Talk:Opening and Closing to Barney's Super Singing Circus 2001 VHS/@comment-2604:2000:1343:C444:44E9:CAC6:3BB8:C53B-20190411010012

Bob's White Christmas is the thirteenth episode and finale of the second season.

Plot
Bob will dress up as Father Christmas for the local school carol concert. But he loses time when Farmer Pickles gets snowed in.

Characters

 * Bob
 * Wendy
 * Scoop
 * Muck
 * Dizzy
 * Roley
 * Lofty
 * Pilchard
 * Bird
 * Travis
 * Spud
 * Farmer Pickles
 * Mrs. Percival (debut)
 * Fin (cameo)
 * Father Christmas/Santa Claus (mentioned)

United Kingdom & Australia

 * Neil Morrissey as Bob, Roley, Lofty & Farmer Pickles
 * Rob Rackstraw as Scoop, Muck, Travis & Spud
 * Kate Harbour as Wendy, Dizzy, Mrs. Percival, Pilchard & Bird

North America
"Yule Be Wiggling" is the 11th Wiggles video was a released on the 16th October 2001 for VHS and on the 22nd October 2002 for DVD. This is also the second Christmas video, after Wiggly, Wiggly Christmas and before Santa's Rockin'!.
 * William Dufris as Bob & Farmer Pickles
 * Lorelei King as Wendy & Mrs. Percival
 * Alan Marriott as Scoop, Travis & Spud
 * Maria Darling as Dizzy & Roley
 * Lachele Carl as Muck
 * Sonya Leite as Lofty, Pilchard & Bird

Song List
Note: All songs are taken from the album of the same name, except where noted otherwise.
 * 1) Doing a Dance
 * 2) Just Can't Wait For Christmas Day
 * 3) Here Come the Reindeer
 * 4) And the World Is One On A Christmas Morning
 * 5) Murray's Christmas Samba
 * 6) Jimmy The Elf
 * 7) Curoo Curoo
 * 8) Christmas Around the World
 * 9) Wags Loves to Shake Shake
 * 10) *Jingle Bells (performed in introduction scene)
 * 11) Angels We Have Heard On High
 * 12) Christmas Polka
 * 13) Decorate the Tree
 * 14) A Scottish Christmas
 * 15) Come On Everybody (We'll Tap For You) (new song)
 * 16) Yule Be Wiggling

Credits
Murray Wiggle Jeff Wiggle Anthony Wiggle Greg Wiggle Paul Paddick Feenie Wade Reem Hanwell Andrew McCourt Morgan Crowley Leeanne Ashley Aunty Kay Ritchie Fred Gaffney The Wiggles Murray Cook Jeff Fatt Anthony Field Greg Page Paul Field Chisholm McTavish Kim Peters Borce Damcesky Douglas Kirk Graham Mulder Ted Williams Ben Dougart Ian Barwick John Abbot Peter Boully Anthony Polkinghorn Craig Watkins Steve Rees Douglas Kirk Chisholm McTavish Craig Abercrombie Tom King (And the World Is One On A Christmas Morning) Craig Abercrombie Paul Field John Field Craig Abercrombie Alex Keller Roberta McNarma Neena Adams Angela Kyral Freenage Animation Andrew Horne CFX Design Chris Burdys Timothy Gurner Robert Santucci Martin Roper
 * Murray Cook
 * Jeff Fatt
 * Anthony Field
 * Greg Page
 * Captain Feathersword
 * Dorothy the Dinosaur
 * Henry the Octopus
 * Wags the Dog
 * Special Guest
 * Choreographer
 * Rebecca Knox
 * Ben Murray
 * Corrine O'Rafferty
 * James Stevenson
 * Naomi Wallace
 * Larissa Wright
 * Seren Anu
 * Kuiam Anu-David
 * Lauren Baldacchine
 * Chelsea Cranefield
 * Keiran Cranefield
 * Kelly-Rose Daiziel
 * James Day
 * Jessica Fawcett
 * Carla Field
 * Clare Field
 * Dominic Field
 * John Paul Field
 * Joseph Field
 * Seamus Field
 * Luke Gaffney
 * Sarah Geel
 * Sarah Hayes
 * Julia Herichly
 * Cooper Jackson
 * Jacob Kyral
 * Sinead Kyral
 * Ashleigh Lindsay
 * Kiara Lindsay
 * Sian Lindsay
 * Keelin MacDonald
 * Erin Moffat
 * Georgia Munro-Cook
 * Hamish Munro-Cook
 * Sam McFadden
 * Michael McFadden
 * Genevieve McFadden
 * Madison Page
 * Ellen Parker
 * Josephine Perez
 * Rebecca Perez
 * Nichole Rogers
 * Alexandra Rowley
 * Liliana Schattovits
 * James Shoulder
 * Special Appearances
 * Executive Producers
 * Producer
 * Director
 * Production Co-ordinator
 * Director of Photography
 * Technical Director
 * Gaffer
 * Gaffer Assistants
 * Camera
 * Off-line Editor
 * On-Line Editors
 * Audio post
 * 3D Animator
 * Additional Footage
 * Sound Recordist
 * Boom Operator
 * Runner
 * Make Up
 * Wardrobe
 * Set Design
 * Set Construction
 * Riggers

Release Dates
Australia: October 16, 2001

America:  September 18, 2001 (Screener Copy VHS), October 22, 2001 (Official Copy VHS), October 22, 2002 (DVD & VHS re-release)

Album Release
The album "Yule Be Wiggling" was a released in December the year before.

CD Songs

 * The Little Drummer Boy
 * The First Noel

Narration Transcript
No songs were featured, but each menu had either Paul Paddick or Greg Page give a narration at the beginning.

Main menu:

Paul Paddick: Take a pick at what you'd like to do: Watch Yule Be Wiggling, have a look at the Wiggly Extras, or turn on Subtitles for the hearing-impaired.

Special Features menu:

Greg Page: Choose the Wiggly Extras you would like to watch.

Song Selection menu:

Paul Paddick: Let's sing along with The Wiggles, Karaoke style! Choose your favorite song, or let's sing all of the songs!

DVD-Rom info:

Paul Paddick: If you insert the DVD disc into your home or Windows-based computer fitted with a DVD drive, you can access more exciting Wiggles fun and games, including accessing to The Wiggles' website. Go to the Wiggles website for some more Wiggles fun.

Christmas Fairy Storybook Options:

Greg Page: It's reading time! You can read with The Wiggles, or read by yourself.
 * }

Trivia
{{Scroll box|*This video was filmed before Hoop-Dee-Doo It's a Wiggly Party, but released after.
 * This is the last video for Wags' 3rd costume.
 * This is the last time The Wiggles use the plain black pants. From 2002 onwards, the pants have trim of the specified color then on.
 * This is the first appearance of the Maton Guitar.
 * This is the third video to have prologues on all the songs, after Yummy Yummy in 1994 and It's a Wiggly Wiggly World! in 2000.
 * Decorate the Tree is very different from the album version, as it is about decorating Captain Feathersword as though he were a Christmas tree, rather than Captain decorating a tree himself.
 * Among the toys in Jimmy The Elf are a Big Red Car and Dorothy the Dinosaur.
 * In And the World Is One On A Christmas Morning, the Wiggles sing the song in studio, with clips of various children and other relatives of The Wiggles and their staff, including Greg's daughter, Madison Page, Murray's daughter Georgia Munro-Cook, son Hamish Munro-Cook, and mother Jean Cook, as well as many of Anthony's nieces and nephews.
 * Angels We Have Heard On High and the closing scene were likely filmed at the same time, due to all of the same people being in the same location.
 * The song title animations for this video are similar to the animations on Hoop-Dee-Doo It's a Wiggly Party.
 * The CGI animation for Jimmy The Elf is similar to the animation of Caveland.
 * This is the first holiday video released on DVD.
 * This video aired on Playhouse Disney in December 2002, followed by Wiggly, Wiggly Christmas.
 * The Red Starry Guitar was originally going to be in the video along with the Red Takamine Guitar and the Black Takamine Guitar.
 * In the Song selection menu of the DVD this is the second time that the Red Starry Guitar is seen in the menu. The first time was Wiggly TV in the Sing Along with The Wiggles menu.
 * The screener VHS has no purple stone FBI Warning & Interpol Warning Screen & no previews at the beginning whatsoever.

Goofs

 * In the song credits, John Field's name is listed on Just Can't Wait For Christmas Day whereas Dominic Lindsay and Margaret Lindsay's are listed on Murray's Christmas Samba.}}

Finland

 * Timo Tuominen as Bob and Roley
 * Antti Pääkkönen as Scoop, Lofty and Travis
 * Jukka Rasila as Muck and Spud
 * Rinna Paatso as Wendy, Dizzy and Mrs. Percival

Locations

 * Bobsville
 * Bob's Yard
 * Bob's Living Room
 * Town Hall
 * The School
 * The Countryside
 * Farmer Pickles' Farm

Trivia

 * In the North American version, all lines mentioning "Father Christmas" were replaced with "Santa Claus".
 * This episode was later paired with Bob and the Big Freeze (Season 5) and Eskimo Bob (Season 5) when the following episodes first premiered in North America in December 2002. It is currently unknown which episodes this episode was originally paired with in December 2001.
 * In the UK version, after Wendy says "Merry Christmas Bob", Bob says "Ho Ho Ho!", but in the North American version, he says "Merry Christmas, Wendy!".
 * This episode marks the first of a few things:
 * This was the first winter theme episode and also the first episode to feature snow.
 * This is the first appearance of Scoop's snowplow.
 * The first appearance of Mrs. Percival.

In Other Languages
{| class="wikitable" !Language !Name !Meaning
 * Polish
 * Wesołych Świąt
 * Merry Christmas
 * Hungarian
 * Bob fehér karácsonya
 * Bob's White Christmas
 * Portuguese
 * O Natal Branco do Bob
 * Bob's White Christmas
 * Russian
 * Снежное Рождество Боба
 * Bob's Snowy Christmas
 * Japanese
 * ボブのホワイトクリスマス
 * Bob's White Christmas
 * German
 * Bob hilft dem Weihnachtsmann
 * Bob Helps Santa Claus
 * Dutch
 * Bob's witte kerst
 * Bob's White Christmas
 * Czech
 * Bořkovy bílé Vánoce
 * Bob's White Christmas
 * - Let's Go to the Zoo  is a  Barney Home Video  that was released on August 28, 2001. Let's_Go_to_the_Zoo.png
 * Dutch
 * Bob's witte kerst
 * Bob's White Christmas
 * Czech
 * Bořkovy bílé Vánoce
 * Bob's White Christmas
 * - Let's Go to the Zoo  is a  Barney Home Video  that was released on August 28, 2001. Let's_Go_to_the_Zoo.png
 * - Let's Go to the Zoo  is a  Barney Home Video  that was released on August 28, 2001. Let's_Go_to_the_Zoo.png

Plot
BJ makes the trip a photo safari, taking pictures of all the animals, while Baby Bop looks for a real elephant to show to her doll "Nelly the Elephant." And there's an unexpected guest - Scooter McNutty - who searches the zoo for an exhibit devoted to the noblest of animals: the squirrel! There's an abundance of animal fun and facts, songs and surprises when Barney take YOU to the zoo.

Filming Location: The Fort Worth Zoo

Cast

 * Barney (Voice: Duncan Brannan / Tim Dever; Costume; David Joyner)
 * Baby Bop (Voice: Julie Johnson; Costume: Jeff Ayers)
 * BJ (Voice: Patty Wirtz; Costume: Jeff Brooks)
 * Ticket Seller (Kate Rafferty Keimig)
 * Miss Kepler (Gene Raye Price)
 * Scooter McNutty (Todd Duffey)
 * Sean (Steven G. McAfee)
 * Man in Zebra-Print Shirt (Steven G. McAfee)
 * Child #1 (David Schulenburg)
 * Child #2 (Stephanie Sechrist)
 * Child #3 (Olivia Payne)
 * Child #4 (Laryssa Bonacquisti)

Song List


The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial terrestrial television network that is a flagship property of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles (at 10 Universal City Plaza), Chicago (at the NBC Tower) and Philadelphia (at the Comcast Technology Center). The network is one of the Big Three television networks. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting. It became the network's official emblem in 1979.

Founded in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), NBC is the oldest major broadcast network in the United States. At that time the parent company of RCA was General Electric (GE). In 1930, GE was forced to sell the companies as a result of antitrust charges.

In 1986, control of NBC passed back to General Electric (GE) through its $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. (GE later liquidated RCA but kept NBC.) Following the acquisition by GE, Bob Wright served as chief executive officer of NBC, remaining in that position until his retirement in 2007, when he was succeeded by Jeff Zucker.

In 2003, French media company Vivendi merged its entertainment assets with GE, forming NBC Universal. Comcast purchased a controlling interest in the company in 2011, and acquired General Electric's remaining stake in 2013. Following the Comcast merger, Zucker left NBCUniversal and was replaced as CEO by Comcast executive Steve Burke.

NBC has thirteen owned-and-operated stations and nearly 200 affiliates throughout the United States and its territories, some of which are also available in Canada and/or Mexico via pay-television providers or in border areas over-the-air; NBC also maintains brand licensing agreements for international channels in South Korea and Germany.

Earliest stations: WEAF and WJZ
During a period of early broadcast business consolidation, radio manufacturer Radio Corporation of America (RCA) acquired New York City radio station WEAF from American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T). Westinghouse, a shareholder in RCA, had a competing outlet in Newark, New Jersey pioneer station WJZ (no relation to the radio and television station in Baltimore currently using those call letters), which also served as the flagship for a loosely structured network. This station was transferred from Westinghouse to RCA in 1923, and moved to New York City.

WEAF acted as a laboratory for AT&T's manufacturing and supply outlet Western Electric, whose products included transmitters and antennas. The Bell System, AT&T's telephone utility, was developing technologies to transmit voice- and music-grade audio over short and long distances, using both wireless and wired methods. The 1922 creation of WEAF offered a research-and-development center for those activities. WEAF maintained a regular schedule of radio programs, including some of the first commercially sponsored programs, and was an immediate success. In an early example of "chain" or "networking" broadcasting, the station linked with Outlet Company-owned WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island; and with AT&T's station in Washington, D.C., WCAP.

New parent RCA saw an advantage in sharing programming, and after getting a license for radio station WRC in Washington, D.C., in 1923, attempted to transmit audio between cities via low-quality telegraph lines. AT&T refused outside companies access to its high-quality phone lines. The early effort fared poorly, since the uninsulated telegraph lines were susceptible to atmospheric and other electrical interference.

In 1925, AT&T decided that WEAF and its embryonic network were incompatible with the company's primary goal of providing a telephone service. AT&T offered to sell the station to RCA in a deal that included the right to lease AT&T's phone lines for network transmission.

Red and Blue Networks
RCA spent $1 million to purchase WEAF and Washington sister station WCAP, shut down the latter station, and merged its facilities with surviving station WRC; in late 1926, it subsequently announced the creation of a new division known as the National Broadcasting Company. The division's ownership was split among RCA (a majority partner at 50%), its founding corporate parent General Electric (which owned 30%) and Westinghouse (which owned the remaining 20%). NBC officially started broadcasting on November 15, 1926.

WEAF and WJZ, the flagships of the two earlier networks, were operated side-by-side for about a year as part of the new NBC. On January 1, 1927, NBC formally divided their respective marketing strategies: the "Red Network" offered commercially sponsored entertainment and music programming; the "Blue Network" mostly carried sustaining – or non-sponsored – broadcasts, especially news and cultural programs. Various histories of NBC suggest the color designations for the two networks came from the color of the pushpins NBC engineers used to designate affiliate stations of WEAF (red) and WJZ (blue), or from the use of double-ended red and blue colored pencils.

On April 5, 1927, NBC expanded to the West Coast with the launch of the NBC Orange Network, also known as the Pacific Coast Network. This was followed by the debut of the NBC Gold Network, also known as the Pacific Gold Network, on October 18, 1931. The Orange Network carried Red Network programming, and the Gold Network carried programming from the Blue Network. Initially, the Orange Network recreated Eastern Red Network programming for West Coast stations at KPO in San Francisco. In 1936, the Orange Network affiliate stations became part of the Red Network, and at the same time the Gold Network became part of the Blue Network.

In the 1930s, NBC also developed a network for shortwave radio stations, called the NBC White Network.

In 1927, NBC moved its operations to 711 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, occupying the upper floors of a building designed by architect Floyd Brown. The space that NBC occupied was designed by Raymond Hood, who based the appearance of its multiple studio facilities on "a Gothic church, the Roman forum, a Louis XIV room and, in a space devoted to jazz, something 'wildly futuristic, with plenty of color in bizarre designs.'" NBC outgrew the Fifth Avenue facilities in 1933.

In 1930, General Electric was charged with antitrust violations, resulting in the company's decision to divest itself of RCA. The newly separate company signed leases to move its corporate headquarters into the new Rockefeller Center in 1931. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., founder and financier of Rockefeller Center, arranged the deal with GE chairman Owen D. Young and RCA president David Sarnoff. When it moved into the complex in 1933, RCA became the lead tenant at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, known as the "RCA Building" (later the GE Building, now the Comcast Building), which housed NBC's production studios as well as theaters for RCA-owned RKO Pictures.

