Discovery Kids

History

As Discovery Kids (1996–2010)

Discovery Communications launched Discovery Kids Channel on October 22, 1996, as part of a suite of four new digital cable channels that included Discovery Travel & Living Network, Discovery Civilization Network, and Discovery Science Network. Upon its launch, the channel primarily offered adventure, nature, and science-themed programs aimed towards a children's audience between ages 6 and 11. Marjorie Kaplan, the network's senior vice president, explained that the creation of Discovery Kids Channel was influenced primarily by children, who were watching its parent network's programming together with their parents.

From 1996 to 2000, Discovery Kids Channel was carried by only a select few cable television providers. In 2001, the channel shortened its name to Discovery Kids and, by the end of the year, was carried in at least 15 million homes. In September 2001, a Canadian version of Discovery Kids was launched in partnership with Corus Entertainment.

In December 2001, Discovery Kids announced a partnership with NBC, in which it would produce a new Saturday morning block for the network known as Discovery Kids on NBC, beginning in September 2002. The block replaced TNBC, a teen-oriented block consisting of live-action shows and sitcoms, and featured programming that met the educational programming guidelines from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It included new original series (such as the reality television series Endurance), existing Discovery Kids programming, and children's spin-offs of programs from sister networks, such as Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.

With the launch of the new block, Discovery Kids also branched out into original animated programming with the premieres of Kenny the Shark and Tutenstein. In March 2006, Discovery declined to renew its contract with NBC for its Saturday morning block, citing a desire to focus exclusively on the Discovery Kids channel. Since the launch of the NBC block, Discovery Kids had grown its cable carriage to over 43 million homes. NBC would replace the Discovery Kids block with Qubo in September 2006.

As The Hub/Hub Network (2010–2014)

On April 30, 2009, toy manufacturer and media company Hasbro announced that it would form a joint venture with Discovery Communications to re-launch Discovery Kids as a new, family-oriented television channel. Hasbro paid $300 million for a 50% ownership stake in the channel, along with an additional investment of $371,783,000 in the joint venture.

Under the arrangement, Discovery would oversee advertising sales and distribution for the new channel, while Hasbro would be in charge of acquiring and producing programming. While the network aimed to maintain educational series (including those carried over from Discovery Kids), plans called for original programs based on Hasbro-owned franchises, such as G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, Transformers, as well as game shows adapted from its board game brands. Discovery believed that partnering with Hasbro would attract better-quality advertisers to the channel.

In July 2009, the joint venture appointed veteran television executive Margaret Loesch as its president and chief executive officer. Loesch had previously served as president of Fox Kids from 1990 to 1997, and at Marvel Productions from 1984 to 1990. In her tenure at Marvel, she assisted the production of several Hasbro tie-in series, including My Little Pony and The Transformers.

In January 2010, Discovery and Hasbro announced that the new network would be known as The Hub; two months later, the companies announced that The Hub would launch on October 10. Its first branding was developed by Troika Design Group, and built around a logo nicknamed the "hubble"—designed to embody a "catalyst of action and imagination". The final logo design was the result of numerous drafts by Troika designers, some of which incorporated typography similar to Hasbro's logo.

The Hub would continue targeting Discovery Kids' main demographic of children aged 2–14 (a market which staff felt was being abandoned by its competitors, such as Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, in favor of tweens), but also planned to feature a primetime block with family-oriented programming. Some of the channel's launch series included the game show Family Game Night; animated series Pound Puppies, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and Deltora Quest; reruns of the Jim Henson series Fraggle Rock, and the preschool-oriented programs Animal Mechanicals and The WotWots. The channel promised to keep the proportion of programs supplied from Hasbro to "less than 20%" of the total of its programming.

As Discovery Family (2014–present)

On June 12, 2014, it was reported that Margaret Loesch would resign from her role as Hub Network president and CEO by the end of the year. On September 17, 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that Discovery Communications was preparing to acquire a controlling stake in Hub Network from Hasbro, then rebrand it as Discovery Family. Along with Discovery's CFO Andrew Warren, Hasbro staff acknowledged that increasing competition in the children's media landscape ― especially by subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix — had affected the network's overall performance and Hasbro's original content. As it was majority-owned by a competitor, other major toy companies such as Mattel refused to purchase advertising time on Hub Network, affecting its ability to air advertising that targeted its main audience; by 2014, the network had made only $9 million per year. Discovery staff was also unable to display a full commitment to Hub Network's operation, due to factors such as the troubled launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network. Believing that they had overvalued its stake in the venture, Hasbro decided to cede the operation of the network to Discovery so it could focus more on content, and its core toy business.

