Spacetoon

Spacetoon (Arabic: سبيستون or سبيس تون) is a pan-Arab free-to-air television channel that specializes in animation and children programs. It began broadcasting on 15 March 2000 in Damascus, and it is currently headquartered in Dubai. The channel targets children from 4 and up. Its late night block Space Power is targeted at teenagers and young adults. The Spacetoon company also maintains a video-on-demand app called Spacetoon Go. It is informally referred to as Stoon.
The Spacetoon company has had two now-defunct channels in the Arab world, Space Power TV and Spacetoon English.
The main Indonesian channel began airing on 24 March 2005 in Jakarta. It later became NET., and its broadcast remains on satellite television. Currently, there are two Spacetoon channels in Indonesia: Spacetoon and Spacetoon Plus. In India, Spacetoon India exists as licensing company, but not as a separate TV channel. In South Korea, Spacetoon launched in 2005 but has since closed down. In Turkey, Spacetoon Turkey launched Spacetoon Go app on 12 December 2024, and its TV channel on 13 January 2025.
Spacetoon is currently broadcast in 22 countries, and has an audience of over 130 million viewers.
In 1999, Bahrain Radio and Television Corporation officially signed an agreement to broadcast a children's cartoon channel. On 15 March 2000, Spacetoon began trial broadcasting as a seven-hour block on Bahrain TV. It continued to air this way until the contract ended on 12 January 2002, according to a statement issued by the Ministry. Later, in 2004, Spacetoon moved its headquarters to Dubai and was established as an independent television channel on Nilesat.
In the Arab world, the majority of programs are dubbed in modern standard Arabic. Spacetoon is very closely affiliated with Venus Center, a Syrian dubbing company which has historically provided the Arabic dubbed versions of the programming, and whose voice actors usually were the announcers for the shows between the years 2000–2015. Using modern standard Arabic in dubbing played a crucial role in maintaining the use of the dialect in childhood, which was especially significant given the context of emerging spoken Arabic dialects.
Programming is categorized into sections marketed as planets, one for each genre:
Programs aired on Spacetoon sometimes have aspects that are censored from their source material. In particular, scenes can be cropped or truncated in order to avoid showing excessive violence to viewers. This has been seen in programs such as Detective Conan, Romeo's Blue Skies, Hunter × Hunter and My Hero Academia. Hunter × Hunter was also subject to the censorship of the depiction of Zen Buddhism and Taoism as related to the characters' powers, with the censored version opting to present their powers as a science and martial art. Selective cropping and editing are also used to hide cleavages (like Momo Yaoyorozu's costume in My Hero Academia) and remove innuendo (like Minoru Mineta's perverted personality in My Hero Academia). In some programs, nudity, negative words censored. For example, in Doraemon, Shizuka's panties scene and nudity scene were censored. In Kiteretsu Daihyakka The word girlfriend was changed to sister, while Miyoko's panties scene and nudity scenes were censored. Religious symbols have also been censored in some programs. For example in My Little Pony, Twilight Sparkle's six-pointed star was censored by cutting off one of its points because it looked exactly like the Star of David on the Israel flag.
On 1 April 2005, Spacetoon launched a second channel for the English-speakers in the region. The shows were aired in English, while some were aired in Arabic with English subtitles. It was broadcast from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. After developments had taken place on the channel, it transmitted from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The channel suddenly and temporarily stopped broadcasting on Wednesday, 19 August 2009, at 6 p.m. for a week, and returned to the air on Wednesday, 26 August 2009. From then on, it broadcast from 2 p.m. to 7:15 p.m.
On 1 January 2011, Spacetoon English closed down.
In Indonesia, Spacetoon officially launched on 25 March 2005. The network was founded by H. Sukoyo, co-founder of TV7. When it was launched, Spacetoon broadcast from 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. WIB. Later, broadcast timings were extended from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. When programming ended, a 10-minute section filled with animation, songs, or messages for children was shown. During mid-2011, due to financial problems, Spacetoon began broadcasting some home-shopping programs and alternative medicine programs.
In March 2013, 95% of Spacetoon ownership stakes were acquired by Net Visi Media. On 18 May 2013, Spacetoon officially moved to satellite television, due to NET. having a trial broadcast on terrestrial network before it was officially launched a week later.
In September 2014, Spacetoon split into two channels: Spacetoon and Spacetoon 2. Spacetoon 2 broadcast more cartoon and animation than Spacetoon, although it still broadcast some home-shopping programs. In May 2016, Spacetoon added another channel, Spacetoon 3. It had clearer audio than Spacetoon and Spacetoon 2, but was closed down on October of the same year. In November 2016, Spacetoon 2 was renamed as Space Shopping due to the home shopping programmes contributing the most revenue to the channel, which overall had little income.
On 25 August 2017, the channel closed down on Telkom-1 satellite.
Currently, Spacetoon only operates two children's television satellite channels, including Spacetoon and Spacetoon Plus.
Spacetoon India is an Indian media and licensing company. It was established in 2006. Spacetoon has more than 70 licensing deals, including for Crayon Shin-chan, Doraemon and Hello Kitty. The company also creates original intellectual property, including Fafa & Juno.
In November 2005, Spacetoon partnered with Sahara One to create Spacetoon Hour, an hour-long broadcast of animated and live action series culled from SpaceToon Media Group's library. The broadcast was later cancelled.
In 2009, Spacetoon launched a free-to-air channel in India. Broadcasting was later discontinued. Its website was shut down in 2015.
In South Korea, Spacetoon officially launched on 1 April 2005. It was transmitted through Sky Life and some local cable broadcasting, but it stopped broadcasting on 4 November 2007 due to low channel awareness. It relaunched in the first half of 2009 through IPTV, but it was discontinued in 2011.
On 31 December 2009, the Ukrainian kids channel, Malyatko TV (Ukrainian: Малятко TV), has changed its logo and its name to Spacetoon Malyatko (Ukrainian: Spacetoon Малятко) at midnight. The differences is that there are Christmas variants of the 10 planets and their theme songs. The shows also were dubbed in Ukrainian.
On 25 March 2010, Spacetoon Malyatko changed its name to Malyatko TV. The reason for the termination of cooperation was failure of partners to fulfill their obligations.
Spacetoon launched its trial broadcast in high-definition on 13 January 2025. It is available through Türksat 4A, Turkcell TV and S Sport Plus. It'll be available on Tivibu, Digiturk and Kablo TV in February.