Chimes
The iconic three-note NBC chimes came about after several years of development. The three-note sequence, G-E'-C', was first heard over Red Network affiliate WSB in Atlanta, with a second inversion C-major triad as its outline. An executive at NBC's New York headquarters heard the WSB version of the notes during the networked broadcast of a Georgia Tech football game and asked permission to use it on the national network. NBC started to use the chimes sequence in 1931, and it eventually became the first audio trademark to be accepted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

A variant sequence with an additional note, G-E'-C'-G, known as "the fourth chime", was used during significant events of extreme urgency (including during World War II, especially in the wake of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor; on D-Day and during disasters). The NBC chimes were mechanized in 1932 by Rangertone founder Richard H. Ranger; their purpose was to send a low-level signal of constant amplitude that would be heard by the various switching stations manned by NBC and AT&T engineers, and to be used as a system cue for switching individual stations between the Red and Blue network feeds. Contrary to popular legend, the G-E'-C' notes were not originally intended to reference to the General Electric Company (an early shareholder in NBC's founding parent RCA and whose Schenectady, New York radio station, WGY, was an early affiliate of NBC Red). The three-note sequence remains in use by the NBC television network, most notably incorporated into the John Williams-composed theme music used by NBC News, "The Mission" (first composed in 1985 for NBC Nightly News).

New beginnings: The Blue Network becomes ABC
In 1934, the Mutual Broadcasting System filed a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), following the government agency's creation, claiming it ran into difficulties trying to establish new radio stations in a market largely controlled by NBC and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). In 1938, the FCC began a series of investigations into the monopolistic effects of network broadcasting. A report published by the Commission in 1939 found that NBC's two networks and its owned-and-operated stations dominated audiences, affiliates and advertising in American radio; this led the Commission to file an order to RCA to divest itself of either NBC Red or NBC Blue.

After Mutual's appeals were rejected by the FCC, RCA filed its own appeal to overturn the divestiture order. However, in 1941, the company decided to sell NBC Blue in the event its appeal was denied. The Blue Network was formally named NBC Blue Network, Inc. and NBC Red became NBC Red Network, Inc. for corporate purposes. Both networks formally divorced their operations on January 8, 1942, with the Blue Network being referred to on-air as either "Blue" or "Blue Network", and Blue Network Company, Inc. serving as its official corporate name. NBC Red, meanwhile, became known on-air as simply "NBC". Investment firm Dillon, Read & Co. placed a $7.5 million bid for NBC Blue, an offer that was rejected by NBC executive Mark Woods and RCA president David Sarnoff.

After losing on final appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court in May 1943, RCA sold Blue Network Company, Inc., for $8 million to the American Broadcasting System, a recently founded company owned by Life Savers magnate Edward J. Noble. After the sale was completed on October 12, 1943, Noble acquired the rights to the Blue Network name, leases on landlines, the New York studios, two-and-a-half radio stations (WJZ in Newark/New York City; KGO in San Francisco and WENR in Chicago, which shared a frequency with Prairie Farmer station WLS); contracts with actors; and agreements with around 60 affiliates. In turn, to comply with FCC radio station ownership limits of the time, Noble sold off his existing New York City radio station WMCA. Noble, who wanted a better name for the network, acquired the branding rights to the "American Broadcasting Company" name from George B. Storer in 1944. The Blue Network became ABC officially on June 15, 1945, after the sale was completed.

Defining radio's golden age
NBC became home to many of the most popular performers and programs on the air. Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Fred Allen, and Burns and Allen called NBC home, as did Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra, which the network helped him create. Other programs featured on the network included Vic and Sade, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve (arguably broadcasting's first spin-off program, from Fibber McGee), One Man's Family, Ma Perkins and Death Valley Days. NBC stations were often the most powerful, and some occupied unique clear-channel national frequencies, reaching hundreds or thousands of miles at night.

In the late 1940s, rival CBS gained ground by allowing radio stars to use their own production companies to produce programs, which became a profitable move for much of its talent. In the early years of radio, stars and programs commonly hopped between networks when their short-term contracts expired. During 1948 and 1949, beginning with the nation's top radio star, Jack Benny, many NBC performers – including Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Burns and Allen and Frank Sinatra – jumped to CBS.

In addition, NBC stars began migrating to television, including comedian Milton Berle, whose Texaco Star Theater on the network became television's first major hit. Conductor Arturo Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in ten television concerts on NBC between 1948 and 1952. The concerts were broadcast on both television and radio, in what perhaps was the first such instance of simulcasting. Two of the concerts were historic firsts – the first complete telecast of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and the first complete telecast of Verdi's Aida (starring Herva Nelli and Richard Tucker), performed in concert rather than with scenery and costumes.

Aiming to keep classic radio alive as television matured, and to challenge CBS's Sunday night radio lineup, which featured much of the programs and talent that had moved to that network following the defection of Jack Benny to CBS, NBC launched The Big Show in November 1950. This 90-minute variety show updated radio's earliest musical variety style with sophisticated comedy and dramatic presentations. Featuring stage legend Tallulah Bankhead as hostess, it lured prestigious entertainers, including Fred Allen, Groucho Marx, Lauritz Melchior, Ethel Barrymore, Louis Armstrong, Ethel Merman, Bob Hope, Danny Thomas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald. However, The Big Show's initial success did not last despite critical praise, as most of its potential listeners were increasingly becoming television viewers. The show lasted two years, with NBC losing around $1 million on the project (the network was only able to sell advertising time during the middle half-hour of the program each week).

NBC's last major radio programming push, beginning on June 12, 1955, was Monitor, a creation of NBC President Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, who also created the innovative programs Today, The Tonight Show and Home for the companion television network. Monitor was a continuous all-weekend mixture of music, news, interviews and features, with a variety of hosts including well-known television personalities Dave Garroway, Hugh Downs, Ed McMahon, Joe Garagiola and Gene Rayburn. The potpourri show tried to keep vintage radio alive by featuring segments from Jim and Marian Jordan (in character as Fibber McGee and Molly); Peg Lynch's dialog comedy Ethel and Albert (with Alan Bunce); and iconoclastic satirist Henry Morgan. Monitor was a success for a number of years, but after the mid-1960s, local stations, especially those in larger markets, were reluctant to break from their established formats to run non-conforming network programming. One exception was Toscanini: The Man Behind the Legend, a weekly series commemorating the great conductor's NBC broadcasts and recordings which ran for several years beginning in 1963. After Monitor ended its 20-year run on January 26, 1975, little remained of NBC network radio beyond hourly newscasts and news features, and Sunday morning religious program The Eternal Light.

Decline
On June 18, 1975, NBC launched the NBC News and Information Service (NIS), which provided up to 55 minutes of news per hour around the clock to local stations that wanted to adopt an all-news radio format. NBC carried the service on WRC in Washington, and on its owned-and-operated FM stations in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. NIS attracted several dozen subscribing stations, but by the fall of 1976, NBC determined that it could not project that the service would ever become profitable and gave its affiliates six months' notice that it would be discontinued. NIS ended operations on May 29, 1977. In 1979, NBC launched The Source, a modestly successful secondary network providing news and short features to FM rock stations.

The NBC Radio Network also pioneered personal advice call-in national talk radio with a satellite-distributed evening talk show, TalkNet; the program featured Bruce Williams (providing personal financial advice), Bernard Meltzer (personal and financial advice) and Sally Jessy Raphael (personal and romantic advice). While never much of a ratings success, TalkNet nonetheless helped further the national talk radio format. For affiliates, many of them struggling AM stations, TalkNet helped fill evening time slots with free programming, allowing the stations to sell local advertising in a dynamic format without the cost associated with producing local programming. Some in the industry feared this trend would lead to increasing control of radio content by networks and syndicators.

General Electric acquired RCA in 1986, and with it NBC, signaling the beginning of the end of NBC Radio. Three factors led to the radio division's demise: GE decided that radio did not fit its strategy, while the radio division had not been profitable for many years. In addition, FCC ownership rules at the time prevented companies acquiring broadcast properties from owning both a radio and television division. In the summer of 1987, GE sold NBC Radio's network operations to Westwood One, and sold off the NBC-owned stations to various buyers. By 1990, the NBC Radio Network as an independent programming service was pretty much dissolved, becoming a brand name for content produced by Westwood One, and ultimately by CBS Radio. The Mutual Broadcasting System, which Westwood One had acquired two years earlier, met the same fate, and essentially merged with NBC Radio.

GE's divestiture of NBC's entire radio division was the first cannon shot of what would play out in the national broadcast media, as each of the Big Three broadcast networks were soon acquired by other corporate entities. NBC was a particularly noteworthy case in that it was the first to be acquired – and was bought by a conglomerate outside the broadcast industry as GE otherwise primarily served as a manufacturing company. Prior to the GE acquisition, NBC operated its radio division partly out of tradition, and partly to meet its then-FCC-mandated requirement to distribute programming for the public good (the broadcast airwaves are owned by the public; as that broadcast spectrum is limited and only so many broadcast stations existed, this served as the basis for government regulation requiring broadcasters to provide certain content that meets the needs of the public). Syndicators such as Westwood One were not subject to such rules as they did not own any stations. GE's divestiture of NBC Radio – known as "America's First Network" – in many ways marked the "beginning of the end" of the old era of regulated broadcasting and the ushering in of the new, largely unregulated industry that is present today.

By the late 1990s, Westwood One was producing NBC Radio-branded newscasts on weekday mornings. These were discontinued in 1999 (along with Mutual branded newscasts), and the few remaining NBC Radio Network affiliates became affiliates of CNN Radio, carrying the Westwood-owned service's hourly newscasts 24 hours a day. In 2003, Westwood One began distributing NBC News Radio, a new service featuring minute-long news updates read by television anchors and reporters from NBC News and MSNBC, with content written by Westwood One employees.

Restoration
On March 1, 2012, Dial Global announced that it would discontinue CNN Radio, and replace it with an expansion of NBC News Radio on April 1, 2012. This marked the first time since Westwood One's purchase of NBC Radio and its properties that NBC would have a 24-hour presence on radio. A previous program, First Light, placed new emphasis on the NBC brand after diminishing it over the years. With the change, NBC News Radio expanded its offerings from 60-second news updates airing only on weekdays to feature two hourly full-length newscasts 24 hours a day. Subsequently, on September 4, 2012, Dial Global launched a sports-talk radio service, NBC Sports Radio.

NBC News Radio has been distributed by iHeartMedia and its TTWN Networks since July 2016. It is provided to the network's 24/7 News Source affiliates and includes a top of the hour newscast along with other audio content which is heard on over 1000 radio stations.

Television
For many years, NBC was closely identified with David Sarnoff, who used it as a vehicle to sell consumer electronics. RCA and Sarnoff had captured the spotlight by introducing all-electronic television to the public at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair, simultaneously initiating a regular schedule of programs on the NBC-RCA television station in New York City. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared at the fair before the NBC camera, becoming the first U.S. president to appear on television on April 30, 1939 (an actual, off-the-monitor photograph of the FDR telecast is available at the David Sarnoff Library). The broadcast was transmitted by NBC's New York television station W2XBS Channel 1 (later WNBC-TV; now WNBC, channel 4) and was seen by about 1,000 viewers within the station's roughly 40 mi coverage area from its transmitter at the Empire State Building.

The following day (May 1), four models of RCA television sets went on sale to the general public in various department stores around New York City, which were promoted in a series of splashy newspaper ads. DuMont Laboratories (and others) had actually offered the first home sets in 1938 in anticipation of NBC's announced April 1939 television launch. Later in 1939, NBC took its cameras to professional football and baseball games in the New York City area, establishing many "firsts" in television broadcasting.

Reportedly, the first NBC Television "network" program was broadcast on January 12, 1940, when a play titled Meet The Wife was originated at the W2XBS studios at Rockefeller Center and rebroadcast by W2XB/W2XAF (now WRGB) in Schenectady, which received the New York station directly off-air from a tower atop a mountain and relayed the live signal to the Capital District. About this time, occasional special events were also broadcast in Philadelphia (over W3XE, later called WPTZ, now known as KYW-TV) as well as Schenectady. The most ambitious NBC television "network" program of the pre-war era was the telecast of the Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia in the summer of 1940, which was fed live to the New York City and Schenectady stations. However, despite major promotion by RCA, television sales in New York during 1939 and 1940 were disappointing, primarily due to the high cost of the sets, and the lack of compelling regularly scheduled programming. Most sets were sold to bars, hotels and other public places, where the general public viewed special sports and news events. One special event was Franklin D. Roosevelt's second and final appearance on live television, when his speech at Madison Square Garden on October 28, 1940, was telecast over W2XBS to receivers in the New York City area.

Television's experimental period ended, as the FCC allowed full-fledged commercial television broadcasts to begin on July 1, 1941. NBC station W2XBS in New York City received the first commercial license, adopting the call letters WNBT. The first official, paid television advertisement broadcast by any U.S. station was for watch manufacturer Bulova, which aired that day, just before the start of a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball telecast on WNBT. The ad consisted of test pattern, featuring the newly assigned WNBT call letters, which was modified to resemble a clock – complete with functioning hands – with the Bulova logo (featuring the phrase "Bulova Watch Time") in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern (a photograph of the NBC camera setting up the test pattern-advertisement for that ad can be seen at this page). Among the programs that aired during the first week of WNBT's new, commercial schedule was The Sunoco News, a simulcast of the Sun Oil-sponsored NBC Radio program anchored by Lowell Thomas; amateur boxing at Jamaica Arena; the Eastern Clay Courts tennis championships; programming from the USO; the spelling bee-type game show Words on the Wing; a few feature films; and a one-time-only, test broadcast of the game show Truth or Consequences, sponsored by Lever Brothers.

Prior to the first commercial television broadcasts and paid advertisements on WNBT, non-paid television advertising existed on an experimental basis dating back to 1930. NBC's earliest non-paid television commercials may have been those seen during the first Major League Baseball game ever telecast, between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds, on August 26, 1939 over W2XBS. In order to secure the rights to televise the game, NBC allowed each of the Dodgers' regular radio sponsors at the time to have one commercial during the telecast. The ads were conducted by Dodgers announcer Red Barber: for Ivory Soap, he held up a bar of the product; for Mobilgas he put on a filling station attendant's cap while giving his spiel; and for Wheaties he poured a bowl of the product, added milk and bananas, and took a big spoonful. Limited, commercial programming continued until the U.S. entered World War II. Telecasts were curtailed in the early years of the war, then expanded as NBC began to prepare for full-time service upon the end of the war. Even before the war concluded, a few programs were sent from New York City to affiliated stations in Philadelphia (WPTZ) and Albany/Schenectady (WRGB) on a regular weekly schedule beginning in 1944, the first of which is generally considered to be the pioneering special interest/documentary show The Voice of Firestone Televues, a television offshoot of The Voice of Firestone, a mainstay on NBC radio since 1928, which was transmitted from New York City to Philadelphia and Schenectady on a regular, weekly basis beginning on April 10, 1944. The series is considered to be the NBC television network's first regularly scheduled program.

On V-E Day, May 8, 1945, WNBT broadcast several hours of news coverage, and remotes from around New York City. This event was promoted in advance by NBC with a direct-mail card sent to television set owners in the New York area. At one point, a WNBT camera placed atop the marquee of the Hotel Astor panned the crowd below celebrating the end of the war in Europe. The vivid coverage was a prelude to television's rapid growth after the war ended.

The NBC television network grew from its initial post-war lineup of four stations. The 1947 World Series featured two New York City area teams (the Yankees and the Dodgers), and television sales boomed locally, since the games were being telecast in the New York market. Additional stations along the East Coast and in the Midwest were connected by coaxial cable through the late 1940s, and in September 1951 the first transcontinental telecasts took place.

The post-war 1940s and early 1950s brought success for NBC in the new medium. Television's first major star, Milton Berle, whose Texaco Star Theatre began in June 1948, drew the first large audiences to NBC Television. Under its innovative president, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, the network launched Today and The Tonight Show, which would bookend the broadcast day for over 50 years, and which still lead their competitors. Weaver, who also launched the genre of periodic 90-minute network "spectaculars", network-produced motion pictures and the live 90-minute Sunday afternoon series Wide Wide World, left the network in 1955 in a dispute with its chairman David Sarnoff, who subsequently named his son Robert Sarnoff as president.

In 1951, NBC commissioned Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti to compose the first opera ever written for television; Menotti came up with Amahl and the Night Visitors, a 45-minute work for which he wrote both music and libretto, about a disabled shepherd boy who meets the Three Wise Men and is miraculously cured when he offers his crutch to the newborn Christ Child. It was such a stunning success that it was repeated every year on NBC from 1951 to 1966, when a dispute between Menotti and NBC ended the broadcasts. However, by 1978, Menotti and NBC had patched things up, and an all-new production of the opera, filmed partly on location in the Middle East, was telecast that year.

Color television
While rival CBS broadcast the first color television programs in the United States, their system was incompatible with the millions of black and white sets in use at the time. After a series of limited, incompatible color broadcasts (mostly scheduled during the day), CBS abandoned the system and broadcasts. This opened the door for the RCA compatible color system to be adopted as the U.S. standard. RCA convinced the FCC to approve its color system in December 1953. NBC was ready with color programming within days of the Commission's decision. NBC began the transition with a few shows in 1954, and broadcast its first program to air all episodes in color beginning that summer, The Marriage.

In 1955, NBC broadcast a live production in color of Peter Pan, a new Broadway musical adaptation of J. M. Barrie's beloved play, on the Producers' Showcase anthology series, The first such telecast of its kind, the broadcast starred the musical's entire original cast, led by Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Ritchard in a dual role as Mr. Darling and Captain Hook. The broadcast drew the highest ratings for a television program for that period. It was so successful that NBC restaged it as a live broadcast a mere ten months later; in 1960, long after Producers' Showcase had ended its run, Peter Pan, with most of the 1955 cast, was restaged again, this time as a standalone special, and was videotaped so that it would no longer have to be performed live on television.

In 1956, NBC started a subsidiary, California National Productions (CNP), for merchandising, syndication and NBC opera company operations with the production of Silent Services. By 1957, NBC planned to remove the opera company from CNP and CNP was in discussion with MGM Television about handling syndication distribution for MGM series.

