1947–1956 In 1947, NBC's first major children's program was
Howdy Doody, one of the era's first breakthrough television programs. The series, which ran for 13 years until it ended in 1960, featured a myriad of characters led by a freckle-faced
marionette voiced by the show's host,
"Buffalo" Bob Smith.
Howdy Doody spent the first nine years of its run airing on weekday afternoons.
1956–1992 In 1956, NBC stopped airing children's programming within its weekday afternoon schedule, relegating the network's children's shows to
Saturdays only with
Howdy Doody serving as its marquee franchise for the remaining four years of that series' run. From the mid-1960s until 1992, the bulk of the children's programs broadcast by NBC were derived from theatrical shorts like
The Pink Panther Show and classic
Woody Woodpecker and
Looney Tunes shorts; reruns of popular television series such as
The Flintstones and
The Jetsons; and foreign acquisitions such as
Astro Boy and
Kimba the White Lion. During this period, the network also aired original animated series – most notably, the 1980s series
The Smurfs and
Alvin and the Chipmunks. It also carried animated series adapted from certain live-action NBC series such as ''
It's Punky Brewster (based on the sitcom Punky Brewster), Emergency +4 (based on the medical drama Emergency!) ALF: The Animated Series (based on the sitcom ALF) and Star Trek: The Animated Series (based on the science fiction drama Star Trek), as well as animated series vehicles for certain NBC prime time stars including Gary Coleman (The Gary Coleman Show) and Mr. T (Mister T), and original live-action series including the Sid & Marty Krofft-produced The Banana Splits, The Bugaloos and H.R. Pufnstuf''.
The Metric Marvels, a short-form series produced by the creators of rival
ABC's
Schoolhouse Rock! as part of a failed attempt to encourage
metrication in the United States, aired on NBC during the late 1970s. In September 1985, NBC was the first network to broadcast Saturday morning cartoons in
stereo. One series that made up to the NBC Saturday morning lineup was
Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series. NBC aired the program on Saturday mornings at 10:00 AM (later moved to 11:00 AM) for one season during 1987.
Final years with animated programming (1989–1992) In September 1989, NBC premiered
Saved by the Bell, a sitcom centered on the fictional Bayside High School in
Pacific Palisades, California, which originated on
The Disney Channel the year prior as
Good Morning, Miss Bliss (the predecessor series, set in an
Indianapolis, Indiana middle school, served as a starring vehicle for
Hayley Mills, who did not return for the retooled series; four cast members from that show –
Mark-Paul Gosselaar,
Dennis Haskins,
Lark Voorhies and
Dustin Diamond – were cast in
Saved by the Bell as their
Miss Bliss characters). Despite receiving harsh reviews from television critics,
Saved by the Bell would become one of the most popular teen-oriented series in television history as well as the highest-rated series on Saturday mornings, dethroning
ABC's
The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show in its first season. In addition, other teen-oriented programs, including
Guys Next Door and ''
Kid 'n Play (series based on the hip-hop duo), joined the lineup in Fall 1990 to bring in more attention to the older targeted audiences for Saturday mornings rather than just children, which this attempt was unsuccessful as Guys Next Door'' quickly ended the next year. However, in October 1990, then-President
George H. W. Bush signed a deal with the
Federal Communications Commission to require
educational content under the
Children's Television Act for the Fall 1991 season, which mandated these guidelines in animated programs for the network, including
Space Cats,
Super Mario World, and
ProStars. Following the negative reception with this experience, NBC subsequently canceled the animated programming for Saturday mornings as FCC responded that not all cartoons were made to be educational.
TNBC (1992–2002) As results of the continued success of
Saved by the Bell and the failed experience of enforcing educational content, NBC restructured its Saturday morning lineup in September 1992 by replacing children's programming with live-action – mostly scripted – series aimed at teenagers as part of a new three-hour block under the brand
TNBC (the network also launched an hour-long Saturday edition of
Today that debuted simultaneously with the TNBC lineup). Most of the programs on the TNBC lineup were sitcoms produced by
Saved by the Bell executive producer
Peter Engel such as
City Guys,
Hang Time,
California Dreams,
One World and the
Saved by the Bell spinoff,
Saved by the Bell: The New Class. Many of the scripted series incorporating social issues such as
underage drinking,
drug use and
sexual harassment. By 2001, the block had begun suffering from declining viewership; in addition, although the block was aimed at adolescents, TNBC's programs ironically registered a median viewer age of 41.
NBA Inside Stuff, an analysis and interview program aimed at teens that was hosted for most of its run by
Ahmad Rashad (who also served as a commentator and pre-game host for the network's
NBA coverage during much of
Inside Stuffs NBC run), also aired alongside the TNBC lineup during the NBA season until
2002, with the program moving to ABC the following season as a result of that network taking the
NBA rights from NBC.
