In 2012, NBCUniversal withdrew from the
Qubo joint venture, with Ion Media Networks acquiring NBCUniversal's interest. On March 28 of that year, NBC announced that the three-hour children's programming time period allocated by the network on Saturday mornings would be programmed by
Sprout (which had become a sister television property to NBC following NBCUniversal's 2010 majority purchase by
Comcast; NBC later took full ownership of the network, whose owners previously included
PBS,
Sesame Workshop and
HIT Entertainment) and launch a new Saturday morning block called NBC Kids, which was aimed at preschoolers and grade school-aged children ages 2 to 6. Sprout also produced a Spanish-language sister block for
Telemundo known as MiTelemundo. NBC Kids and MiTelemundo both 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.
Closure On February 24, 2016, NBCUniversal announced that it had entered into a programming agreement with Litton Entertainment to launch a new Saturday morning E/I block replacing NBC Kids. The block would be replaced on October 8, 2016 by
The More You Know (named inspired by its public service announcement campaign), a block produced by Litton Entertainment (now
Hearst Media Production Group) that would feature live-action documentary and lifestyle programs aimed at pre-teens and teenagers. The move came as part of a shift by broadcast television networks towards using their Saturday morning lineup solely to comply with the
educational programming requirements mandated by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), along with the cultural shift towards
cable and online
video on demand viewing of children's and animated programming. NBC Kids aired for the final time on September 25, 2016. Despite this, MiTelemundo continued to broadcast on Telemundo until December 31, 2017, when it was replaced by a Spanish-language version of The More You Know the following week under the same name. ==Programming==