During a National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Chicago in 1956, NBC announced that its owned-and-operated station in that market, WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV), had become the first television station in the country to broadcast its programming in color (airing at least six hours of color broadcasts each day). In 1959, NBC premiered a televised version of the radio program The Bell Telephone Hour, which aired in color from its debut; the program would continue on the NBC television network for nine more years until it ended in 1968.

In 1961, NBC approached Walt Disney about acquiring the rights to his anthology series, offering to produce the program in color. Disney was in the midst of negotiating a new contract to keep the program (then known as Walt Disney Presents) on ABC, however ABC president Leonard Goldenson said that it could not counter the offer, as the network did not have the technical and financial resources to carry the program in color. Disney subsequently struck a deal with NBC, which began airing the anthology series in the format in September 1961 (as Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color). As many of the Disney programs that aired in black-and-white on ABC were actually filmed in color, they could easily be re-aired in the format on the NBC broadcasts. In January 1962, NBC's telecast of the Rose Bowl became the first college football game ever to be telecast in color.

By 1963, much of NBC's prime time schedule was presented in color, although some popular series (such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which premiered in late 1964) were broadcast in black-and-white for their entire first season. In the fall of 1965, NBC was broadcasting 95% of its prime time schedule in color (with the exceptions of I Dream of Jeannie and Convoy), and began billing itself as "The Full Color Network." Without television sets to sell, rival networks followed more slowly, finally committing to an all-color lineup in prime time in the 1966–67 season. Days of Our Lives became the first soap opera to premiere in color, when it debuted in November 1965.

NBC contracted with Universal Studios in 1964 to produce the first feature-length film produced for television, See How They Run, which first aired on October 17, 1964; its second television movie, The Hanged Man, aired six weeks later on November 28. Even while the presentations performed well in the ratings, NBC did not broadcast another made-for-TV film for two years.

In 1967, NBC reached a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to acquire the broadcast rights to the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. CBS, which had televised the film annually since 1956, refused to meet MGM's increased fee to renew its television rights. Oz had been, up to then, one of the few programs that CBS had telecast in color. However, by 1967, color broadcasts had become standard on television, and the film simply became another title in the list of specials that NBC telecast in the format. The film's showings on NBC were distinctive as it televised The Wizard of Oz without a hosted introduction, as CBS had long done; it was also slightly edited for time in order to make room to air more commercials. Despite the cuts, however, it continued to score excellent television ratings in those pre-VCR days, as audiences were generally unable to see the film any other way at that time. NBC aired The Wizard of Oz each year from 1968 to 1976, when CBS, realizing that they may have committed a colossal blunder by letting a huge ratings success like Oz go to another network, agreed to pay MGM more money to re-acquire the rights to show the film.

The late 1960s brought big changes in the programming practices of the major television networks. As baby boomers reached adulthood, NBC, CBS and ABC began to realize that much of their existing programming had not only been running for years, but had audiences that skewed older. In order to attract the large youth population that was highly attractive to advertisers, the networks moved to clean house of a number of veteran shows. In NBC's case, this included programs like The Bell Telephone Hour and Sing Along With Mitch, which both had an average viewer age of 50. During this period, the networks came to define adults between the ages of 18 and 49 as their main target audience, although depending on the show, this could be subdivided into other age demos: 35–45, 18–25 or 18–35. Regardless of the exact target demographic, the general idea was to appeal to viewers who were not close to retirement age and to modernize television programming, which the networks felt overall was stuck in a 1950s mentality, to closely resemble contemporary American society.

1970s doldrums
The 1970s started strongly for NBC thanks to hits like Adam-12, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Ironside, The Dean Martin Show and The Flip Wilson Show. However, despite the success of such new shows as the NBC Mystery Movie, Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, Little House on the Prairie, The Midnight Special, The Rockford Files, Police Woman and Emergency!, as well as continued success from veterans like The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Wonderful World of Disney, the network entered a slump in the middle of the decade. Disney, in particular, saw its ratings nosedive once CBS put 60 Minutes up against the program in the Sunday 7:00 p.m. time slot in the 1975–76 season.

In 1974, under new president Herb Schlosser, the network tried to attract younger viewers with a series of costly movies, miniseries and specials. This failed to attract the desirable 18–34 demographic, and simultaneously alienated older viewers. None of the new prime-time shows that NBC introduced in the fall of 1975 earned a second season renewal, all failing in the face of established competition. The network's lone breakout success that season was the groundbreaking late-night comedy/variety show, NBC's Saturday Night – which would be renamed Saturday Night Live in 1976, after the cancellation of a Howard Cosell-hosted program of the same title on ABC – which replaced reruns of The Tonight Show that previously aired in its Saturday time slot.

In 1978, Schlosser was promoted to executive vice president at RCA, and a desperate NBC lured Fred Silverman away from top-rated ABC to turn its fortunes around. With the notable exceptions of CHiPs, Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, Diff'rent Strokes and its spin-off The Facts of Life, Real People and the miniseries Shōgun, Silverman was unable to pull out a hit. Failures accumulated rapidly under his watch (such as Hello, Larry, Supertrain, Pink Lady and Jeff, The Krofft Superstar Hour, season six of Saturday Night Live, and The Waverly Wonders). Many of them were beaten in the ratings by shows that Silverman had greenlit during his previous tenures at CBS and ABC.

During this time, several longtime affiliates also defected from NBC in markets such as Atlanta (WSB-TV), Baltimore (WBAL-TV), Baton Rouge (WBRZ-TV), Charlotte (WSOC-TV), Dayton (WDTN), Indianapolis (WRTV), Jacksonville (WTLV), Minneapolis-St. Paul (KSTP-TV), San Diego (KGTV), Schenectady (WRGB) and Wheeling (WTRF-TV). Most were wooed away by ABC, which had lifted out of last place to become the #1 network during the late 1970s and early 1980s, while WBAL-TV, WRGB and WTRF-TV went to CBS; WBAL-TV was originally to go to ABC, but the station decided against it because ABC's evening newscasts had attracted ratings too dismal for them to consider doing so. In the case of WSB-TV and WSOC-TV, which have both since become ABC affiliates, both stations were (and remain) under common ownership with Cox Enterprises, with its other NBC affiliate at the time, WIIC-TV in Pittsburgh (which would become WPXI in 1981 and also remains owned by Cox), only staying with the network because WIIC-TV itself was a distant third to CBS-affiliated powerhouse KDKA-TV and ABC affiliate WTAE-TV (KDKA-TV, owned at the time by Group W and now owned by CBS, infamously passed up affiliating with NBC after Westinghouse bought the station from DuMont in 1954, leading to an acrimonious relationship between NBC and Westinghouse that lasted for years afterward). In markets such as San Diego, Charlotte and Jacksonville, NBC had little choice but to affiliate with a UHF station, with the San Diego station (KNSD) eventually becoming an NBC O&O. In Wheeling, NBC ultimately upgraded its affiliation when it partnered with WTOV-TV in nearby Steubenville, Ohio, overtaking former affiliate WTRF-TV in the ratings by a large margin. Other smaller television markets like Yuma, Arizona waited many years to get another local NBC affiliate (first with KIVA, and later KYMA). The stations in Baltimore, Dayton and Jacksonville, however, have since rejoined the network.

After President Jimmy Carter pulled the U.S. team out of the 1980 Summer Olympics, NBC canceled a planned 150 hours of coverage (which had cost $87 million for the broadcast rights), placing the network's future in doubt. It had been counting on the broadcasts to help promote its new fall shows, and had been estimated to pull in $170 million in advertising revenue.

The press was merciless towards Silverman, but the two most savage attacks on his leadership came from within the network. The company that composed the promotional theme for NBC's "Proud as a Peacock" image campaign created a parody song called "Loud as a Peacock," which was broadcast on Don Imus' program on WNBC radio in New York. Its lyrics blamed Silverman for the network's problems ("The Peacock's dead, so thank you, Fred"). An angered Silverman ordered all remaining copies of the spoof destroyed, although some copies remain in circulation. Saturday Night Live writer and occasional performer Al Franken satirized Silverman in a sketch on the program titled "A Limo For A Lame-O", where he presented a chart with the top-10 rated programs for that season and commented that there was "not one N" on the list. Silverman later admitted he "never liked Al Franken to begin with", and the sketch ruined Franken's chance of succeeding Lorne Michaels as executive producer of SNL following his 1980 departure (with the position going to Jean Doumanian, who was fired after one season following declining ratings and negative critical reviews. Michaels would later return to the show in 1985).

Tartikoff's turnaround
Fred Silverman resigned as entertainment president in the summer of 1981. Grant Tinker, a highly regarded producer who co-founded MTM Enterprises with then-wife Mary Tyler Moore, became president of the network and Brandon Tartikoff became president of the entertainment division. Tartikoff inherited a schedule full of aging dramas and very few sitcoms, but showed patience with promising programs. One such show was the critically acclaimed Hill Street Blues, which suffered from poor ratings during its first season. Rather than canceling the show, he moved the Emmy Award-winning police drama from Steven Bochco to Thursdays, where its ratings improved dramatically. He used the same tactics with St. Elsewhere and Cheers. Shows like these were able to get the same ad revenue as their higher-rated competition because of their desirable demographics, upscale adults ages 18–34. While the network claimed moderate successes with Gimme a Break!, Silver Spoons, Knight Rider and Remington Steele, its biggest hit during this period was The A-Team, which, at 10th place, was the network's only program to rank in the Nielsen Top-20 for the 1982–83 season, and ascended to fourth place the following year. These shows helped NBC through the disastrous 1983–84 season, which saw none of its nine new fall shows gaining a second year.

In February 1982, NBC canceled Tom Snyder's The Tomorrow Show and gave the 12:35 a.m. time slot to 34-year-old comedian David Letterman. Though Letterman was unsuccessful with his weekday morning talk show effort for the network (which debuted on June 23, 1980), Late Night with David Letterman proved much more successful, lasting for 11 years and serving as the launching pad for another late-night talk franchise that continues to this day.

In 1984, the huge success of The Cosby Show led to a renewed interest in sitcoms, while Family Ties and Cheers, both of which premiered in 1982 to mediocre ratings (the latter ranking at near dead last among all network shows during the 1982–83 season), saw their viewership increase from having Cosby as a lead-in. The network rose from third place to second in the ratings during the 1984–85 season and reached first place in 1985–86, with hits The Golden Girls, Miami Vice, 227, Night Court, Highway to Heaven and Hunter. The network's upswing continued late into the decade with ALF, Amen, Matlock, L.A. Law, The Hogan Family, A Different World, Empty Nest, Unsolved Mysteries and In the Heat of the Night. In 1986, Bob Wright was appointed as chairman of NBC.

In the fall of 1987, NBC conceived a syndication package for its owned-and-operated stations, under the brand "Prime Time Begins at 7:30", consisting of five sitcoms that each aired once a week, and were produced by various production companies contracted by NBC. The series included Marblehead Manor (from Paramount Television, airing Mondays), centering on a mansion owner and the people who live with him; She's the Sheriff (from Lorimar-Telepictures and airing Tuesdays), a comeback vehicle for Suzanne Somers which cast her as a widowed county sheriff; a series adapted from the George S. Kaufman play You Can't Take It with You (airing Wednesdays), starring Harry Morgan; Out of This World (from MCA Television and airing Thursdays), which starred Maureen Flannigan as a teenager born to an alien father and human mother that develops supernatural abilities on her 15th birthday; and a revival of the short-lived 1983 NBC series We Got It Made (produced by Fred Silverman for MGM Television and closing out the week on Fridays), as part of an ongoing trend at the time in which former network series were revived in first-run syndication.

The package was aimed at attracting viewers to NBC stations in the half-hour preceding prime time (8:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zone, 7:00 p.m. elsewhere), and was conceived as a result of the FCC's loosening of the Prime Time Access Rule, legislation passed in 1971 that required networks to turn over the 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) time slot to local stations to program local or syndicated content; and the relaxation of the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, which had prevented networks from producing content from their own syndication units to fill the void. The shows that were part of the package were regularly outrated in many markets by such syndicated game shows as Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and Hollywood Squares. Marblehead Manor, We Got It Made and You Can't Take It With You were cancelled at the end of the 1987–88 season, with She's the Sheriff lasting one more season in weekend syndication before its cancellation. Out of This World ran for three additional seasons, airing mainly on weekends, and was the most successful of the five series.

NBC aired the first of eight consecutive Summer Olympic Games broadcasts when it covered the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea. The 1988–89 season saw NBC have an astonishing 18 series in Nielsen's year-end Top 30 most-watched network programs; it also ranked at first place in the weekly ratings for more than 12 months, an unprecedented achievement that has not been duplicated since. The network continued its hot streak into the early 1990s with new hits such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Blossom and Law & Order.

"Must See TV"
In 1991, Tartikoff left his role as NBC's President of Entertainment to take an executive position at Paramount Pictures. In the course of a decade, he had taken control of a network with no shows in the Nielsen Top 10 and left it with five. Tartikoff was succeeded by Warren Littlefield, whose first years as entertainment president proved shaky as a result of most of the Tartikoff-era hits ending their runs. Some blamed Littlefield for losing David Letterman to CBS after naming Jay Leno as the successor to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, following the latter's retirement as host in May 1992. Things turned around with the launches of new hit series such as Mad About You, Wings, Sisters, Frasier, Friends, ER and Will & Grace.

One of Tartikoff's late acquisitions, Seinfeld initially struggled from its debut in 1989 as a summer series, but grew to become one of NBC's top-rated shows after it was moved to Thursdays in the time slot following Cheers. Seinfeld ended its run in 1998, becoming the latest overall television program in the U.S. to end its final season as the leader in the Nielsen ratings for a single television season. Consequently, Friends emerged as NBC's biggest television show after the 1998 Seinfeld final broadcast. It dominated the ratings, never leaving the top five watched shows of the year from its second through tenth seasons and landing on the number-one spot during season eight in the 2001–02 season as the latest sitcom in the U.S. to lead the annual Nielsen primetime television ratings. Cheers spinoff Frasier became a critical and commercial success, usually landing in the Nielsen Top 20 – although its ratings were overshadowed to a minor extent by Friends – and went on to win numerous Emmy Awards (eventually setting a record for a sitcom that lasted until it was overtaken by Modern Family in 2014). In 1994, the network began branding its strong Thursday night lineup, mainly in reference to the comedies airing in the first two hours, under the "Must See TV" tagline (which during the mid- and late 1990s, was also applied to NBC's comedy blocks on other nights, particularly on Tuesdays).

By the mid-1990s, NBC's sports division, headed by Dick Ebersol, had rights to three of the four major professional sports leagues (the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA), the Olympics, and the national powerhouse Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team. The NBA on NBC enjoyed great success in the 1990s due in large part to the Chicago Bulls' run of six championships at the hands of superstar Michael Jordan. However, NBC Sports would suffer a major blow in 1998, when it lost the rights to the American Football Conference (AFC) to CBS, which itself had lost rights to the National Football Conference (NFC) to Fox four years earlier; the deal stripped NBC of National Football League (NFL) game telecasts after 59 years and AFC games after 36 years (dating back to its existence as the American Football League prior to its 1970 merger with the NFL).

Littlefield left NBC in 1998 to pursue a career as a television and film producer, with the network subsequently going through three entertainment presidents in three years. Littlefield was replaced as president of NBC Entertainment by Scott Sassa, who oversaw the development of such shows as The West Wing, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Fear Factor. After Sassa was reassigned to NBC's West Coast Division, Garth Ancier was named as his replacement in 1999. Jeff Zucker then succeeded Ancier as president of NBC Entertainment in 2000.

New century, new problems
At the start of the 2000s, NBC's fortunes started to take a rapid turn for the worse. That year, NBC's longstanding ratings lead ended as CBS (which had languished in the ratings after losing the NFL) overtook it for first place. In 2001, CBS chose to move its hit reality series Survivor to serve as the anchor of its Thursday night lineup. Its success was taken as a suggestion that NBC's nearly two decades of dominance on Thursday nights could be broken; even so, the strength of Friends, Will & Grace, ER and Just Shoot Me! (the latter of which saw its highest viewership following its move to that night in the 2000–01 season) helped the network continue to lead the Thursday ratings. Overall, NBC retook its first place lead that year, and spent much of the next four years (with the exception of the 2002–03 season, when it was briefly jumped again by CBS for first) in the top spot.

On the other hand, NBC was stripped of the broadcast rights to two other major sports leagues: it lost Major League Baseball to Fox after the 2000 season (by that point, NBC only had alternating rights to the All-Star Game, League Championship Series and World Series), and, later, the NBA to ABC after the 2001–02 season. After losing the NBA rights, NBC's major sports offerings were reduced to the Olympics (which in 2002, expanded to include rights to the Winter Olympics, as part of a contract that gave it the U.S. television rights to both the Summer and Winter Olympics through 2012), PGA Tour golf events and a floundering Notre Dame football program (however, it would eventually acquire the rights to the National Hockey League in May 2004).

In October 2001, NBC acquired Spanish-language network Telemundo from Liberty Media and Sony Pictures Entertainment for $2.7 billion, beating out other bidders including CBS/Viacom. The deal was finalized in 2002.

In 2003, French entertainment conglomerate Vivendi Universal sold 80% of its film and television subsidiary, Vivendi Universal Entertainment, to NBC's parent company, General Electric, integrating the network with Vivendi Universal's various properties (Universal Pictures film studio, Canal+ television networks, & Universal Parks & Resorts theme & amusement parks & resorts) upon completion of the merger of the two companies under the combined NBC Universal brand. NBC Universal was then owned 80% by General Electric and 20% by Vivendi. In 2004, Zucker was promoted to the newly created position of president of NBC Universal Television Group. Kevin Reilly became the new president of NBC Entertainment.