Discovery and Hasbro both publicly announced the rebranding on September 25, 2014. Hasbro's CEO Brian Goldner explained that Discovery Family would be the "next chapter" in its joint venture with Discovery, "[combining] highly rated award-winning storytelling around Hasbro's brands and Discovery's most popular non-fiction shows that appeal to both children and families alike." Hub Network was re-launched as Discovery Family on October 13, 2014 — just over four years since the earlier re-launch as The Hub. With these changes, Discovery Communications now held a 60% stake in the joint venture; Hasbro retained a 40% stake and continued to program Discovery Family's daytime lineup with children's programming. Following the re-launch, the network's primetime lineup was replaced by reruns of family-oriented, factual programming from Discovery Channel's library. Henry Schleiff (who oversaw sister networks such as Destination America and Investigation Discovery) led the re-launched network, with Tom Cosgrove (who previously served as CEO of Discovery Channel and Science) as general manager.

In re-launching Hub Network, Discovery executives noted there would be a larger emphasis on programming of interest to both children and their parents; Warren argued that since ABC Family had become, in his opinion, aimed towards teenage girls, there was a gap in the broadcasting industry for a new, family-oriented network. With these shifts in the network's operation, it was announced on October 7, 2014 that the Transformers: Prime follow-up Transformers: Robots in Disguise, which was initially announced for Hub Network, would instead air on Cartoon Network (whose parent company would later merge with Discovery). Hasbro Studios president Stephen Davis felt that Cartoon Network was a more appropriate home for a Transformers series due to its male-oriented demographics, describing Hub Network's lineup as "traditionally skewed towards girls". Other recent Transformers animated series preceding The Hub's launch had aired on Cartoon Network. Davis remarked that Hasbro was still "100% committed" to its joint venture with Discovery. Despite the move for Robots in Disguise, fellow Hub Network Transformers series Transformers: Rescue Bots remained on Discovery Family for its third season.

Programming

The majority of Discovery Family's daytime programs are tied to media franchises owned by Hasbro itself, with newer series previously produced through its Hasbro Studios (later known as Allspark) and Entertainment One (which Hasbro acquired in 2019) subsidiaries. As the Hub Network, it previously aired game shows adapted from Hasbro's board games, such as Family Game Night, Scrabble Showdown, Pictureka!, and The Game of Life.

One of the network's most noteworthy series was My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, an animated series developed by Lauren Faust for the then-ongoing relaunch of Hasbro's My Little Pony franchise. The series not only became The Hub's highest-rated program within its target demographic of young girls, but attracted an unexpectedly significant cult following among male teenagers and adults. Following its conclusion in October 2019, a spin-off series, My Little Pony: Pony Life, ran from November 2020 to May 2021. A similar situation occurred with Littlest Pet Shop, which was succeeded by Littlest Pet Shop: A World of Our Own in 2018.

The Hatchery, a company co-founded by former president Margaret Loesch in 2003 with a majority stake acquired by American Greetings, supplied the series Dan Vs. and R. L. Stine's The Haunting Hour to the Hub Network. American Greetings also supplied Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures (part of the 2009 re-launch of Strawberry Shortcake, a property they owned until 2015), The Twisted Whiskers Show, Maryoku Yummy, and Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot. Hasbro was named the master toy licensee of Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake in 2008.

During its time as the Hub Network, the channel acquired series unrelated to Hasbro, The Hatchery, and American Greetings; these included Animal Mechanicals, The Aquabats! Super Show!, Cosmic Quantum Ray, Majors & Minors, Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch, Secret Millionaires Club, and SheZow. It also aired reruns of older acquired series like Fraggle Rock and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman; a collection of Warner Bros. Animation series, such as Batman Beyond, Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, and Tiny Toon Adventures; a few former Fox Kids shows like Goosebumps and Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation; and syndicated sitcoms and dramas that, by the end of the network's run, included Blossom (which returned briefly in 2016), Step by Step, and Sister, Sister. A limited amount of Discovery Kids programming, such as Adventure Camp and Flight 29 Down, remained on The Hub's lineup upon its launch.

Primetime and overnight programming

Following the re-launch as Discovery Family in October 2014, the channel began carrying science and nature-related programs from Discovery Channel during primetime, such as Africa, Extreme Engineering: Big Reveals, Flying Wild Alaska, and Time Warp. Original programs have also been commissioned for this time slot, including Bake It Like Buddy, From Wags to Riches with Bill Berloni, My Dog's Crazy Animal Friends, Reno, Set, Go!, Secrets of America's Favorite Places, and the ninth season of Cake Boss.

Availability

Discovery Family operates one feed nationally, and does not operate a timeshift feed for the west coast. A 1080i high-definition simulcast of the network was introduced in May 2010, with AT&T U-verse as the first to carry the HD feed.

Based on numbers from Nielsen, Variety ranked Discovery Family as the 132nd most-watched broadcast or cable network in the United States in 2022 based on total viewership.

International versions

On March 31, 2016, the pan-EMEA version of Discovery World was re-launched as a regional version of Discovery Family.

On September 14, 2017 at 5:30pm, a French version of Discovery Family was launched exclusively for SFR TV subscribers, as a part of a deal between Altice (the parent company of SFR) and Discovery, Inc. Unlike its American counterpart, the channel did not include children's programming in its schedule. The channel shut down on 29 March 2022.