ABC Kids is a four-hour block of animated television series and live-action children's television series (normally shows from Disney Channel), broadcast on the ABC network in the U.S. and was broadcast on the CTV network and BBS in Canada on Saturday mornings until 2002.

History

Sometime around 1997 Peter Hastings, the creator and excutive producer of One Saturday Morning, who wrote on Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain left both shows in order to produce cartoons for Disney and ABC. ABC was told by Michael Eisner to create a Saturday morning block that was different from the rest at the time. They asked Hastings to do it. In February 1997 Peter Hastings pleged the idea that Saturday is different from every other day and to repsent buildings as week days. He also propsed to use virtual set technology; Although he knew little about it at the time and the technology used was just starting development. Disney and ABC liked the idea. He hired Prudence Fenton as Consultant Manger and Co-Executive Producer. Together they sampled virtual set technology at NAB 1997 and chose technology developed by Accom and ELSET. Rutherford Bench Productions which had previously worked with Disney hired Pacific Ocean Post, POP Sound today, to produce the virtual set. The building was initially a drawing of Grand Central Station with a roller coaster but evolved into a towering mechanical 1.

Disney's One Saturday Morning

On September 13, 1997, Disney's One Saturday Morning was created as a successor to both The Disney Afternoon and the recent ABC Saturday Morning lineup, and originally featured some of the shows that had been on them. The block originally lasted 2 and half hour but changed to 5 hours and finally 5 and a half. On September 6, 1999 a spin-off, Disney's One Too, aired on UPN and in syndication every weekday in the morning or afternoon. One Saturday Mornings last airdate was September 7, 2002. During the introduction to One Saturday Morning as well as other introductions on the block, a tiny lightbulb icon would appear in a bottom corner of the screen and an announcer would say, "Illuminating Television," stating the programming block's educational programming. The lightbulb's chain would be pulled by a hand and the lightbulb would have an animation (turning into a rocket, falling into a garbage can, jumping in a pool) etc.

ABC Kids

On September 14, 2002, Disney's One Saturday Morning was terminated and rebranded as ABC Kids, whose main target is children ages 8-16, while One Saturday Mornings was children ages 5-12. The block formally contained new programs, but in the present, most ABC Kids programming are reruns of Disney Channel originals (excluding Power Rangers, which airs on Toon Disney's Jetix). Power Rangers was previously aired on Fox Kids until mid way through Wild Force. Then starting with the Power Rangers Wild Force episode "Unfinished Business", Power Rangers moved to ABC Kids for the 2002 Fall season and Power Rangers has since aired on ABC. The remainder of the Wild Force season and all of the following Ninja Storm season were premiered on ABC and then later on Jetix. Beginning with the DinoThunder season, premieres were moved to Jetix on cable and then re-run in later weeks on ABC.

Current line up

The schedule shown above was originally introduced during the 2006-2007 season (except for Power Rangers: Jungle Fury, which began airing on ABC Kids in 2008). No new Disney Channel sitcoms or animated series were added for the 2007-2008 season, despite the fact that Disney Channel had debuted Cory in the House, a spin-off of That's So Raven earlier in 2007. No changes were announced for the 2008-2009 season, despite the prior additions of live-action sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place (which premiered in October 2007) and animated series Phineas and Ferb (which originally debuted in November 2007) to Disney Channel's lineup.

In addition, no "new-to-ABC Kids" episodes of existing Disney Channel shows were aired during the 2007-2008 season, as reruns of the first season of Hannah Montana, The Emperor's New School and The Replacements, and reruns of the first and second seasons of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody continue to air (even though all the aforementioned series had moved onto their second and third seasons, and a spin-off respectively). It is unknown if and when any changes to the Disney Channel programming will be made to the ABC Kids lineup in the near future.

Programming

All programming past and present

Disney's One Saturday Morning segments

Disney's One Saturday Morning (1997- 2002) featured a wide variety of interstitial content that filled in the gaps between shows, even consisting of a trio Jazz musical group, Roller Toasters. During this period, the show was hosted from September 1997 to June 1998 by Charlie (played by Jessica Prunell) and Phil (played by Travis Wester) and was hosted from June 1998 to September 2002 by Meme (played by Valarie Rae Miller) and Jelly Roll (a talking elephant voiced by Brad Garrett). However the in between skits, below, were stripped from the air by fall 2001. These segments included:

• • Mrs. Munger's Class: A brief skit about a class featuring manipulated talking yearbook photographs. The Mrs. Munger's Class segments were later withdrawn from broadcast because the people (members of an actual middle school class in 1975) whose images were manipulated for use in this skit had not given permission, and several of them sued. http://www.sdreader.com/php/cityshow.php?id=SH010799 A similar skit titled Centerville, using authorized photographs, was later added in place of Mrs. Munger's Class.
  • Manny the Uncanny: A live action skit in which the eccentric Manny (played by Paul Rugg) visits some real world location. Activities included taxiderming a carrot and playing with live bugs at a research lab. Sometime later it was rebranded as Manny's America
  • Tube Dwellers: A CGI segment about 2 guys named Bob who live in your TV and fix it as their job. Their adventures are usually amusing, since both of them are pretty dim-witted, resulting in many hilarious escapades.
  • Great Minds Think For Themselves: A short animated segment featuring Genie from Aladdin (voiced by Robin Williams) in which he profiles a famous American, such as Benjamin Franklin or Albert Einstein.
  • How Things Werk: A '50s style cartoon segment where Mr. Werks would explain to a kid named Billy how an ordinary item worked (such as an umbrella or chalkboard). The explanation was invariably not only wrong but ridiculously complicated, branching almost into the realm of conspiracy theory. This segment took place in a '50s style comic book.
  • Flipbook: A small segment in which a Flip book would be flipped, resulting in a funny animation. One of the shortest segments on Disney's One Saturday Morning.
  • Flyndiggery Do!: A humorous live-action segment hosted by Alistair Flyndiggery (played by Paul Rugg), an Australian nature show host, who talked about and showed different animals.
  • Monkey Boys: The live-action shenanigans of two men, Buddy and Hodge-Podge, who almost always make a mess of things.
  • Find Out Why: A short animated segment featuring Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King, in which they gave interesting facts about science and nature. This segment was a counterpart to Great Minds Think for Themselves.
  • What's The Diff?: A segment where two seemingly identical pictures would be shown, and the viewer would have 30 seconds to identify the six differences between the pictures.
  • What's That Sound: An animated segment in which a sound is played and the viewers guess what it is. After the commercials, the two animated characters would try to guess behind game show booths. One of the characters would guess some ridiculous answer
  • Disney's One Saturday Morning Building: Disney's One Saturday Morning took place in a giant 1 shaped building where Meme and Jelly Roll were the hosts of the program, and had some of their own segments, such as How Much Stuff Could An Elephant Crush? (Each week, Jelly Roll attempts to crush something, resulting in a funny outcome), Ask Derby (Meme asks her friend Derby, the geriatric mouse, a question, to which he responds with a ridiculous answer), Ms. Moose (Meme and her friends Jelly Roll and Derby visit Ms. Moose, a person in a large moose suit) and others.
  • I Don't Know Who Invented It, But Thanks: Guests in the building would have some kind of dilemma, and Meme, Jellyroll, or one of the staff would have the solution, than Meme and Jellyroll would state, "(Item which helped the guest), I don't who invented it/them (according to the item), but thanks!
  • Televator: In the control room of the building, MeMe and Jellyroll would pick the show to play on the time slot. Even though the block did have a schedule.

External links

• ABC Kids official site
• Blast From The Past 1990s ABC

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