In 2004, NBC experienced a Three on a match scenario (Friends and Frasier ended their runs; Jerry Orbach, who had played one of the most popular characters of its hit Law & Order, died suddenly later that year), and shortly afterward was left with several moderately rated shows and few true hits. In particular, Friends spin-off Joey, despite a relatively strong start, started to falter in the ratings during its second season. The 2004–05 season saw NBC become the first major network to air select dramas in letterbox over its analog broadcast feed; the move was done in the hopes of attracting new viewers, although the network saw only a slight boost.

In December 2005, NBC began its first week-long primetime game show event, Deal or No Deal; the series garnered high ratings, and returning as a weekly series in March 2006. Otherwise, the 2005–06 season was one of the worst for NBC in three decades, with only one fall series, the sitcom My Name Is Earl, surviving for a second season; the sole remaining anchor of the "Must See TV" lineup, Will & Grace also saw its ratings decline. That season, NBC's ratings freefalled to fourth place, behind a resurgent ABC, Fox (which would eventually become the most-watched U.S. broadcast network in the 2007–08 season) and top-rated CBS (which led for much of the remainder of the decade). During this time, all of the networks faced audience erosion from increased competition by cable television, home video, video games and the Internet, with NBC being the hardest hit.

The 2006–07 season was a mixed bag for the network, with Deal or No Deal remaining strong and Heroes becoming a surprise hit on Monday nights, while the highly touted Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (from West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin) lost a third of its premiere-night viewers by Week 6 and was eventually cancelled; two critically acclaimed sitcoms, The Office and 30 Rock, also pulled in modest successes and went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for four consecutive years. The network also regained the rights to the NFL after eight years that season when it acquired the Sunday Night Football package from ESPN (as part of a deal that also saw Monday Night Football move to ESPN from ABC). However, despite this, NBC remained at a very distant fourth place, barely ranking ahead of The CW.

However, NBC did experience success with its summer schedule, despite its declining ratings during the main broadcast season. America's Got Talent, a reality talent competition series that premiered in 2006, earned a 4.6 rating in the 18–49 demographic, higher than that earned by the 2002 premiere of Fox's American Idol. Got Talent (which is the flagship of an international talent competition franchise) would continue to garner unusually high ratings throughout its summer run. However, NBC decided not to place it in the spring season, and instead use it as a platform to promote their upcoming fall shows. Originally hosted by Regis Philbin, the series is currently hosted by Tyra Banks, and continues to garner strong ratings throughout its summer seasons. In March 2007, NBC announced that it would begin offering full-length episodes of its prime time series for streaming on mobile devices, becoming the first U.S. broadcast network to offer on-demand mobile episode content, as the market began shifting away from traditional television.

Following the unexpected termination of Kevin Reilly, in 2007, Ben Silverman was appointed president of NBC Entertainment, while Jeff Zucker was promoted to succeed Bob Wright as CEO of NBC. The network failed to generate any new primetime hits during the 2008–09 season (despite the rare good fortune of having the rights to both the Super Bowl and the Summer Olympics in which to promote their new programming slate), the sitcom Parks and Recreation survived for a second season after a six-episode first season, while Heroes and Deal or No Deal both collapsed in the ratings and were later cancelled (with a revamped Deal or No Deal being revived for one additional season in syndication). In a March 2009 interview, Zucker had stated that he no longer believed it would be possible for NBC to become #1 in prime time. Ben Silverman left the network in 2009, with Jeff Gaspin replacing him as president of NBC Entertainment.

Comcast era (2011–present)
On December 3, 2009, Comcast announced they would purchase a 51% controlling stake in NBC Universal from General Electric (which would retain the remaining 49%) for $6.5 billion in cash and $9.1 billion in raised debt. GE used $5.8 billion from the deal to buy out Vivendi's 20% interest in NBC Universal.

NBC's broadcast of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, in February of that year, generated a ratings increase of 21% over its broadcast of the 2006 Winter Games in Torino. The network was criticized for repeatedly showing footage of a crash occurring during practice for an Olympic luge competition that killed Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. NBC News president Steve Capus ordered the footage not to be shown without his permission and Olympics prime time host Bob Costas promised on-air that the video would not be shown again during the Games. NBC Universal was on track to lose $250 million in advertising revenue on that year's Winter Olympics, failing to make up the $820 million it paid for the U.S. television rights. Even so, with its continuing position in fourth place (although it virtually tied with ABC in many demographics on the strength of NBC's sports broadcasts that year ), the 2009–10 season ended with only two scripted shows – Community and Parenthood, as well as three unscripted shows – The Marriage Ref, Who Do You Think You Are? and Minute to Win It – being renewed for second seasons, while other series such as Heroes and veteran crime drama Law & Order (the latter of which ended after 20 seasons, tying it with Gunsmoke as the longest-running prime time drama in U.S. television history) were cancelled.

After Conan O'Brien succeeded Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show in 2009, the network gave Leno a new prime time talk show, committing to air it every weeknight at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific as an inexpensive comedic alternative to the police procedurals and other hour-long dramas typically aired in that time slot. In doing so, NBC became the first major U.S. broadcast network in decades, if ever, to broadcast the same program in a weekdaily prime time strip. Its executives called the decision "a transformational moment in the history of broadcasting" and "in effect, launching five shows." Conversely, industry executives criticized the network for abandoning a history of airing quality dramas in the 10:00 hour, and expressed concern that it would hurt NBC by undermining a reputation built on successful scripted series. Citing complaints from many affiliates, which saw their late-evening newscasts drop significantly in the local ratings during The Jay Leno Show's run, NBC announced on January 10, 2010 that it would drop Leno's show from the 10:00 p.m. slot – with Zucker announcing plans to shift the program (which would have been reduced to a half-hour) into the 11:35 p.m. slot and shift its existing late night lineup (including The Tonight Show) by 30 minutes. The removal of The Jay Leno Show from its prime time schedule had almost no impact on the network's ratings. The increases NBC experienced in the 2010–11 season compared to 2009–10 were almost entirely attributable to the rising viewership of NBC Sunday Night Football. By 2012, the shows that occupied the 10:00 p.m. time slot drew lower numbers than The Jay Leno Show did when it aired in that hour two years before. In the spring of 2010, cable provider and multimedia firm Comcast announced it would acquire a majority interest in NBC Universal from General Electric, which would retain a minority stake in the company in the interim.

On September 24, 2010, Jeff Zucker announced that he would step down as NBC Universal's CEO once the company's merger with Comcast was completed at the end of the year. After the deal was finalized, Steve Burke was named CEO of NBCUniversal and Robert Greenblatt replaced Jeff Gaspin as chairman of NBC Entertainment. In 2011, NBC was finally able to find a breakout hit in the midseason reality singing competition series The Voice. Otherwise, NBC had another tough season, with every single new fall program getting cancelled by season's end – the third time this has happened to the network after the fall of 1975, and the fall of 1983 – and the midseason legal drama Harry's Law being its only freshman scripted series to be renewed for the 2011–12 season. The network nearly completed its full conversion to an all-HD schedule (outside of the Saturday morning time slot leased by the Qubo consortium, which NBCUniversal would rescind its stake in the following year) on September 20, 2011, when Last Call with Carson Daly converted to the format with the premiere of its 11th season.

The 2011–12 season was another tough season for NBC. On the upside, the network's broadcast of Super Bowl XLVI was the most-watched program in U.S. television history at the time, and the network's Monday night midseason lineup of The Voice and musical-drama Smash was very successful. The network managed to lift itself into third place in the 18–49 demographic in the 2011–12 season, primarily on the strength of those three programs (SNF, The Voice, and Smash), breaking the network's eight-year streak in fourth place. Four shows survived for a second season, but three of them were cancelled in the following year, none were unqualified ratings successes, and the network remained a distant fourth place in total viewership.

In the fall of 2012, NBC greatly expanded its sitcom roster, with eight comedy series airing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. NBC bounced back to first place network in adults 18–49 that fall, boosted by the new season of The Voice, the initial success of freshman drama Revolution and sitcom Go On, and the continued strength of Sunday Night Football. However, withholding the new season of The Voice and benching Revolution until late March, the network's midseason ratings suffered, falling to fifth place behind Spanish-language network Univision during the February sweeps period. The 2012–13 season ended with NBC finishing in third place overall, albeit by a narrow margin, with only three new shows, all dramas, surviving for a second season (Revolution, Chicago Fire and Hannibal).

In 2013, NBC Sports migrated its business and production operations (including NBCSN) to new facilities in Stamford, Connecticut. Production of the network's NFL pre-game show Football Night in America remained at the NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center (with production operations based in Studio 8G, while the program itself was broadcast in Studio 8H, the longtime home of Saturday Night Live), until it migrated to the Stamford facility in September 2014. Despite the failure of another highly advertised game show event, The Million Second Quiz, the 2013–14 season was mostly successful for NBC due to the continued success of The Voice, Chicago Fire, Revolution, Sunday Night Football and Grimm. Along with new hits including The Blacklist, Hannibal and Chicago PD and a significant ratings boost from its broadcast of the 2014 Winter Olympics, NBC became the #1 network in the coveted 18–49 demographic that season for the first time since 2003–04, when Friends ended. NBC also improved considerably in total viewership, finishing behind long-dominant CBS in second place for the season.

The 2014–15 season was something of a mixed bag for NBC, but still successful. NBC launched eight new series that year, with only one, comedy-drama police procedural The Mysteries of Laura, being renewed for a second season. Nevertheless, the network continued to experience success with most of its returning series, especially The Blacklist (despite a modest decline in viewership following its move to Thursdays midway through the season, due partly to an initial weak lead-in from miniseries The Slap). Combined with the record number of viewers tuning in to Super Bowl XLIX, NBC again finished #1 in the 18–49 demographic and in second place overall.

The 2015–16 season was successful for NBC, with the successful launch of the new drama Blindspot premiering after The Voice, then subsequently being renewed for a second season in November 2015. NBC also continued with the success with the Chicago franchise with launching its second spin-off Chicago Med, which also received an early second season pick up in February 2016. Thursday nights continues to be a struggle for NBC, with continued success with the third season of The Blacklist brought the failed launch of Heroes Reborn which was cancelled in January 2016, and thriller The Player, however NBC found success with police procedural Shades of Blue which improved the 10pm time slot and was renewed for a second season in February 2016. On the comedy side, NBC surprisingly found success in the new workplace sitcom Superstore which premiered as a "preview" after The Voice in November 2015, and officially launched in January 2016 which brought decent ratings for a new comedy without The Voice as a lead-in and which was subsequently renewed for a second season in February 2016.

The 2016–17 season brought more success for NBC with new Comedy-drama This Is Us which was well received by critics and ratings and was renewed for two additional seasons in January 2017. The Blacklist continued to bring in modest ratings however, it brought the failed launch of its spinoff The Blacklist: Redemption. NBC continued to grow the Chicago franchise with a third spinoff titled Chicago Justice. On the comedy side, workplace sitcom Superstore continued success in its second season. The network launched new fantasy sitcom The Good Place following The Voice and brought in modest ratings and was renewed for a second season in January 2017.

Programming
, NBC provides 87 hours of regularly scheduled network programming each week. The network provides 22 hours of prime time programming to affiliated stations Monday through Saturdays from 8:00–11:00 p.m. (7:00–10:00 p.m. in all other U.S. time zones) and Sundays from 7:00–11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time (6:00–10:00 p.m. in all other time zones).

Daytime programming is also provided weekdays between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. in the form of the one-hour weekday soap opera Days of Our Lives (the scheduling of the program varies depending on the station, although it is initially fed to affiliates at 1:00 p.m. Eastern). NBC News programming includes the morning news/interview program Today from 7:00–11:00 a.m. weekdays, 7:00–9:00 on Saturdays and 7:00–8:00 on Sundays; nightly editions of NBC Nightly News (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into the program's time slot), the Sunday political talk show Meet the Press, weekday early-morning news program Early Today and newsmagazine Dateline NBC. Late nights feature the weeknight talk shows The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers and Last Call with Carson Daly, weeknight replays of the fourth hour of Today and CNBC program Mad Money, and the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and the LXTV-produced 1st Look and Open House NYC on Saturdays (replays of the previous week's 1st Look also air on Friday late nights on most stations).

The network's Saturday morning children's programming time slot is programmed by Litton Entertainment under a time-lease agreement. The three-hour block of programming designed for 14–16 year-old teenage viewers is under the umbrella branding of The More You Know, based on the network's long-time strand of internally-produced public service announcements of the same name. It premiered on October 8, 2016, giving Litton control of all but Fox's Saturday morning E/I programming among the five major broadcast networks.

Sports programming is also provided weekend afternoons at any time between 12:00 and 6:00 p.m. (9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m., or tape-delayed in the Pacific Time Zone). Due to the unpredictable length of sporting events, NBC will occasionally pre-empt scheduled programs (more common with the weekend editions of NBC Nightly News, and local and syndicated programs carried by its owned-and-operated stations and affiliates). NBC has also held the American broadcasting rights to the Summer Olympic Games since the 1988 games and the rights to the Winter Olympic Games since the 2002 games. Coverage of the Olympics on NBC have included pre-empting regularly scheduled programs during daytime, primetime, and late night.

NBC News
News coverage has long been an important part of NBC's operations and public image, dating to the network's radio days. Notable NBC News productions past and present include Today, NBC Nightly News (and its immediate predecessor, the Huntley-Brinkley Report), Meet the Press (which has the distinction of the longest continuously running program in the history of American television), Dateline NBC, Early Today, NBC News at Sunrise, NBC Nightside and Rock Center with Brian Williams.

In 1989, the news division began its expansion to cable with the launch of business news channel CNBC. The company eventually formed other cable news services including MSNBC (created in 1996 originally as a joint venture with Microsoft, which now features a mix of general news and political discussion programs with a liberal stance), and the 2008 acquisition of The Weather Channel in conjunction with Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. In addition, NBCSN (operated as part of the NBC Sports Group, and which became an NBC property through Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal) carries sports news content alongside sports event telecasts. Key anchors from NBC News are also used during NBC Sports coverage of the Olympic Games.

Daytime programming
NBC is currently the home to only one daytime program, the hour-long soap opera Days of Our Lives, which has been broadcast on the network since 1965. Since NBC turned back an hour of its then two-hour daytime schedule to its affiliates as a result of the September 2007 expansion of Today to four hours, the network currently ties with The CW for the fewest daytime programming hours of any major broadcast television network.

Long-running daytime dramas seen on NBC in the past include The Doctors (1963–1982), Another World (1964–1999), Santa Barbara (1984–1993), and Passions (1999–2007). NBC also aired the final 4½ years of Search for Tomorrow (1982–1986) after that series was initially cancelled by CBS, although many NBC affiliates did not clear the show during its tenure on the network. NBC has also aired numerous short-lived soap operas, including Generations (1989–1991), Sunset Beach (1997–1999), and the two Another World spin-offs, Somerset (1970–1976) and Texas (1980–1982).

Notable daytime game shows that once aired on NBC include The Price Is Right (1956–1963), Concentration (1958–1973 and 1987–1991 as Classic Concentration), The Match Game (1962–1969), Let's Make a Deal (1963–1968 and 1990–1991, as well as a short-lived prime-time revival in 2003), Jeopardy! (1964–1975 and 1978–1979), The Hollywood Squares (1966–1980), Wheel of Fortune (1975–1989 and 1991), Password Plus/Super Password (1979–1982 and 1984–1989), Sale of the Century (1969–1973 and 1983–1989) and Scrabble (1984–1990 and 1993). The last game show ever to air as part of NBC's daytime schedule was the short-lived Caesars Challenge, which ended in January 1994.

Notable past daytime talk shows that have aired on NBC have included Home (1954–1957), The Ernie Kovacs Show (1955–1956), The Merv Griffin Show (1962–1963), Leeza (1994–1999) and Later Today (1999–2000).

Children's programming
Children's programming has played a part in NBC's programming since its initial roots in television. NBC's first major children's series, Howdy Doody, debuted in 1947 and was one of the era's first breakthrough television shows. From the mid-1960s until 1992, the bulk of NBC's children's programming was composed of mainly animated programming including classic Looney Tunes and Woody Woodpecker shorts; reruns of primetime animated sitcoms such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons; foreign acquisitions like Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion; animated adaptions of Punky Brewster, ALF and Star Trek as well as animated vehicles for Gary Coleman and Mr. T; live-action programs like The Banana Splits, The Bugaloos and H.R. Pufnstuf; and the original broadcasts of Gumby, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Underdog, The Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears. From 1984 to 1989, the network aired a series of public service announcements called One to Grow On, which aired after the end credits of every program or every other children's program.

In 1989, NBC premiered Saved by the Bell, a live-action teen sitcom which originated on The Disney Channel the previous year as Good Morning, Miss Bliss (which served as a starring vehicle for Hayley Mills; four cast members from that show were cast in the NBC series as the characters they originally played on Miss Bliss). Saved by the Bell, despite being given bad reviews from television critics, would become one of the most popular teen series in television history as well as the top-rated series on Saturday mornings, dethroning ABC's The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show in its first season.

The success of Saved by the Bell led NBC to remove animated series from its Saturday morning lineup in August 1992 in favor of additional live-action series as part of a new block called TNBC, along with the debut of a Saturday edition of Today. Most of the series featured on the TNBC lineup were executive produced by Peter Engel (such as City Guys, Hang Time, California Dreams, One World and the Saved by the Bell sequel, Saved by the Bell: The New Class), with the lineup being designed from the start to meet the earliest form of the FCC's educational programming guidelines under the Children's Television Act. NBA Inside Stuff, an analysis and interview program aimed at teens that was hosted for most of its run by Ahmad Rashād, was also a part of the TNBC lineup during the NBA season until 2002 (when the program moved to ABC as a result of that network taking the NBA rights from NBC).

