ABC Kids (OThreeV's vision)

**ABC Kids** (originally titled **Disney's One Saturday Morning** until 2002) 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 17. This was the first time Disney Channel content aired on over-the-air television in the United States.

The block regularly airs on Saturday mornings, though certain programs within the lineup air on Sundays in some parts of the country due to station preferences for non-educational programming or scheduling issues with regional or network sports broadcasts.

## History

#### Disney's One Saturday Morning

Immediately after The Walt Disney Company purchased ABC corporate parent Capital Cities/ABC Inc. in 1996, the network's children's program block ABC Saturday Morning, aired such Disney-produced series as *The Mighty Ducks*, *Jungle Cubs* 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' 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, 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 he was tasked with overhauling ABC's Saturday morning lineup in order to compete against Fox Kids and Kids' WB. 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-hour sub-block within the ABC Saturday Morning lineup. 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 by 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) 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 third season remained competitive with its broadcast peers on Fox and Kids' WB, with *The Weekenders* being a bright spot for the block; the new series dethroned *Pokémon* to become broadcast television's most-watched Saturday morning cartoon, though all of the broadcast networks had fallen behind Nickelodeon.

The block received a new brand identity in the fall of 2000; this was followed by the shorts and hosted segments being discontinued on December 16 in a reformatting of the ABC block. By this time, the interstitials within the block were relegated to bumpers and program promotions. The change proved to be disastrous; by February 2001, ratings had fallen to less than half of its competitors' on Fox, The WB and Nickelodeon. In the fall of 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*).

#### ABC Kids

On July 23, 2001, the Walt Disney Company purchased Fox Family Worldwide, primarily for its Fox Family Channel, which was included in the sale as well as Saban Entertainment, a company in which Fox purchased a 50% interest in 1994. On September 14, 2002, ABC rebranded its Saturday morning block, as a subtle nod to the Fox Kids brand acquired by Disney through its purchase of Fox Family Worldwide, to ABC Kids (as a result of the sale, the original iteration of Fox Kids ceased to exist; Fox's children's program lineups would be handled from that point onward by 4Kids Entertainment until 2012 (Fox Kids officially relaunched around the time 4Kids controlling the lineup in 2009), where they later became managed by Saban Brands - a then-successor to the original Saban Entertainment - that same year, then by Hasbro starting in 2018).

The rechristened block originally contained a mix of first-run programs exclusive to the block, as well as reruns of several original series from both Disney Channel and Toon Disney. *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 ABC Kids until 2004. The series premiere of Disney Channel's *Lilo & Stitch: The Series* was also held on ABC Kids on September 20, 2003, with a delayed premiere on Disney Channel on October 12, 2003. The new block abandoned the imagery of the *One Saturday Morning* era in favor of a sports stadium motif, which, in 2006, was changed to a rock concert design that remained throughout the later years of ABC Kids.

Through Disney's acquisition of Saban Entertainment, the *Power Rangers* series moved from Fox Kids' original presence to the ABC Kids block. All first-run episodes from the franchise premiered on ABC Kids beginning with the second half of the show's *Wild Force* season (starting with the episode "Unfinished Business"), with the entirety of the *Wild Force* and *Ninja Storm* seasons subsequently airing in reruns on ABC Family (the former season aired in part both before the introduction of and during the ABC Family Action Block). However, when Toon Disney and ABC Family jointly launched the action-oriented Jetix block in 2004, Jetix handled all first-run episode debuts of subsequent seasons from *Dino Thunder* to *Jungle Fury*, while ABC Kids aired these seasons in reruns. Due to the low ratings of the *Jungle Fury* season, as well as the merger between Jetix and Toon Disney to form Disney XD in 2009, the *RPM* season aired exclusively on ABC Kids. After production on *RPM* had concluded, instead of producing a new season, Disney produced a re-version of the first 32 episodes of *Mighty Morphin Power Rangers*, which included a new logo, an updated title sequence, comic book-referenced graphics, and extra alternative visual effects. The re-version aired from January 2 to August 28, 2010, after which Haim Saban bought the franchise back and Fox had re-acquired broadcast rights to the series in part to the re-acquisition of the then-absorbed Fox Kids brand in 2008. Later on after which, ABC was gonna greenlight plans to rebrand the ABC Kids block under a new name, but plans for that were eventually scrapped, and the ABC Kids name would continue to be retained by the network to this day.