Discovery Kids on NBC (2002–2006) On January 6, 2002, NBC entered into an agreement with
Discovery Communications, in which it would produce a new Saturday morning block for the network featuring original programs from the
Discovery Kids cable channel under a time-lease agreement to provide programming compliant with the FCC's educational programming guidelines to NBC's affiliates, rather than having any network input or production. The block, branded "
Discovery Kids on NBC", premiered on October 5, 2002. In March 2006, Discovery Communications announced it would not renew its contract with NBC, citing a desire to focus exclusively on the Discovery Kids cable channel. Discovery Kids on NBC ended its run on September 2, 2006.
Qubo on NBC/Telemundo (2006–2012) In May 2006,
NBCUniversal and
Ion Media Networks announced plans to form
Qubo, a joint venture in conjunction with
Scholastic Corporation,
Classic Media (now part of DreamWorks Animation, which later acquired with NBCUniversal in 2016) and Canada-based
Corus Entertainment's animation subsidiary
Nelvana. The multi-platform programming endeavor, aimed at children between 4 and 8 years of age, would comprise children's program blocks airing on NBC, Spanish-language sister network
Telemundo and Ion Media's i: Independent Television (now
Ion Television), as well as a 24-hour
digital multicast channel (launched in Early January 2007) on i's
owned-and-operated stations (alternatively known as Qubo Channel),
video on demand services and a branded website. The reasoning why the name "qubo" was chosen for the endeavor, or why its logo is a cube, has never been publicly stated by any of the partners, although general manager Rick Rodriguez stated in an interview with
Multichannel News that the name was intended to be something that sounded fun, and be a brand that could easily be used uniformly in English and Spanish. The new
Qubo on NBC block premiered on September 9, 2006, featuring seven programs in its initial season:
VeggieTales,
3-2-1 Penguins!,
Larryboy: The Cartoon Adventures,
Dragon,
Babar (originally aired on HBO),
Jane and the Dragon, and
Jacob Two-Two, the last of which was carried over from Telemundo's previous children's block,
Telemundo Kids. Initially,
VeggieTales episodes aired on the block excised religious content originally incorporated before and after the main feature in the home media releases. This drew criticism for the block and NBC in particular from the conservative watchdog group
Parents Television Council, as well as
VeggieTales co-creator
Phil Vischer, who claimed that he was unaware of the intent to edit out the religious material when Qubo acquired the programming distribution rights. Additionally,
3-2-1 Penguins! (the original direct-to-video series) and
Larryboy: The Cartoon Adventures were initially presented together under the title
3-2-1 Penguins! and Larryboy Stories, with episodes alternating between the two shows until September 29, 2007, when
Larryboy was dropped from the lineup and the original direct-to-video episodes of
3-2-1 Penguins! were replaced by a brand new, televised second season of the series the following week.
NBC Kids (2012–2016) On March 28, 2012, NBC announced that the three-hour children's programming time period allocated by the network on Weekend mornings would be taken over by
Sprout (which had become a sibling television property to NBC following parent company NBCUniversal's 2010 majority purchase by
Comcast; NBC later took full ownership of the network, whose owners previously included
Sesame Workshop and
HIT Entertainment) and launch a new weekend morning block called
NBC Kids, which is aimed at preschoolers and grade school-aged children ages 2 to 9. A similarly programmed block would also launch on Telemundo under the name MiTelemundo. This block meets the programming requirements defined by the
FCC's
Children's Television Act, and is the first to air in
high definition. NBC Kids debuted on July 7, 2012, one week after the Qubo block ended its run on NBC on June 30, followed by Telemundo on July 1. This left Ion Television (and later
Ion Plus) as the only network to retain a Qubo-branded children's block, until Qubo Channel ceased operations on February 28, 2021, as the
E.W. Scripps Company is now the owner of
Ion Media, which they acquired on January 7, 2021. Between 2014 and 2015, several
PBS Kids programs were being removed from both the block and the Sprout channel due to PBS leaving the channel and continuing with its own children's programming separately and after being acquired by NBCUniversal in 2010. Then on both February 24, 2016 and March 1, 2016, NBC announced that NBC Kids would shut down and succeeded on October 8, 2016, by
The More You Know, a block produced by
Litton Entertainment that would feature live-action documentary and lifestyle programs aimed at preteens and teenagers, similarly to a block also introduced by Litton for
NBC's co-owner
CW for the past two years. The transfer came as part of a shift by broadcast television networks towards using their weekend morning lineup only to comply with the educational programming requirements and when Sprout changed its name to
Universal Kids on September 9, 2017 (closed down eight years later due to Peacock's move). NBC Kids quietly went to the
Noodle and Doodle end credits shortly before
NBC Sports on September 25, 2016.
The More You Know (2016–present) Between February 24, 2016, and March 1, 2016, NBC announced that it would lease its weekend morning lineup to
Litton Entertainment,
The More You Know starting October 2016. Named after NBC's
series of public service campaigns, the three-hour weekend morning block is programmed by
Litton Entertainment, and features
live-action programming aimed at teenagers. Just like its predecessor, The More You Know meets the programming requirements defined by the
FCC's
Children's Television Act. ==Programming==