In 2002, NBC entered into an agreement with Discovery Communications to carry educational children's programs from the Discovery Kids cable channel. Debuting that September, the Discovery Kids on NBC block originally consisted exclusively of live-action series, including reality series Trading Spaces: Boys vs. Girls (a kid-themed version of the TLC series Trading Spaces); the Emmy-nominated reality game show Endurance, hosted and produced by J. D. Roth (whose production company, 3-Ball Productions, would also produce reality series The Biggest Loser for NBC beginning in 2003); and scripted series such as Strange Days at Blake Holsey High and Scout's Safari. The block later expanded to include some animated series such as Kenny the Shark, Tutenstein and Time Warp Trio.

In May 2006, NBC announced plans to launch a new Saturday morning children's block under the Qubo brand in September 2006. An endeavor originally operated as a joint venture between NBCUniversal, Ion Media Networks, Scholastic Press, Classic Media and Corus Entertainment's Nelvana unit (Ion acquired the other partners' shares in 2013), the Qubo venture also encompassed weekly blocks on Telemundo and Ion Television, a 24-hour digital multicast network on Ion's owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, as well as video on demand services and a branded website. Qubo launched on NBC on September 9, 2006 with six programs (VeggieTales, Dragon, VeggieTales Presents: 3-2-1 Penguins!, Babar, Jane and the Dragon and Jacob Two-Two).

On March 28, 2012, it was announced that NBC would launch a new Saturday morning preschool block programmed by Sprout (originally jointly owned by NBCUniversal, PBS, Sesame Workshop and Apax Partners, with the former acquiring the other's interests later that year). The block, NBC Kids, premiered on July 7, 2012, replacing the "Qubo on NBC" block.

Specials
NBC holds the broadcast rights to several annual specials and award show telecasts including the Golden Globe Awards and the Emmy Awards (which is rotated across all four major networks each year). Since 1952, NBC has served as the official U.S. broadcaster of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. CBS also carries unauthorized coverage of the Macy's parade as part of The Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS; However, as NBC holds rights to the parade, it has exclusivity over the broadcast of Broadway and music performances appearing in the parade (CBS airs live performances separate from those seen in the parade as a result), and Macy's chose to reroute the parade in 2012 out of the view of CBS' cameras, although it continues to cover the parade. NBC began airing a same-day rebroadcast of the parade telecast in 2009 (replacing its annual Thanksgiving afternoon airing of Miracle on 34th Street). In 2007, NBC acquired the rights to the National Dog Show, which airs following the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade each year.

The network also broadcasts several live-action and animated specials during the Christmas holiday season, including the 2014 debuts How Murray Saved Christmas (an animated musical adaptation of the children's book of the same name) and Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas (a stop-motion animated special based on the 2003 live-action film Elf).

Since 2013, the network has aired live musical adaptations with major stars in lead roles. Originally dismissed as a gimmick, they have proven to be ratings successes, as well as a nostalgic tribute to the early days of television. Past adaptations include:
 * The Sound of Music in 2013 (starring Carrie Underwood as Maria Von Trapp)
 * Peter Pan in 2014 (starring Allison Williams in the titular role and Christopher Walken as Captain Hook)
 * The Wiz in 2015 (starring Queen Latifah as the Wiz, Mary J. Blige as the Wicked Witch and Uzo Aduba as the Good Witch)
 * Hairspray in 2016 (starring Ariana Grande as Penny Pingleton, Jennifer Hudson as Motormouth Maybelle, Kristin Chenoweth as Velma von Tussle and Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad, reprising his role in the original Broadway production)
 * Jesus Christ Superstar in 2018 (starring John Legend as Jesus Christ, Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdalene and Alice Cooper as King Herod)

From 2003 to 2014, NBC also held rights to two of the three pageants organized by the Miss Universe Organization: the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants (NBC also held rights to the Miss Teen USA pageant from 2003, when NBC also assumed rights to the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants as part of a deal brokered by Miss Universe Organization owner Donald Trump that gave the network half-ownership of the pageants, until 2007, when NBC declined to renew its contract to carry Miss Teen USA, effectively discontinuing televised broadcasts of that event). NBCUniversal relinquished the rights to Miss Universe and Miss USA on June 29, 2015, as part of its decision to cut business ties with Donald Trump and the Miss Universe Organization (which was half-owned by corporate parent NBCUniversal) in response to controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants made by Trump during the launch of his 2016 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination.

Programming library
Through the years, NBC has produced many in-house programs, in addition to airing content from other producers such as Revue Studios and its successor Universal Television. Notable in-house productions by NBC have included Get Smart, Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Las Vegas and Crossing Jordan.

NBC sold the distribution rights to programs it produced prior to that year to National Telefilm Associates in 1973; those rights are currently owned by CBS Paramount Television through Republic Pictures and Spelling Entertainment Group, although NBC still owns the copyrights to the episodes. As a result, NBC, in a way, now owns several other series aired on the network prior to 1973, such as Wagon Train. NBC continues to own its entire library of programs produced after 1973, through corporate sister NBCUniversal Television Group (the successor to Universal Television).

Stations
, NBC has eleven owned-and-operated stations and current and pending affiliation agreements with 226 additional television stations encompassing 49 states, the District of Columbia, six U.S. possessions and two non-U.S. territories (Aruba and Bermuda). The network has a national reach of 90.05% of all households in the United States (or 281,372,474 Americans with at least one television set).

Currently, New Jersey is the only U.S. state where NBC does not have a locally licensed affiliate. New Jersey is served by New York City O&O WNBC-TV and Philadelphia O&O WCAU; New Jersey formerly had an in-state affiliate in Atlantic City-based WMGM-TV, which was affiliated with the network from 1955 to 2014. NBC maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in a few smaller markets, such as Binghamton, New York (WBGH-CD), Jackson, Tennessee (WNBJ-LD) and Juneau, Alaska (KATH-LD), that do not have enough full-power stations to support a standalone affiliate. In some markets, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a co-owned/co-managed full-power television station.

As mentioned with New Hampshire and Boston, NBC operates a low-powered station in Boston, WBTS-LD, which aims to serve as its station in that market while using a network of additional full-power stations to cover the market in full (including Merrimack, New Hampshire-licensed Telemundo station WNEU, which transmits WBTS on a second subchannel. A WBTS translator, WYCN-CD, is licensed to Nashua, New Hampshire and was purchased by NBC in early 2018 after the FCC spectrum auction, but transmits a full-power signal under a channel share with the WGBH Educational Foundation and its secondary Boston station WGBX-TV from Needham, Massachusetts.

Currently outside of the NBC Owned Television Stations-operated O&O group, Tegna Media is the largest operator of NBC stations in terms of overall market reach, owning or providing services to 20 NBC affiliates (including those in larger markets such as Denver, St. Louis, Seattle and Cleveland); Gray Television is the largest operator of NBC stations by numerical total, owning 23 NBC-affiliated stations.

Video-on-demand services
NBC provides video on demand access for delayed viewing of the network's programming through various means, including via its website at NBC.com, a traditional VOD service called NBC on Demand available on most traditional cable and IPTV providers, and through content deals with Hulu and Netflix (the latter of which carries only cataloged episodes of NBC programs, after losing the right to carry newer episodes of its programs during their current seasons in July 2011). NBCUniversal is a part-owner of Hulu (as part of a consortium that includes, among other parties, the respective parent companies of ABC and Fox, The Walt Disney Company and 21st Century Fox), and has offered full-length episodes of most of NBC's programming through the streaming service (which are available for viewing on Hulu's website and mobile app) since Hulu launched in private beta testing on October 29, 2007.

The most recent episodes of the network's shows are usually made available on NBC.com and Hulu the day after their original broadcast. In addition, NBC.com and certain other partner websites (including Hulu) provide complete back catalogs of most of its current series as well as a limited selection of episodes of classic series from the NBCUniversal Television Distribution program library – including shows not broadcast by NBC during their original runs (including the complete or partial episode catalogs of shows like 30 Rock, The A-Team, Charles in Charge, Emergency!, Knight Rider (both the original series and the short-lived 2008 reboot), Kojak, Miami Vice, The Office, Quantum Leap and Simon & Simon).

On February 18, 2015, NBC began providing live programming streams of local NBC stations in select markets, which are only available to authenticated subscribers of participating pay television providers. All eleven NBC owned-and-operated stations owned by NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations' were the first stations to offer streams of their programming on NBC's website and mobile app, with intentions to reach agreements with other station groups to provide streams of NBC-affiliated stations in other markets. Due to restrictions imposed by the league, the network's NFL game telecasts are not permitted to be streamed on the service.

NBC HD
NBC's master feed is transmitted in 1080i high definition, the native resolution format for NBCUniversal's television properties. However, 19 of its affiliates transmit the network's programming in 720p HD, while four others carry the network feed in 480i standard definition either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry NBC programming on a digital subchannel, or because a primary feed NBC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD.

WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina (a station that re-joined NBC in February 2016) is currently testing the upcoming ATSC 3.0 television standard, which will allow the transmission of 2160p ultra-high-definition television (UHD), through a secondary experimental station (WRAL-EX); it has transmitted limited NBC programming in UHD through a secondary subchannel, and is currently the only station overall which transmits NBC's schedule in 1080p on its main subchannel.

Meet the Press was the first regular series on a major television network to produce a high-definition broadcast on February 2, 1997, which aired in the format over WHD-TV in Washington, D.C., an experimental television station owned by a consortium of industry groups and stations which launched to allow testing of HD broadcasts and operated until 2002 (the program itself continued to be transmitted in 480i standard definition over the NBC network until May 2, 2010, when it became the last NBC News program to convert to HD). NBC officially began its conversion to high definition with the launch of its simulcast feed, NBC HD, on April 26, 1999, when The Tonight Show became the first HD program to air on the NBC network as well as the first regularly scheduled American network program to be produced and transmitted in high definition. The network gradually converted much of its existing programming from standard-definition to high definition beginning with the 2002–03 season, with select shows among that season's slate of freshmen scripted series being broadcast in HD from their debuts.

The network completed its conversion to high definition in September 2012, with the launch of NBC Kids, a new Saturday morning children's block programmed by new partial sister network PBS Kids Sprout, which also became the second Saturday morning children's block with an entirely HD schedule (after the ABC-syndicated Litton's Weekend Adventure). All of the network's programming has been presented in full HD since then (with the exception of certain holiday specials produced prior to 2005 – such as its annual broadcast of It's a Wonderful Life – which continue to be presented in 4:3 SD, although some have been remastered for HD broadcast).

NBCi
In 1999, NBC launched NBCi (briefly changing its web address to "www.nbci.com"), a heavily advertised online venture serving as an attempt to launch an Internet portal and homepage. This move saw NBC partner with XOOM.com (not to be confused with the current money transfer service), e-mail.com, AllBusiness.com, and Snap.com (eventually acquiring all four companies outright; Snap should also not be confused with the current-day parent of Snapchat) to launch a multi-faceted internet portal with e-mail, webhosting, community, chat and personalization capabilities, and news content. Subsequently, in April 2000, NBC purchased GlobalBrain, a company specializing in search engines that learned from searches initiated by its users, for $32 million.

The experiment lasted roughly one season; after its failure, NBCi's operations were folded back into NBC. The NBC Television portion of the website reverted to NBC.com. However, the NBCi website continued in operation as a portal for NBC-branded content (NBCi.com would be redirected to NBCi.msnbc.com), using a co-branded version of InfoSpace to deliver minimal portal content. In mid-2007, NBCi.com began to mirror the main NBC.com website; NBCi.com was eventually redirected to the NBC.com domain in 2010.

Evolution of the NBC logo
NBC has used a number of logos throughout its history; early logos used by the television and radio networks were similar to the logo of its then parent company, RCA. Logos used later in NBC's existence incorporated stylized peacock designs, including the current version that has been in use since 1986.

Canada
NBC network programs can be received throughout most of Canada on cable, satellite and IPTV providers through certain U.S.-based affiliates of the network (such as WBTS-LD/Boston, KING-TV/Seattle, KBJR-TV/Duluth, Minnesota, WGRZ/Buffalo, New York and WDIV-TV/Detroit). Some programs carried on these stations are subject to simultaneous substitutions, a practice imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in which a pay television provider supplants an American station's signal with a feed from a Canadian station/network airing a particular program in the same time slot to protect domestic advertising revenue. Some of these affiliates are also receivable over-the-air in southern areas of the country located near the Canada–United States border (signal coverage was somewhat reduced after the digital television transition in 2009 due to the lower radiated power required to transmit digital signals).

Europe and the Middle East
NBC no longer exists outside the Americas as a channel in its own right. However, NBC News and MSNBC programs are broadcast for a few hours a day on OSN News, formerly known as Orbit News in Africa and the Middle East. Sister network CNBC Europe also broadcasts occasional breaking news coverage from MSNBC as well as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. CNBC Europe also broadcast daily airings of NBC Nightly News at 00:30 CET Monday to Fridays.

NBC Super Channel becomes NBC Europe
In 1993, then-NBC parent General Electric acquired Super Channel, relaunching the Pan-European cable network as NBC Super Channel. In 1996, the channel was renamed NBC Europe, but was, from then on, almost always referred to on-air as simply "NBC".

Most of NBC Europe's prime time programming was produced in Europe due to rights restrictions associated with U.S. primetime shows; the channel's weekday late night schedule after 11:00 p.m. Central European Time, however, featured The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Later, which the channel's slogan "Where the Stars Come Out at Night" was based around. Many NBC News programs were broadcast on NBC Europe, including Dateline NBC, Meet the Press and NBC Nightly News, the latter of which was broadcast simultaneously with the initial U.S. telecast. Today was also initially aired live in the afternoons, but was later broadcast instead the following morning on a more than half-day delay.

In 1999, NBC Europe ceased broadcasting in most of Europe outside of Germany; the network was concurrently relaunched as a German-language technology channel aimed at a younger demographic, with the new series NBC GIGA as its flagship program. In 2005, the channel was relaunched again as the free-to-air movie channel Das Vierte which eventually shut down end of 2013 (acquired by Disney which replaced it by a German version of Disney Channel. GIGA Television was subsequently spun off as a separate digital channel, available on satellite and cable providers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland which shut down as a TV-station end of 2009.

Mexico
NBC programming is available in Mexico through free-to-air affiliates in markets located within proximity to the Mexico–United States border (such as KYMA-DT/Yuma, Arizona; KGNS-TV/Laredo, Texas; KTSM/El Paso, Texas; KVEO/Brownsville, Texas; and KNSD/San Diego), whose signals are readily receivable over-the-air in border areas of northern Mexico. Some U.S.-based border affiliates are also available on subscription television providers throughout the country, including in the Mexico City area.

Nicaragua
In Nicaragua, satellite providers carry either select U.S.-based NBC and Telemundo affiliated stations or the main network feed from NBCUniversal or Telemundo. The main local affiliate stations are NBC 6 WTVJ, Telemundo 51 WSCV in Miami. In addition to the NBC programming there is also available by the NBC sister network  Telemundo, a Spanish network based in the United States.

Canal de Noticias
In 1993, NBC launched a 24-hour Spanish-language news channel serving Latin America (the second news channel serving that region overall, after Noticias ECO, and the first to broadcast 24 hours a day), Canal de Noticias NBC, which based its news schedule around the "wheel" format conceived at CNN. The channel, which was headquartered in the offices of the NBC News Channel affiliate news service in Charlotte, North Carolina, employed over 50 journalists to produce, write, anchor and provide technical services. Canal de Noticias NBC shut down in 1999 due to the channel's inability to generate sustainable advertising revenue.

Caribbean
In the Caribbean, many subscription providers carry either select U.S.-based NBC affiliated stations or the main network feed from NBC O&Os WNBC in New York City or WTVJ in Miami. In addition, the network's programming has been available in the U.S. Virgin Islands since 2004 on WVGN-LD in Charlotte Amalie (owned by LKK Group), while Telemundo owned-and-operated station WKAQ-TV in San Juan, Puerto Rico carries the WNBC feed on a digital subchannel. In these areas, NBC programs are available in English and in Spanish via second audio program.

Bahamas
In the Bahamas, NBC programming is available via U.S.-based affiliate stations on domestic cable providers.

Netherlands Antilles
In Aruba, NBC maintains an affiliation with Oranjestad station PJA-TV (which brands on-air as "ATV").

Puerto Rico
In Puerto Rico, Telemundo O&O WKAQ-TV carries "NBC Puerto Rico" over their third subchannel, which is effectively a simulcast of WNBC with some local advertising and station identification.

Bermuda
Until it ended operations in 2014, NBC's entire program lineup was carried by VSB-TV, using the Eastern Time Zone feed, though an hour ahead due to its location in the Atlantic Time Zone. Bermuda currently receives NBC service from WTVJ Miami via cable.

Guam
In Guam, the entire NBC programming lineup is carried by Hagåtña affiliate KUAM-TV (which has been an NBC affiliate since 1956) via the network's East Coast satellite feed. Entertainment and news programming is broadcast day and date on a one-day tape delay as Guam is on the west side of the International Date Line (for example, the network's Thursday prime time lineup airs Friday evenings on KUAM, and is advertised by the station as airing on the latter night in on-air promotions). Live programming, including breaking news and sporting events, airs as scheduled; because of the time difference with the six U.S. time zones, live sports coverage often airs on the station early in the morning. KUAM's programming is relayed to the Northern Mariana Islands via satellite station WSZE in Saipan.

American Samoa
In American Samoa, NBC was affiliated with KKHJ-LP in Pago Pago from 2005 to 2012. Cable television providers on the islands carry the network's programming via Seattle affiliate KING-TV.

