Teletoon Retro started as a programming block on Teletoon. On November 24, 2000, Teletoon Canada was given approval by the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to launch a national English language category 2 specialty channel named Teletoon Retro. The channel never made it to air. Plans to launch the channel arose again in 2005, when on October 25, Teletoon Canada was given approval again to launch Teletoon Retro. The channel was launched at 6:00 PM EST on October 1, 2007, across all major television providers with its first program being
The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. To coincide with the channel's launch, Teletoon briefly relaunched the
Retro programming block. A French language counterpart, titled
Télétoon Rétro, which had been given approval to be launched at the same time as Teletoon Retro, was launched on September 4, 2008. On February 4, 2013, the channel underwent a refresh with new graphics and bumpers created by John Lee, retiring the "television sets" era from 2009 to 2013. In addition, the channel also underwent a new logo, and the male announcer (still used on its parent network) was retired and replaced with a female announcer. However, the channel's slogan did not change. On March 4, 2013, Corus Entertainment announced that it would acquire Astral Media's 50% ownership interest in Teletoon Canada (owner of
Teletoon,
Télétoon, Teletoon Retro,
Télétoon Rétro, and
Cartoon Network), along with several other properties. The purchase was in relation to
Bell Media's pending takeover of Astral (which had earlier been rejected by the CRTC in October 2012, but was restructured to allow the sale of certain Astral Media properties in order to allow the purchase to clear regulatory hurdles). Corus's purchase was cleared by the
Competition Bureau two weeks later on March 18. On December 20, 2013, the CRTC approved Corus's full ownership of Teletoon Canada and it was purchased by Corus on January 1, 2014. The channel continues to be owned by Teletoon Canada, now wholly owned by
Corus Entertainment under its Corus Kids division. On March 1, 2014, a
high definition simulcast of the channel was launched. The only two providers to carry it were
Cogeco and
Bell Fibe TV. Shaw Direct, SaskTel, Bell MTS, and Telus Optik TV never launched the feed in time. In August 2015, Teletoon Retro's website announced that the channel would be shut down effective September 1, 2015; some of its programming was moved to the main Teletoon network. The channel shut down at 6:00 AM on that date. On some providers, Teletoon Retro was replaced by either
Disney Channel or
Cartoon Network. The transition was legally structured so that Cartoon Network would cease to exist as a separately-licensed service as of September 1, 2015, and henceforth operate under Teletoon Retro's category B license instead. Cartoon Network was ultimately relaunched as a newer Canadian version of
Boomerang on March 27, 2023, thus returning a classic animation format to the former Teletoon Retro channel space. ==Final programming==