In the 2004–05 season, ABC Kids dropped its two remaining original series, *Fillmore!* and *Recess* (the latter of which was airing in reruns on the block since it ended in 2001). With the transfer of Walt Disney Television Animation to Disney Channels Worldwide, ABC short-time fulfilled the FCC's three-hour quota by carrying select episodes of Disney Channel live-action comedies and animated series (anywhere between nine and thirteen episodes from a given season) featuring moral lessons and/or educational anecdotes. The episodes were selected by both the Standards and Practices Division of the network and any educational consultants who were attached to the shows. The episodes were selected by both the Standards and Practices Division of the network and any educational consultants who were attached to the shows. Later beginning in March 2006, plans for another fulfill strategy had already begun, as ABC made another decision to officially begin adding select programming from Disney Channel's preschool brand, Playhouse Disney (later Disney Junior), that are fully designed to meet federally mandated educational programming guidelines exclusively during the block's first hour, resulting in the first time second runs of Playhouse Disney programming would be brought to the ABC Kids schedule as part of a sub-block called *The Playhouse Disney Express* (which became advertised in promos for ABC Kids promoting any two selected programs), as ABC was requested to have at least an hour of shows on its weekend morning lineup that meet the E/I requirements. *Mickey Mouse Clubhouse* and *Bear in the Big Blue House* were the first two Playhouse Disney series to be added to the block in the fall of 2006. In midseason 2011 amid to Playhouse Disney becoming Disney Junior, the sub-block was later renamed as *The Disney Junior Express*, and has remained since.

In 2009, a selection of Disney XD programs were added to the block in coordination with the channel's launch in February beginning with its first live-action original, *Zeke and Luther*, and additionally prior to Disney's acquisition of Marvel in 2009, select Marvel series that were produced in conjunction with Disney XD also began premiering on the lineup, starting with *The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes* in 2011. *Liv and Maddie* and *Girl Meets World* were the last two live-action Disney Channel shows to be added to the lineup before departing from ABC in September 2017, and thus ABC Kids began to focus more on animation like it did back during the *Disney's One Saturday Morning* era of the block, until almost three years later in 2020 when the block began adding some more live-action Disney Channel shows to the lineup starting with *Gabby Duran & The Unsittables* that same year.

In 2013, ABC Kids became the one of the only three Saturday morning (and mostly traditional weekday) blocks without a strictly E/I-based lineup to air on broadcast TV. This happened in November of that year, when Tribune acquired Weigel's 50% stake in This TV, and their Cookie Jar Toons/This Is for Kids block came to an end.

Later in 2019, ABC Kids also made the American terrestrial broadcast debut of Australian preschool show *Bluey* "also featuring moral lessons and/or educational anecdotes, like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse/& The Roadster Racers/Mixed Up Adventures", and then later in 2021, to comply with the European Content Quota law, Disney brought *Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir* to ABC Kids after the *Disney+* streaming service bought the streaming rights to the series, replacing Fox Kids "The then TV Partner for Miraculous Ladybug" (though with cable airings of the series debuting on Freeform with the relaunch of the Jetix block in 2019 while being shared with FoxHub until 2021).

On August 14, 2021, ABC Kids rolled out a new logo due to ABC's new branding package that debuted on August 9, featuring elements of the network's current branding, the overhauled logo design and the block's rock concert branding design.

## Programming

* 1 Program also ran on syndication or ABC prior to the block.
* 2 Program moved to Toon Disney/Disney XD for episode premieres.
* 3 Program also aired on Freeform under the Jetix brand.

### Current programming

##### Programming from Disney Channel

 *Big City Greens* | September 15, 2018
 *Raven's Home* | September 25, 2021

##### Programming from Disney+

**‡** - Program transitioned from Fox Kids

### Former programming

#### Disney's One Saturday Morning

##### Programming from Disney Channel

 *The Proud Family* **†** | August 31, 2002
 *Lizzie McGuire* **†** | September 15, 2001

##### Acquired programming

 *Schoolhouse Rock!*1 | September 13, 1997
 *NBA Inside Stuff* **†** | September 7, 2002

**†** - Program transitioned to ABC Kids

#### ABC Kids

##### Acquired programming

**†** - Program transitioned from Disney's One Saturday Morning

**‡** - Program transitioned from Fox Kids

### Scrapped programming

The following programs were planned to air on ABC Kids, but they were pulled.

## See also

* The Disney Afternoon – a Disney-produced syndicated children's program block that ran from 1990 to 1997.
* Disney's One Too – a programming block that aired on UPN from 1999 to 2003 as a successor to UPN Kids and since 2015 on ABC Family (later Freeform).