Federated States of Micronesia
In the Federated States of Micronesia, NBC programming is available on domestic cable providers via Honolulu affiliate KHNL.

NBC Asia and CNBC Asia
NBC Asia launched in 1994, distributed to Nepal, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan and the Philippines. Like NBC Europe, NBC Asia featured most of NBC's news programs as well as The Tonight Show, Late Night and Saturday Night Live. Like its European counterpart, it was not allowed to broadcast American-produced primetime shows due to existing broadcast agreements with other domestic broadcasters. NBC Asia produced a regional evening news program that aired each weeknight, and occasionally simulcast some programs from CNBC Asia and MSNBC. NBC also operated NBC Super Sports, a 24-hour channel devoted to televising sporting events.

In July 1998, NBC Asia was replaced by a regional version of the National Geographic Channel. As is the case with NBC Europe, CNBC Asia broadcasts select episodes of The Tonight Show and Late Night as well as Meet the Press are as part of its weekend schedule, and airs NFL games under the Sunday Night Football brand.

Regional partners
Through regional partners, NBC-produced programs are seen in some countries in the continent. In the Philippines, Jack TV (owned by Solar Entertainment) airs Will & Grace and Saturday Night Live, while TalkTV airs The Tonight Show and NBC News programs including the weekday and weekend editions of Today, Early Today, Dateline NBC and NBC Nightly News. Solar TV formerly broadcast The Jay Leno Show from 2009 to 2010. In Hong Kong, English language free-to-air channel TVB Pearl (operated by TVB) airs live broadcasts of NBC Nightly News, as well as other select NBC programs.

Australia
In Australia, the Seven Network has maintained close ties with NBC and has used a majority of the U.S. network's image campaigns and slogans since the 1970s (conversely, in 2009, NBC and Seven both used the Guy Sebastian single "Like it Like That" in image promos for their respective summer schedules). The network's Seven News division has used John Williams-composed "The Mission" (the proprietary theme music for NBC News' flagship programs since 1985) as the theme music for its local and national news programs since the mid-1980s. Local newscasts were also titled Seven Nightly News from the mid-1980s until c. 2000. NBC News and Seven News often share news resources, with the former division using Seven's reporters for breaking news coverage and select taped story packages relating to Australian stories and the latter sometimes incorporating NBC News reports into its national bulletins.

Seven also rebroadcasts some of NBC's news and current affairs programming during the early morning hours (usually from 3:00 to 5:00 a.m. local time), including the weekday and weekend editions of Today (which it brands as NBC Today to differentiate it from the unrelated morning program on the Nine Network), Dateline NBC and Meet the Press.

Pre-history (1995–1998)
In 1995, Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) began planning its own educational subscription channel as a new home for most of its programming (other than Sesame Street) such as Cro (which had aired on ABC with excellent ratings, but was canceled after 2 seasons). The channel was to be called "New Kid City" and was planned to be CTW's "own niche on the dial with shows that emphasize educational content"; but CTW later abandoned the concept.

Meanwhile, Nickelodeon began planning an early interactive educational channel called "Big Orange"; in addition to Nickelodeon, other Viacom divisions (such as Viacom Interactive) were involved with the project. By 1997, Viacom retooled the project into an attempt at a package of educational programming to by syndicated to the major broadcast networks to fulfill the FCC's stricter new requirements for educational programming, and the project was renamed "Noggin". A pilot was also developed for the project that was based on a Nickelodeon series of shorts called "Inside Eddie Johnson".

In addition to being a syndicated package of educational programming, another vision was that Noggin could also evolve into a pay channel that would focus on educational content, complementing entertainment-oriented Nickelodeon. For various reasons, Noggin would ultimately not launch as a syndication package, though CTW and Nickelodeon would form a partnership in 1998 for the pay channel concept, and Noggin was announced soon after as a joint venture between Nickelodeon and CTW with the goal of "[positioning] educational children's programs at the forefront of the digital cable movement".

Original Noggin (1999–2002)
On February 2, 1999, the new channel launched at 6:00 a.m., with the original pilot episode of Sesame Street from 1969. Its production arm Noggin Originals, whose first logo was a light bulb, was then followed by the first few episodes of The Electric Company, which had not been televised since 1971. At the time Noggin launched, only Inverness, Colorado-based satellite provider EchoStar and Meridian, Colorado-based satellite provider Dish Network carried the channel.

The network's name was derived from a slang term for "head" and, by extension, had reflected its original purpose as an educational channel. Noggin's programming was originally targeted primarily at pre-teens from 1999 to 2002, although a few programs airing on the channel were aimed at preschoolers. This had the unintended consequence of creating a redundant audience with parent network Nickelodeon, which also primarily targets a pre-teen audience, despite Noggin's programming being more educational in nature than the entertainment-based Nickelodeon. The channel's first official mascot was Phred, a strange pickle character, who was seen on the channel from 1999 to 2002.

Programs that aired on Noggin during this period of Noggin's history included (among others) Phred on Your Head Show, A Walk In Your Shoes, Sponk!, and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Feetface Era (2002–2003)
On April 1, 2002, the format of Noggin was changed to reflect the network's programming strengths, shifting its target audience to preschoolers full-time and outside of Sesame Street, moving archived CTW/Sesame Workshop programming to the graveyard hours until their eventual removal on May 26, 2003. That same day, Noggin debuted a new mascot named Feetface. Acknowledging at the time that there was low demand for nighttime preschool programming, Viacom launched The N in the evening/early morning half of the network's broadcast day. It targeted an older audience and carried programming that had more appeal to young teenagers than Noggin or Nickelodeon's show.

Similarly to the shared-time format of Nickelodeon (which had shared channel space with other channels throughout its early history including The Movie Channel, the Alpha Repertory Television Service (also known as ARTS), and ARTS' successor A&E) and Nick at Nite, Noggin and The N aired their respective programming over the same channel space and in a block format: Noggin ran from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET, while The N ran from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. ET seven nights a week. This was acknowledged in Noggin's daily sign-off message, which explained that Noggin would resume its programming at 6:00 a.m. ET the next morning. Later in 2002, Sesame Workshop sold its stake in Noggin to Viacom, giving them full control of the channel.

Noggin was a commercial-free service, but it showed interstitials between shows such as episodes from the short film series Oobi and Connie the Cow's Milk Break, as well as other "tie-in" media such as music videos that tied in with promotions for programs on the other Nickelodeon channels. At the time, the channel's revenue came primarily from carriage fees paid by pay television providers. On April 6, 2003, Feetface's last day on Noggin aired, alongside Maurice Sendak's Little Bear.

Moose and Zee Era (2003–2012)
On March 8, 2003, a preview for Moose and Zee began airing, in which Feetface is seen meeting Moose and Zee and asks them to take over before announcing his departure from the network. On April 7, 2003, Noggin introduced two new mascots named Moose A. Moose and Zee D. Bird. Besides airing classic Nickelodeon preschool series such as Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer, and original shows such as Oobi and Jack's Big Music Show, Noggin also aired many preschool-oriented shows originating from English-speaking countries outside of the United States (including Nelvana’s Canadian series Maurice Sendak's Little Bear and Franklin the Turtle, and British series Tiny Planets).

The channel also served as the launching pad for music videos by children's music artists such as Laurie Berkner, Lisa Loeb and Dan Zanes, usually shown as filler between 23-minute-long shows that ran commercial-free. The channel continued to carry classic Sesame Workshop series until September 12, 2005, when Jack's Big Music Show premiered on the channel. Around this time, Noggin began to air versions of classic shows from the Sesame Workshop library (such as The Electric Company), that were edited for running time.

In 2006, Noggin began to decrease its reliance on foreign children's programs; Tweenies was removed from the schedule in January, with Tiny Planets being dropped that April. Tiny Planets was previously shown intermittently (i.e. not on a daily basis, at 6:00 a.m. ET, as Tweenies was for a year until it was removed. The channel, however, later acquired the Australian series The Upside Down Show (which, like Tiny Planets, has American origins through Sesame Workshop). Noggin was renamed as Nick's Noggin on April 2, 2007, carrying Nick Jr. programs.

First return as a full 24/7 service (2007-2009)
On August 13, 2007, Nickelodeon announced that it would shut down sister channel Nickelodeon Games and Sports for Kids on December 31, 2007, turning it into an online-only service on TurboNick, with The N becoming its own 24-hour channel that would take over Nickelodeon GAS's channel space. Noggin's time-sharing service ended its 5-year run on December 30, 2007 at 6:00 p.m. ET, with the Little Bear episode "Family Portrait / Little Bear's New Friend / Emily's Visit" as its last program to air. The final sign on was a sudden cut-in to a curriculum board for the American/French series 64 Zoo Lane replacing the song. The change was likely made in reaction to new services such as BabyFirst programming preschool programming 24/7, and reactive to the possibility of Disney creating a 24/7 network for their Playhouse Disney strand, which eventually came true in 2012 with the launch of Disney Junior.

Due to unknown complications, Dish Network continued to carry a constant loop of Nickelodeon GAS programming on its usual channel slot, with Noggin continuing to timeshare with The N on the satellite provider until April 23, 2009, when Dish replaced GAS with the Pacific Time Zone feed of Turner Broadcasting System's channel Cartoon Network (that network had a programming block called Tickle-U that aired preschool programming from 2005-2007); Dish Network began to carry The N and Noggin as separate channels on May 6, 2009.

Relaunch as Nick Jr. (2009–present)
On February 24, 2009, Nickelodeon announced that Noggin and The N were to be rebranded as Nick Jr. and TeenNick respectively to bring both channels in line with the Nickelodeon brand identity. In July of that year, Nickelodeon unveiled new standardized logos for its five channels, intending to create a unified look that could better be conveyed across the services.

Noggin ended its 10-year run on September 28, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. ET and was relaunched as Nick Jr., accompanied by the debut of the new logo (which was designed by New York City-based creative director/designer Eric Zim). Although the use of an orange "adult" and blue "child" figure was discontinued in the new wordmark logo, the tradition of the "Nick" text being orange (representing the adult) and the "Jr." text remaining in blue (as the child) was retained. As is common with newer networks which have taken another former network's channel slot, some subscription providers have confusingly continued to display the channel's logos as either Noggin, The N, or both as that of Nick Jr.'s current logo on electronic program guides. The Nick Jr. channel retained Noggin's mascots Moose A. Moose and Zee D. Bird. It also continued not to accept traditional advertising or marginalize closing credits for promotion of other shows on the channel.

A Spanish language block featuring Nick Jr. and Nickelodeon programs debuted on July 12, 2010 on sister channel Tr3́s. "Tr3́s Jr." aired Spanish dubs of Blue's Clues and Wonder Pets. The block was ended once the final affiliations for Tr3́s broadcast stations requiring E/I programming expired.

Without warning the viewers on March 1, 2012, an update of Nick Jr.'s image debuted that was produced by Gretel Inc. The Moose A. Moose and Zee D. Bird mascots and programs were completely dropped, halting the 9-year run, removing one of the last vestiges of the channel's former Noggin identity; as a result, some of the interstitial learning activities that originally featured Moose's narration (like the Puzzle Time segments) were recycled and replaced by the voice of a female continuity announcer. Disappointed parents organized a social media effort to bring back the Moose and Zee characters. The channel changed its slogan from "It's Like Preschool On TV" to "The Smart Place To Play" (which was also used as the branding for the Nick Jr. block). In addition, The Upside Down Show, Oswald, Jack's Big Music Show, Franklin, Toot & Puddle, and Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends were pulled from the network's lineup; the latter five would return later that year.

The channel's programming at this point began to be hosted by characters from Nick Jr. shows. The channel also began incorporating programming promotions and short features on that date; seven months later, on October 1, 2012, Nick Jr. started airing limited traditional advertising (for companies such as ABCMouse, Kmart, and Playskool) in the form of underwriter sponsorships airing in-between shows, whereas its parent network airs longer traditional advertising.

In mid-February 2013, a second Pacific Time Zone-based feed for Nick Jr. was launched, both to allow a unified schedule across nearly all time zones and the reaction of parents to NickMom's scheduling a few months before which meant programming for a mature audience aired in the early evening west of the Rockies.

Return of Noggin as an app (2015–present)
On February 25, 2015, Nickelodeon announced the return of the Noggin brand and the Moose and Zee characters, this time as the name and mascots for a new video streaming service that launched on March 5, 2015 as an iOS mobile app under the Noggin branding. The app requires a monthly subscription fee and offers access to selected episodes or full seasons from the Noggin archive of several cancelled or rarely aired Nick Jr. shows including Gullah Gullah Island, The Upside Down Show, and Oswald. Robot and Monster and the original series of Teletubbies are also on the app, even though they were never part of the Noggin lineup (in fact, the former was always targeted towards an adolescent audience), along with the mentioned new Moose and Zee clips and continuity bumpers. The most popular shows on the app are Blaze and the Monster Machines and PAW Patrol.

Nick Jr.'s mobile app continues to exist separately with TV Everywhere requirements, which the Noggin subscription service does not require. No on-air changes have occurred on the linear Nick Jr. channel outside of promotions for the Noggin app and subscription service. The website was also revived to be an informational guide to the app.

Second return as a full 24/7 service (2015–present)
On September 9, 2015, the social media channels of NickMom announced that the four-hour weeknight block on Nick Jr., along with the NickMom website, would end operations by the end of September 2015 due to Viacom's 2015 cutbacks involving acquired programming and also due to NickMom's low ratings with the time vacated by NickMom returned to traditional Nick Jr. programming. In the early morning of September 28, NickMom ended its 2-year run at 2am ET, with an airing of the film Guarding Tess. No sign off message was shown; after the film Guarding Tess, it faded straight into an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba! at its end. Since then, some of Nick Jr.'s most popular programming, including repeats of Dora the Explorer, Blue's Clues, Team Umizoomi, and Bubble Guppies now fill the four hours vacated by NickMom, whose former website address is now used as a redirect to Nickelodeon's site for parental resources.

Following NickMom's closure, Nick Jr. increased the amount of traditional advertising it aired, but also began scheduling programs in an inversion of the "off-the-clock" format, in which the network shortened its commercial breaks to a maximum of three minutes in length, allowing the network to air more programming. The "off-the-clock" format was previously adopted by various Viacom networks, such as TV Land, Nick at Nite, MTV, MTV2, and Paramount Network (though in a reversed form, the scheduling format for those channels was designed to add extra advertising loads).

In December 2017, Nickelodeon made a deal with Mattel Creations to move the British show Thomas & Friends to Nick Jr. from its longtime U.S. TV home of PBS Kids starting in 2018.

Additional Nick Jr. Channel notation
On May 21, 2018, the network refreshed their imaging with new interstitial pieces and updated curriculum notices, and began to promote themselves as the "Nick Jr. Channel" audibly and visually to avert confusion with the Nickelodeon block.

High-definition feed
An HD feed of the channel was launched on August 1, 2013, broadcasting at 1080i60 lines. As of 2017, most subscription providers carry it and downscale it for the standard definition version.

International
On May 16, 2011, MTV Networks launched two new channels, Nick Jr. and MTVNHD, in Asia. These 24-hour channels began to be available on StarHub TV in Singapore on May 18 and on Telekom Malaysia Berhad's Unifi TV in Malaysia on June 1. The channel launched aggressively to the rest of Southeast Asia later.

An African version of Nick Jr. was launched on September 30, 2014 along with Nicktoons. In Poland, Nick Jr. is available on NC+ from March 2013. In Romania, Nick Jr. is available on UPC Romania since 24 October 2014. In Canada, Nick Jr. was launched as a programming block on the local version of Nickelodeon.

Versions of Nick Jr. also exist in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands & Flanders, India, France, Italy, Latin America, and Australia. On November 3, 2017, Nick Jr. launched in Portugal.

How Sprout "Sprouted" into Existence
The channel was the direct result of a partnership between Comcast, PBS, Sesame Workshop, and HIT Entertainment. After several discussions with PBS produces and execs, as well as the producers of its children's shows, PBS became involved in the commercial cable venture in order to keep its signature series on the air and to also continue to be the number one choice for kids programming. Sprout is not carried on every cable or satellite system as of now, but it is predicted in the coming months for the service to expand its distribution. (Sprout is digital and will not be found on analog cable.)

PBS Kids Sprout Team Members
Kevin. Kevin is in charge of the Sprout Birthdays Department. He usually makes appearances during the day, as well as in the late night hours. Some of the actions performed by him include reading birthday cards that are sent to him through the mail, recognizing names of children who celebrate birthdays, and leading in the Sprout Birthday Song. If a child's name (and/or card) is read aloud by Kevin, that child will receive a special bonus&mdash;Magic Sprouting Seeds.

Melanie. Melanie is the host of the Good Night Show, which begins every evening at 6:00pm ET (5:00pm CT). Actions performed by her include games, stories, songs, dances, and crafts. Melanie's companion, Hush, is a goldfish whom she calls upon when it is time for another kids' show. With Melanie, nighttime on Sprout is always fun. Many kids enjoy her, because of her spirited sense and soothing voice, which calms preschoolers down after a long day. Recently, Melanie has been known to do things beyond the normal night routine, like giving encouraging advice. The Good Night Show airs from 6:00pm to midnight EST.

