Disney's One Saturday Morning on ABC

**Disney's One Saturday Morning** is a Saturday morning American children's programming block that has aired on ABC since September 13, 1997. It features a mixture of animated and live-action series from Walt Disney Television Animation, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior, aimed at children between the ages of 3 and 13. Since July 14, 2014, the One Saturday Morning Block and Disney Junior on ABC is shared with a 4PM to 6PM timeslot known as ABC Kids due to many feeds on ABC. Though, XYZ might have these timeslot in certain days where ABC Sports is currently at.

## History

In the years immediately prior to The Walt Disney Company's purchase of ABC corporate parent Capital Cities/ABC Inc. in 1995, the network's children's program block at the time, ABC Saturday Morning, aired such Disney-produced series as *The Mighty Ducks*, *DuckTales* and *Gargoyles*; it was one of two networks at the time that prominently carried Disney programming on Saturday mornings, as CBS also carried Disney cartoons (CBS's were mostly television spin-offs of Disney Renaissance films, whereas ABC's were mostly other Disney properties). After Disney formally took over ABC's operations in 1996, Disney head Michael Eisner sought to create a Saturday morning block that was different from those carried by its competitors at the time.

In February 1997, Peter Hastings left Warner Bros. Animation and joined Disney, where was tasked with overhauling ABC's Saturday morning lineup. He pitched an idea around the concept that Saturday is different from every other day of the week, and the representation of weekdays as buildings. Hastings also proposed the use of virtual set technology; although he knew a bit about it at the time and the technology used was just starting to be developed, Disney and ABC liked the idea. He hired Prudence Fenton as consultant manager and co-executive producer. Together, they sampled virtual set technology at the 1997 NAB Show and chose technology developed by Accom and ELSET. Rutherford Bench Productions, which had previously worked with Disney on other projects, hired Pacific Ocean Post (now POP Sound) to produce the virtual set. The building was initially a drawing of Grand Central Terminal with a roller coaster added, but evolved into a towering mechanical structure. Even the interior has similarities such as a central high raised room, with two wings on the left and right sides and another on the south side.

On September 13, 1997, Disney's One Saturday Morning premiered as a two-and-a-half-hour sub-block within the ABC Saturday Morning lineup.[5] It was originally scheduled to debut the Saturday prior on September 6, but coverage by all U.S. networks of the funeral of Princess Diana pushed back the premiere up one week to September 13. Disney’s One Saturday Morning featured two parts: three hours of regularly scheduled cartoons and a two-hour flagship show that included feature segments, comedy skits, and the virtual world which Hastings had proposed, along with newer episodes of three animated series: *Doug* (which had been acquired from Nickelodeon in 1996), *Recess* and *Pepper Ann*.

*Doug*, *Recess* and *Pepper Ann* were each nominally given 40-minute time slots. The extended 10 minutes during each show's slot were for One Saturday Morning's interstitial segments and educational features. The live-action wraparound segments were originally hosted by Charlie (portrayed by Jessica Prunell, now an attorney) for the block's first season in 1997, and later by MeMe (Valarie Rae Miller) beginning in September 1998; the segments also featured an elephant named Jelly Roll (voiced by stand up comedian and actor Brad Garrett), who served as a sidekick to the human host. *Schoolhouse Rock!*, a longtime essential of ABC's Saturday morning block since 1973, also aired as an interstitial segment during *The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show*, the only non-Disney cartoon to carry into the block and one that would air until 2000, when the carriage contract with Warner Bros. was exhausted.

Disney’s One Saturday Morning was initially a massive success, beating Fox Kids during its first season to be the most-watched Saturday morning block on broadcast television. It remained competitive in its second season, beating all of Fox Kids' shows except *Power Rangers*. The shorts and hosted segments were discontinued in 2000 in a reformatting of the ABC block; by this time, the interstitials within the block were relegated to bumpers and program promotions. In September 2001, live-action series were added to the One Saturday Morning lineup with the addition of the "Zoog Hour," an hour-long sub-block featuring the Disney Channel original series *Lizzie McGuire* and *Even Stevens* (the sub-block, advertised in promos for Disney’s One Saturday Morning promoting the two programs as "powered by Zoog," was named after Disney Channel's weekend programming block at the time, Zoog Disney).

A spin-off of Disney's One Saturday Morning, Disney's One Too, debuted on UPN on September 6, 1999; produced through a time-lease agreement between Disney and UPN, the block aired each weekday (either in the morning or afternoon, depending on the station's preference) and on Sunday mornings, and featured many of the programs shown on One Saturday Morning (including *Recess*, *Pepper Ann* and *Sabrina: The Animated Series*). Although being discontinued in 2003, it got revived in 2015 on ABC Family (Later Freeform) when the network required some children's programming during the weekday and Sunday route “Because Tom Ascheim wanted ABC Family to be a Family Channel”, thus all of One Saturday Morning programs aired seven days a week.

In September of 2002, the newly revamped One Saturday Morning block contained a mix of first-run programs exclusive to the block, as well as reruns of several original series from Disney Channel. *NBA Inside Stuff* also began airing on the block as a result of ABC's acquisition of the broadcast television rights to the NBA from NBC (where the series originally premiered in 1992), beginning with the 2002–03 season's Christmas Day game; *Inside Stuff* continued to air on Disney's One Saturday Morning until 2004.

In September 2004, One Saturday Morning almost exclusively carried live-action and animated series from Disney Channel as a result of the short-lived *Fillmore!* (which had been airing in reruns since the summer of 2004) and *Recess* (which was airing in reruns on the block since it ended in 2001) being dropped from the lineup. With the expanded regulation of federally mandated educational programming guidelines defined by the Federal Communications Commission's Children's Television Act, ABC chose to fulfill the five-hour quota by carrying select episodes of Disney Channel live-action comedies and animated series (anywhere between 9 and 13 episodes from a given season) featuring moral lessons and/or educational anecdotes and Beginning in 2006, ABC began to carry *Mickey Mouse Clubhouse* to be as part of the One Saturday Morning block due to it featuring moral lessons and/or educational anecdotes. They begin to mix the Disney Channel programming and added more programming along with programming airing on ABC from the 1997 launch to 2004 and added the addition of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show and the return of the two hour flagship show to make a current unique programming block using the same name. By then, all Playhouse Disney programming and Toon Disney programming beside the DIC Entertainment programming move their programming to One Saturday Morning. The Playhouse Disney timeslot is known as Disney's One Saturday Playhouse while the rest and entertainment timeslots is Disney's One Saturday Morning on ABC. This brings all of the Disney programming that use to aired on ABC including Mickey Mouse Works, Hercules and Buzz Lightyear: Star Command back to ABC for the first time while bringing back the iconic Bugs Bunny and Tweety show. In September 12, 2013, Disney introduces a brand new different logo for the first time since 1997 and introduces a unique update on the One Saturday Morning theme song by the Johnson & Titans Band. The new logo has the iconic logo update to new font and lettering while the ABC logo is yellow. Plus replacing the 2000-2013 graphics package is a current unique on air graphics package produced by Primal Screen, Brand New School and Jaden Johnson based on the 2000-2013 look and the Disney Channel look. The logo animation is update to have the text forming by folding up with the ABC logo zooming in and "1" sliding in.