On November, 28, 2005 PBS KIDS Sprout announced that Cox Communications has signed an agreement to carry the 24-hour preschool network and video-on-demand (VOD) service on its cable systems. Cox joins other satellite and cable operators including Comcast, Insight, and RCN in providing the quality content kids love and parents trust. Cox Communications serves more than 6.2 million basic cable subscribers nationwide and is the third largest cable system in the country. This arrangement will bring PBS KIDS Sprout to more than 18 million committed subscribers. "With trusted entertaining and educational brands such as Sesame Street, Barney & Friends and many others in the portfolio of programming, Cox is pleased to add PBS KIDS Sprout to our linear and On DEMAND lineups for the young minds in Cox households," said Bob Wilson, senior vice president of Programming. "We are so happy that Cox is joining the PBS KIDS Sprout family, and that Cox cable customers will have 24/7 access to some of the most trusted programs and characters in preschool TV," said Sandy Wax, President of PBS KIDS Sprout. PBS KIDS Sprout features an extraordinary line-up of shows including: Sesame Street(R), Bob the Builder(TM), Barney & Friends(TM), Thomas & Friends(TM), Angelina Ballerina(TM), Sagwa: The Chinese Siamese Cat(TM), Caillou(R), The Berenstain Bears(TM), Jay Jay the Jet Plane(TM), Teletubbies(TM), Dragon Tales(TM), Pingu(TM), Noddy(TM) and more!

Shows Currently on Sprout

 * 1) Angellina Ballerina
 * 2) Barney & Friends
 * 3) Berenstain Bears
 * 4) Big Sister, Little Brother
 * 5) Bob the Builder
 * 6) Boohbah
 * 7) Caillou
 * 8) Dragon Tales
 * 9) James the Cat
 * 10) Jay Jay the Jet Plane
 * 11) Kipper
 * 12) Make Way for Noddy
 * 13) Pingu
 * 14) Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat
 * 15) Sesame Street
 * 16) Teletubbies
 * 17) Thomas & Friends
 * 18) Zoboomafoo (Kratt Brothers)

Everybody Needs a Nap

Playhouse Disney is a defunct brand for a slate of programming blocks and international cable and satellite television channel that was owned by the Disney Channels Worldwide unit of The Walt Disney Company's Disney–ABC Television Group. It originated in the United States as a morning program block on the Disney Channel. Its programming was targeted at children ages 2–6, featuring a mix of live-action and animated series.

The Playhouse Disney block on Disney Channel was relaunched as Disney Junior on February 14, 2011. The 22 cable channels and blocks using the Playhouse Disney brand around the world were relaunched under the Disney Junior brand over the next two years, concluding with the rebranding of the Russian channel in September 2013.

History
Playhouse Disney launched on May 8, 1997 as a daily morning program block for preschoolers on Disney Channel, debuting just over one year after the channel's relaunch that signified the beginning of its full conversion into a commercial-free basic cable channel. Prior to the block's launch, Disney Channel had aired a lineup of preschool-targeted programs (which were mixed alongside animated series aimed at older children) during the morning hours since its debut in April 1983. On April 6, 1997, Disney Channel re-launched its morning program block, which now utilized a similar graphics package for its promotions as that used for the channel's afternoon children's programs. A stylized version of Disney Channel's "Mickey Mouse TV" logo of the time period for the block (featuring a green paint-style background overlaid by a multicolored "playhouse" titling) was introduced on October 4, 1998 with the introduction of new graphics for the block.

One of the Playhouse Disney block's most popular series was Bear in the Big Blue House, an educational live-action series from Jim Henson Productions that debuted in October 1997, focusing on the adventures of Bear (voice by Noel MacNeal); the series was named by TV Guide as one of the "top 10 new shows for kids" that year. For the first three years of its run, the Playhouse Disney block originally aired each weekday from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and weekends from 6:00 to 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Following each program, which usually ran 23 minutes (most of which, with the exception of movies, aired without promotional interruption), the remainder of the time period was filled by blocks of either short segments or music videos (the latter of which were originally aired under the banner "Feet Beat").

In Spring 2001, Playhouse Disney introduced a new on-air graphics package produced by motion graphics company Beehive; actress Allyce Beasley began serving as the U.S. block's promo announcer at this time, a capacity she would hold until March 30, 2007. On June 25, 2001, Disney-ABC Cable Networks Group (now Disney-ABC Television Group) announced plans to launch Playhouse Disney Channel, a companion digital cable and satellite channel that would have served the same target audience as the Disney Channel block; plans for the network were later scrapped, although Disney-ABC International Television would launch dedicated Playhouse Disney Channels in international markets (including Canada and Latin America) between 2002 and 2007. Coinciding with Disney Channel's on-air rebranding, in 2002, the block introduced a stylized version of Disney Channel's logo (designed by CA Square, and featuring an outline of Mickey Mouse's head as its centerpiece), as well as a mascot named Clay, an anthropomophic clay figure who often used the catchphrases "It's true!" and "Are you with me?". Alongside Clay's induction to the block, Playhouse Disney began to add more acquired programming to their lineup, with the biggest addition being the popular Australian children's band The Wiggles' hugely successful television series, which became one of the block's highest viewership shows for 7 years.

On March 31, 2007, Clay was replaced by two anthropomorphic monkey puppets as the block's hosts, Ooh and Aah (who served as the main characters for one of the short series featured on the Playhouse Disney lineup, Ooh, Aah & You). Beginning in 2007, Disney Channel began truncating the weekday block to four hours (from 5:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time) during the summer months, in order to air episodes of Disney Channel original series during the late morning and early afternoon hours; however, the weekend schedule continued to air as a seven-hour block. By this point, the Playhouse Disney block had expanded to air from 4:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time on weekdays, and 4:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on weekends, each running a different schedule.

Like Disney Channel, Playhouse Disney was a commercial-free service, but it did show short "promotional spots" (structured as short-form segments for Disney products targeted at the block's demographics) along with – beginning in 2002 – underwriter sponsorships (with companies such as McDonald's ) within breaks between programs (preschool-targeted programs that aired between 3:00 and 7:00 a.m. Central Time outside of the Playhouse Disney banner, included the promotional shorts for Disney entertainment products that were seen during Disney Channel's afternoon and nighttime schedule).

Disney Junior
On May 26, 2010, Disney-ABC Television Group announced the launch of Disney Junior, a relaunching of Playhouse Disney that would serve as the brand for the Disney Channel block and a new standalone digital cable and satellite channel in the United States, as well as the new brand for the 22 existing Playhouse Disney-branded cable channels and program blocks worldwide. The Playhouse Disney block ended its 14-year run on February 13, 2011, with the last program to air being an episode of the short series Handy Manny's School for Tools at 12:55 p.m. Central Time.

The Disney Junior block debuted on February 14, 2011 at 4:00 a.m. Central Time, with the Little Einsteins episode "Fire Truck Rocket" as its first program. Several former Playhouse Disney series were carried over to the relaunched block including Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Special Agent Oso, Imagination Movers, Handy Manny, and Little Einsteins. With the relaunch of the block, the block's mascots Ooh and Aah were retired and several of its older programs were entirely discontinued (however, Ooh and Aah & You was later carried on the Disney Junior cable channel).

The 24-hour cable channel debuted on March 23, 2012, mainly featuring a mix of original series and programs held over from the Playhouse Disney library (which largely aired as part of the channel's overnight schedule until mid-2014). Disney Junior took over the channel space held by the Disney-owned soap opera-focused channel Soapnet, largely due to that channel's existing subscriber reach (being carried in 75 million households with pay television). An automated Soapnet feed remained in operation for providers that did not yet reach agreements to carry the Disney Junior channel or providers that were required to continue carrying Soapnet in addition to Disney Junior until Soapnet fully ceased operations on December 31, 2013.

Programming
The list below pertains to programs aired on the U.S. block on Disney Channel.

Original programming

 * Bear in the Big Blue House (October 20, 1997 – May 6, 2007)
 * PB&J Otter (March 15, 1998 – April 8, 2005)
 * Rolie Polie Olie (October 4, 1998 – June 2, 2006)
 * Out of the Box (October 7, 1998 – June 10, 2005)
 * The Book of Pooh (January 22, 2001 – September 4, 2005)
 * Stanley (September 15, 2001 – May 16, 2008)
 * JoJo's Circus (September 28, 2003 – January 4, 2009)
 * The Koala Brothers (October 1, 2003 – May 16, 2008)
 * Higglytown Heroes (September 12, 2004 – April 4, 2009)
 * Breakfast with Bear (September 2005 – September 15, 2006)
 * Little Einsteins (October 9, 2005 – February 13, 2011)
 * Charlie and Lola (November 7, 2005 – February 13, 2011)
 * Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (May 5, 2006 – February 13, 2011)
 * Handy Manny (September 18, 2006 – February 13, 2011)
 * Johnny and the Sprites (January 13, 2007 – June 28, 2009)
 * My Friends Tigger & Pooh (May 12, 2007 – October 9, 2010)
 * Bunnytown (November 10, 2007 – February 13, 2011)
 * Imagination Movers (September 6, 2008 – February 13, 2011)
 * Special Agent Oso (April 4, 2009 – February 13, 2011)
 * Jungle Junction (October 5, 2009 – February 13, 2011)

Acquired programming

 * Donald's Quack Attack (April 6, 1997 – October 19, 1997)
 * Goof Troop (April 6, 1997 – October 19, 1997)
 * Really Wild Animals (April 6, 1997 – October 19, 1997)
 * Audobon's Animal Adventures (April 6, 1997 – October 19, 1997)
 * TaleSpin (April 6, 1997 – October 2, 1998)
 * Mickey's Mouse Tracks (April 6, 1997 – June 27, 1999)
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (April 6, 1997 – August 29, 1999)
 * Henry's Amazing Animals (April 6, 1997 – December 31, 1999)
 * Welcome to Pooh Corner (April 7, 1997 – May 30, 1997)
 * The Care Bears (April 7, 1997 – May 30, 1997)
 * My Little Pony Tales (April 7, 1997 – May 30, 1997)
 * Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears (April 7, 1997 – August 29, 1997)
 * DuckTales (April 7, 1997 – August 29, 1997; September 4, 1999 – April 30, 2000; September 4, 2000 – October 31, 2000)
 * The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show (April 7, 1997 – August 29, 1997)
 * Adventures in Wonderland (April 7, 1997 – June 5, 1998)
 * The Little Mermaid (April 7, 1997 – September 29, 2002)
 * The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (April 7, 1997 – September 1, 2006)
 * Katie and Orbie (June 2, 1997 – December 31, 1999)
 * Madeline (June 2, 1997 – September 4, 2005)
 * Jungle Cubs (September 15, 1997 – September 3, 2000)
 * 101 Dalmatians: The Series (October 5, 1998 – July 16, 1999)
 * Sing Me a Story with Belle (October 5, 1998 – September 3, 2000)
 * Rupert (September 4, 2000 – January 21, 2001)
 * The Wiggles (June 17, 2002 – June 12, 2009)
 * Anatole (September 2, 2002 – June 27, 2003)
 * The Doodlebops (June 17, 2005 – April 4, 2009)
 * Chuggington (January 18, 2010 – February 13, 2011)
 * Timmy Time (December 6, 2010 – February 13, 2011)

International
On September 29, 2000, Disney Television International launched the first international Playhouse Disney Channel in the United Kingdom. It broadcast for 15 hours a day, alongside Toon Disney and Disney Channel +1 on the Sky Digital platform. On April 4, 2009, Egmont Group launched a companion Playhouse Disney magazine in the United Kingdom that focused on the channel's four most popular shows: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, Handy Manny and Little Einsteins. Each issue included "to do" pages and suggested activities for parents and children based on an educational theme. The channel was replaced by Disney Junior on May 7, 2011.

On November 30, 2007, Astral Media launched a Canadian version of Playhouse Disney Channel under a brand licensing agreement with Disney-ABC Television Group; the channel operated as a multiplex channel of Family Channel, which had long maintained a programming distribution agreement with Disney Channel for the domestic rights to the U.S. channel's series until January 2016.

Slogans

 * "Where Learning is Powered by Imagination" (October 4, 1998 – October 6, 2002)
 * "Imagine and Learn" (October 7, 2002 – February 13, 2011)

PTV block
The framework for PBS Kids was established as part of PBS's "Ready to Learn" initiative, a project intended to facilitate access of early childhood educational programming to underprivileged children. On July 11, 1994, PBS repackaged their existing children's educational programming as a new block called "PTV". In addition to scheduled educational programming, PTV also incorporated interstitial content such as "The P-Pals", which featured animated characters shaped like PBS logos delivering educational content from their fictional world, "PTV Park". These interstitial shorts were aimed at younger children. Older children were targeted with live action and music video interstitials.

Several of the interstitial shorts, along with some of the station identification sequences that were shown during the block, continued to be used by some PBS member stations after PTV aired for the last time on September 5, 1999.

PBS Kids
On September 6, 1999, PBS launched the PBS Kids brand in several areas including its daytime Ready to Learn Service, PBS Online web pages for kids, and a home video label. Children's programming on the PBS network was then given unified branding. Along with the block of programming on PBS, PBS Kids lent its name to a separate television network, which launched on the same date and was targeted to children from 4 to 7 years old. The PBS Kids Channel ran for six years.

On September 30, 2000, the Bookworm Bunch programming block was introduced as PBS Kids' Saturday morning block. PBS Kids Go!, a programming block targeting older children, was launched in October 2004.

Block and local channels
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television network which was launched on December 1, 1977 as the first cable channel for children. It is owned by Viacom through its Viacom Media Networks division's Nickelodeon Group unit and is based in New York City. It broadcasts usually from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on weekdays (the sign off time varies with holidays and special programming), Saturdays from 7:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Sundays from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time). It is primarily aimed at children and adolescents aged 2–17.

The channel was originally first tested as Pinwheel on December 1, 1977. Pinwheel was at the time only available on QUBE, which was the first two-way major market interactive cable television system, owned by Warner Cable. Pinwheel relaunched as Nickelodeon on April 1, 1979, and expanded to other cable providers nationwide. It was initially commercial-free and remained without advertising until 1984. Warner sold Nickelodeon, along with its sister networks MTV and VH1, to Viacom in 1986.

, the channel is available to about 92.056 million households (79.086% of households with TV) in the United States.

History
The channel's name comes from the first five cent movie theaters called nickelodeons. Its history dates back to December 1, 1977, when Warner Cable Communications launched the first two-way interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, Ohio. Under the name Pinwheel Network, the C-3 cable channel carried Pinwheel daily from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Nickelodeon launched on April 1, 1979, initially distributed to Warner Cable systems via satellite on the RCA Satcom-1 transponder. Originally commercial-free, advertising was introduced in January 1984.

Programming
Nickelodeon's schedule currently consists largely of original series aimed at children, pre-teens and young teenagers, including animated series (such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The Loud House, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Adventures of Kid Danger), to live-action comedy and action series (such as Power Rangers Ninja Steel, Henry Danger, Game Shakers, Knight Squad, along with the month-long running show Hunter Street), as well as series aimed at preschoolers (such as Top Wing, PAW Patrol, Shimmer and Shine, Blaze and the Monster Machines, and Rusty Rivets). It also airs reruns of select original series that have ended their runs (such as iCarly and The Fairly OddParents), as well as occasional original made-for-TV movies. It also aired bi-monthly special editions of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee, a newsmagazine series aimed at children that debuted in 1992 as a weekly series which ended in 2015.

Nicktoons
Nicktoons is the branding for Nickelodeon's original animated television series (although it has seldom been used by the network itself since the 2002 launch of the high-tier subscription channel of the same name). Until 1991, the animated series that aired on Nickelodeon were largely imported from foreign countries, and some original animated specials were also featured on the channel up to that point. Original animated series continue to make up a substantial portion of Nickelodeon's lineup, with roughly 6 to 7 hours of these programs airing on the weekday schedule and around nine hours on weekends, including a five-hour weekend morning animation block. Since the late 2000s, after the channel struck a deal with DreamWorks Animation in 2006 to develop the studio's animated films into weekly series, the network has also begun to incorporate Nicktoons that use three-dimensional computer animation (such as The Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy & Chum Chum, and Winx Club) in addition to those that are produced through traditional or digital ink and paint.

Movies
Nickelodeon does not air theatrically released or direct-to-video movies on a regular basis; however, it does produce its own original made-for-TV movies, which usually premiere in weekend evening timeslots or on school holidays.

The channel occasionally airs feature films produced by the network's Nickelodeon Movies film production division (whose films are distributed by sister company Paramount Pictures). Although the film division bears the Nickelodeon brand name, the channel does not have access to most of the movies produced by its film unit. Nickelodeon does have broadcast rights to most feature films based on or that served as the basis for original series produced by it (such as Barnyard: The Original Party Animals); the majority of the live-action feature films produced under the Nickelodeon Movies banner are licensed for broadcast by various free-to-air and pay television outlets within the United States other than Nickelodeon (although the network has aired a few live-action Nickelodeon Movies releases such as Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and Good Burger).

Nickelodeon also advertises hour-long episodes of its original series as movies; though the "TV movie" versions of Nickelodeon's original series differ from traditional television films in that they have shorter running times (approximately 45 minutes, as opposed to 75–100 minute run times that most television movies have), and use a traditional multi-camera setup for regular episodes (unless the program is natively shot in the single-camera setup common of films) with some on-location filming. Nickelodeon also periodically acquires theatrically released feature films for broadcast on the channel including Universal's Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale, several Monster High films, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles Forever (which was later released by Nickelodeon Movies through Paramount for DVD release), with the Barbie and Monster High films usually aired under a brokered format in which Mattel purchases the time in order to promote the release of their films on DVD within a few days of the Nickelodeon premiere, an arrangement possible as Nickelodeon does not have to meet the Federal Communications Commission rules which disallow that arrangement for broadcast channels due to regulations disallowing paid programming to children.

Current

 * Nick Jr. (marketed on-screen as Nick Jr. On Nick) – Nickelodeon currently programs shows targeted at preschool-age children on Monday through Fridays from 8:30 am- 2:00 pm Eastern and Pacific Time (7-10am during the summer months, other designated school break periods, and on national holidays). The block primarily targets audiences of preschool age as Nickelodeon's usual audience of school-age children are in school during the block's designated time period. Programs currently seen in this block include Blaze and the Monster Machines, Team Umizoomi, Bubble Guppies, PAW Patrol, Max & Ruby, and Mutt & Stuff.
 * Nick's New Saturday Night – a primetime live-action block airing from 8-10pm Eastern and Pacific Time. It launched on September 22, 2012, as Gotta See Saturday Nights. Recent episodes of certain original series may air when no new episodes are scheduled to air that week. The schedule features Henry Danger and Knight Squad (all first-run episodes are cycled on the schedule, giving it a variable schedule). Premieres of the network's original made-for-TV movies also occasionally air during the primetime block, usually in the form of premiere showings.

Former

 * SNICK – "SNICK" (short for "Saturday Night Nickelodeon") was the network's first dedicated Saturday primetime block that aired from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. Geared toward pre-teens and teenagers, it debuted on August 15, 1992, (with the initial lineup featuring two established series that originally aired on Sundays, Clarissa Explains It All and The Ren and Stimpy Show, and two new series, Roundhouse and Are You Afraid of the Dark?). The block featured mainly live-action series (primarily comedies), although it periodically featured animated series. SNICK was discontinued on August 28, 2004, and was replaced the following week (September 4, 2004) by a Saturday night edition of the TEENick block.
 * Nick in the Afternoon – "Nick in the Afternoon" was a daytime block that ran on weekday afternoons during the summer months from 1995 to 1997, and aired in an extended format until December for its final year in 1998. It was hosted by Stick Stickly, a Mr. Bill-like popsicle stick character (puppeteered by Rick Lyon and voiced by actor Paul Christie, who would later voice Noggin/Nick Jr.'s mascot, Moose A. Moose until 2012). The block was replaced for the summer of 1999 by "Henry and June's Summer" (hosted by the animated hosts of the anthology series KaBlam!). The Stick Stickly character was later revived for "The '90s Are All That" on TeenNick, which debuted in 2011.
 * U-Pick Live – "U-Pick Live" (originally branded as "U-Pick Friday" from 1999 to late 2000, and originally hosted by the Henry and June characters from KaBlam!) was a block that aired weekday afternoons from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time from October 14, 2002, to May 27, 2005, which was broadcast from studios in New York City's Times Square district, where Nickelodeon is headquartered. Using a similar concept that originated in 1994 with the Nick in the Afternoon block, "U-Pick Live" allowed viewer interaction in selecting the programs (usually cartoons) that would air on the block via voting on the network's website. The concept of user-chosen programming was later used as part of a Friday edition of TeenNick's "The '90s Are All That" block that ran in 2011.
 * TEENick – "TEENick" was a teen-oriented block that ran from March 6, 2001 to February 2, 2009, which ran on Sundays from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time; a secondary block on Saturdays launched in 2004, taking over the 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time slot long held by SNICK. It was originally hosted by Nick Cannon, and then by Jason Everhart (aka "J. Boogie"). From January 16 to May 12, 2007, and again from March 1, 2008, to August 3, 2009, sister network The N ran a spin-off block "TEENick on The N". The TEENick name, which was dropped on February 2, 2009 (with the Saturday block remaining unbranded until the introduction of "Gotta See Saturdays" in 2013), later became the name of the rebranded The N on September 28, 2009.
 * ME:TV – "ME:TV" was a short-lived live hosted afternoon block that ran during the summer of 2007, which ran on weekday afternoons from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time.
 * Nick Studio 10 – "Nick Studio 10" was a short-lived late afternoon programming block that ran from February 18 to June 17, 2013, which ran weekdays from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. The block featured wraparound segments around episodes of the network's animated series, which were shown in an off-the-clock schedule due to the segments that aired following each program's individual acts.

Special events

 * Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards – The Kids' Choice Awards are a 90-minute-long annual live awards show held on the fourth Saturday night in March (formerly the first Saturday in April until 2008). The award show (whose winners are selected by Nickelodeon viewers though voting on the channel's website and through text messaging) honors popular television series and movies, actors, athletes and music acts, with winners receiving a hollow orange blimp figurine (one of the logo outlines used for much of the network's "splat logo" era from 1984 to 2009).
 * Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Sports Awards – A spin-off of the Kids' Choice Awards, "Kids Choice Sports" is held in July with the same KCA voting procedures and differing categories for team sports and athlete achievements for the previous year (featuring categories such as "Best Male Athlete", "Best Female Athlete", "King Of Swag", and "Queen Of Swag"), along with the award featuring a sports-specific purple mohawk. Its inaugural ceremony aired on July 17, 2014, and originally suspended the international channels so people could only watch it on the main channel.
 * Nickelodeon HALO Awards –  The HALO Awards features 5 ordinary teens who are Helping And Leading Others (HALO).  Its inaugural ceremony aired on December 11, 2009. The awards show is hosted by Nick Cannon and airs on Nickelodeon and TeenNick every November/December.
 * Worldwide Day of Play – The "Worldwide Day of Play" is an annual event held on a Saturday afternoon in late September that began on October 2, 2004, to mark the conclusion of the "Let's Just Play" campaign launched that year, which are both designed to influence kids to exercise and participate in outdoor activities; schools and educational organizations are also encouraged to host local events to promote activity among children during the event. Nickelodeon and its sister channels (except for the Pacific and Mountain Time Zone feeds and the Nick 2 Pacific feed that is distributed to the Eastern and Central Time Zones), some of the network's international channels and associated websites are suspended (with a message encouraging viewers to participate in outdoor activities during the period) from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time on the day of the event. Since 2010, the Worldwide Day of Play event became part of The Big Help program, as part of an added focus on healthy lifestyles in addition to the program's main focus on environmental issues.

Nickelodeon-produced blocks on broadcast networks

 * Nickelodeon en Telemundo – On November 9, 1998, Telemundo debuted a daily block of Spanish dubs of Nickelodeon's series (such as Rugrats, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Hey Arnold!, Rocko's Modern Life, KaBlam! and Blue's Clues); the weekday edition of the block ran until September 5, 2000, when it was relegated to weekends in order to make room for the morning news program Hoy En El Mundo; Nickelodeon's contract with Telemundo ended in November 2001, after the network was acquired by NBC.
 * Nick on CBS/Nick Jr. on CBS – On September 14, 2002, Nickelodeon began producing a two-hour Saturday morning block for CBS (which was co-owned with Nickelodeon at the time as a result of network parent Viacom's 1999 acquisition of CBS) featuring episodes of series such as As Told by Ginger, The Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, and Pelswick debuted on most CBS stations. The block was retooled in 2004 as a preschool-oriented block featuring Nick Jr. shows (such as Blue's Clues, Dora the Explorer, and Little Bill); "Nick Jr. on CBS" was replaced in September 2006 by the KOL Secret Slumber Party block (produced by DIC Entertainment, which was subsequently acquired by Cookie Jar), as a result of CBS and Viacom's split into separate companies earlier that year.

Nick at Nite
Nick at Nite (stylized as "nick@nite") is Nickelodeon's nighttime programming service, which debuted on July 1, 1985, and broadcasts Weekdays from 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., Saturdays from 9:30 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. and Sundays from 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time.

Originally featuring classic sitcoms from the 1950s and 1960s such as The Donna Reed Show, Mr. Ed, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, programming eventually shifted towards repeats of popular sitcoms from the 1980s to the 2000s such as Home Improvement, The Cosby Show, and Roseanne. Nick at Nite has also occasionally incorporated original scripted and competition series, with some in recent years being produced through its parent network's Nickelodeon Productions unit. Programs airing on Nick at Nite include Full House, Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and George Lopez, as well as original series such as See Dad Run and Instant Mom. Since 2004, Nielsen has broken out the television ratings of Nick at Nite and Nickelodeon as two separate networks.

Nicktoons
Nicktoons is a pay television network that launched on May 1, 2002, as Nicktoons TV; it was renamed as Nicktoons in May 2003, before rebranding Nicktoons Network from 2005 until reverting to its previous name in September 2009. The network airs a mix of newer live action & animated shows from Nick (like The Haunted Hathaways, Fanboy & Chum Chum, Robot and Monster, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles along with original series produced exclusively for Nicktoons).

Nick Jr.
Nick Jr. is a pay television network aimed primarily at children between 2 and 7 years of age, featuring a mix of current and some former preschool-oriented programs from Nickelodeon, and original series exclusive to the channel; it originally launched on February 2, 1999, as Noggin, a joint venture between MTV Networks and the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), the latter of which sold its stake to Viacom in 2002.

On September 28, 2009, the network was relaunched as Nick Jr., named after the former preschool program block of the same name that aired on Nickelodeon from January 1988 to February 2009. The network debuted Nickmom, a four-hour nightly program block aimed at mothers in September 2012, which was controversial at its start due to its more lenient content standards (including some profanity, crude humor and suggestive references) than what is otherwise permitted on Nick Jr., particularly as the network operates a singular Eastern Time Zone feed, which results in the Nickmom block airing at the same time in all six U.S. time zones (being broadcast as early as 5:00 p.m. in the Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zone). While traditional advertising appears on the channel during the Nickmom block, the network otherwise only runs programming promotions and underwriter-style sponsorships in lieu of regular commercials.

TeenNick
TeenNick is a pay television network that is aimed at adolescents and young adults, which originated as a nighttime block called "The N" on Noggin (in a similar scheduling structure as Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite) on April 1, 2002, and was spun off into a standalone channel on December 31, 2007, when it took over the satellite transponder of Nickelodeon Games and Sports. On September 28, 2009, the network was rebranded as TeenNick, named after the former TEENick block that aired on Nickelodeon from July 2000 to February 2009. Although TeenNick has more relaxed program standards than the other Nickelodeon channels (save for Nick at Nite and the Nickmom block on Nick Jr.) – allowing for moderate profanity, suggestive dialogue and some violent content – the network has shifted its lineup almost exclusively towards current and former Nickelodeon series (including some that are burned off due to low ratings on the flagship channel) that have stricter content standards. It also airs some acquired sitcoms and drama series (such as Degrassi, which has aired on the network since 2003 as The N) and until the rebrand, also incorporated some original programming.

NickRewind
On July 25, 2011, TeenNick began airing The '90s Are All That, renamed The Splat in October 2015, a block of Nickelodeon's most popular 1990s programming, targeting the network's target demographic from that era.

Through several name changes the block is now called "NickRewind" and focuses on programming from the 1980's to 2000's and airs nightly from 11PM to 6AM.

NickMusic
NickMusic is a pay television network in the United States mainly featuring music video and music-related programming from younger pop artists that appeal to Nickelodeon's target audience. It launched on the channel space formerly held by MTV Hits on September 9, 2016.

TV Land
TV Land is a pay television channel that debuted on April 29, 1996. Based on the Nick at Nite block, it originally aired classic television series from the early 1950s to the 1970s, but beginning in 2004, has broadened its programming inventory to include series from the 1980s and 1990s (and more recently, the 2000s). In 2008, TV Land began producing its own original series: originally these were reality series; however, the network ventured into scripted originals with the 2010 debut of Hot in Cleveland. On December 17, 2006, Viacom's MTV Networks Kids & Family Group division took over operational responsibilities for TV Land from Nick at Nite (concurrent with Nickelodeon taking operational duties for Nick at Nite), though TV Land continues to be operated as part of the company's Viacom Media Networks unit.

Nickelodeon Games and Sports for Kids
Nickelodeon Games and Sports for Kids (commonly branded as Nickelodeon GAS or Nick GAS), was a pay television network that launched on March 1, 1999, as part of the suite of high-tier channels launched by MTV Networks. It ran a mix of game shows and other competition programs from Nickelodeon (essentially formatted as a children's version of—and Viacom's answer to—the Game Show Network). The channel formally ceased operations on December 31, 2007, with The N taking over its channel space as a separate 24-hour network; however, an automated loop of Nick GAS continued to be carried on Dish Network due to unknown factors until April 23, 2009.

NickMom
NickMom (stylized as nickmom) was a programming block launched on October 1, 2012, airing in the late night hours on Nick Jr. The block attempted original programming targeted towards young mothers until 2014, then began to carry acquired films and sitcoms, along with the 2010 version of the TV series Parenthood. Due to Viacom's 2015 cutbacks involving acquired programming and low ratings, the NickMom block and associated website were discontinued in the early morning hours of September 28, 2015.

Nick 2
Nick 2 was the off-air brand for a secondary timeshift channel of Nickelodeon formerly available on the high-tier packages exclusively on cable providers as a compliment to the main Nickelodeon feed, repackaging Nickelodeon's Eastern and Pacific Time Zone feeds for the appropriate timezone – the Pacific feed was distributed to the Eastern and Central Time Zones, and the Eastern feed was distributed to the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones – resulting in the difference in local airtimes for a particular program between two geographic locations being three hours at most, allowing viewers a second chance to watch a program after its initial airing on the Eastern Time Zone feed or to watch the show ahead of its airing on the Pacific Time Zone feed of the main channel (for example, the Nick at Nite block would respectively start at 11:00 p.m. Eastern on Nick 2 Pacific or 5:00 p.m. Pacific weeknights on Nick 2 Eastern). Nick 2 never broadcast in high definition. The service existed from around 2000 until November 2018, launching as Nick TOO.

The timeshift channel was originally offered as part of the MTV Networks Digital Suite, a slate of channels exclusive to high-tier cable packages (many of the networks also earned satellite carriage over time), and was the only American example of two feeds of a non-premium service being provided to cable and IPTV providers. A Nick TOO logo was used on the channel until 2004, when MTV Networks decided to stop using customized branding on the feed (a logo for Nick 2 was only used for identification purposes on electronic program guides as a placeholder image); most television listings thus showed the additional channel under the brandings "Nickelodeon Pacific/NICKP" or "Nickelodeon Eastern/NICKE".

On another note, DirecTV and Dish Network also offer both Nickelodeon feeds, though they carry both time zone feeds of most of the children's networks that the providers offer by default.

Viacom Media Networks discontinued the Nick 2 digital cable service on November 22, 2018, likely due to video on demand options making timeshift channels for the most part superfluous. Both timezone feeds continue to be offered on satellite providers, unbranded.

Nick.com
Nick.com is Nickelodeon's main website, which launched in October 1995 as a component of America Online's Kids Only channel before eventually moving to the full World Wide Web. It provides content, as well as video clips and full episodes of Nickelodeon series available for streaming. The website's popularity grew to the point where in March 1999, Nick.com became the highest rated website among children aged 6–14 years old. Nickelodeon used the website in conjunction with television programs which increased traffic. In 2001, Nickelodeon partnered with Networks Inc. to provide broadband video games for rent from Nick.com; the move was a further step in the multimedia direction that the developers wanted to take the website. Skagerlind indicated that over 50% of Nick.com's audience were using a high speed connection, which allowed them to expand the gaming and video streaming options on the website.

Mobile apps
Nickelodeon released a free mobile app for smartphones and tablet computers operating on the Apple and Android platforms in February 2013. Like Nick.com, a TV Everywhere login code provided by participating subscription providers is required to view individual episodes of the network's series.

Nickelodeon Movies
Nickelodeon Movies is a motion picture production unit that was founded in 1995, as a family entertainment arm of Paramount Pictures (owned by Nickelodeon corporate parent Viacom), which releases the studio's films. The first film released from the studio was the 1996 mystery/comedy Harriet the Spy. Nickelodeon Movies has produced films based on Nickelodeon animated programs including The Rugrats Movie and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, as well as other adaptations and original live-action and animated projects.

Nickelodeon Magazine
Nickelodeon Magazine was a print magazine that was launched in 1993; the channel had previously published a short-lived magazine effort in 1990. Nickelodeon Magazine incorporated informative non-fiction pieces, humor (including pranks and parodical pieces), interviews, recipes (such as green slime cake), and a comic book section in the center of each issue featuring original comics by leading underground cartoonists as well as strips about popular Nicktoons. It ceased publication after 16 years in December 2009, citing a sluggish magazine industry. A new version of the magazine was launched by Papercutz in June 2015.

Nick Radio
Nick Radio is a radio network that launched on September 30, 2013, in a partnership between both the network and iHeartMedia (then called Clear Channel Communications), which distributes the network mainly via its iHeartRadio web platform and mobile app; its programming is also streamed via the Nick.com website and on New York City radio station WHTZ as a secondary HD channel. Nick Radio focuses on Top 40 and pop music (geared towards the network's target audience of children and adolescents, with radio edits of some songs incorporated due to inappropriate content), along with celebrity interview features. In addition to regular on-air DJs, Nick Radio also occasionally features guest DJ stints by popular artists as well as stars from Nickelodeon's original series.

Nickelodeon Universe
Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America is the largest indoor theme park in the United States. On August 18, 2009, Nickelodeon and Southern Star Amusements announced that it would build a second Nickelodeon Universe in New Orleans, Louisiana on the site of the former Six Flags New Orleans by the end of 2010, which was set to be the first outdoor Nickelodeon Universe theme park. On November 9, 2009, Nickelodeon announced that it had ended the licensing agreement with Southern Star Amusements.

Nickelodeon Universe has a second location currently under construction at the American Dream Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with a planned opening of some time in April 2019.

Theme park areas
All except three Nickelodeon-themed theme park areas now closed:

Current attractions

 * Nickland is an area inside of Movie Park Germany featuring Nickelodeon-themed rides, including a SpongeBob SquarePants-themed "Splash Battle" ride, and a Jimmy Neutron-themed roller coaster. This area is currently being expanded to fill space formerly occupied with rides based on Warner Bros. characters.
 * Nickelodeon Land opened on May 4, 2011, at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, featuring several rides based on Nickelodeon series including SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dora the Explorer, and The Fairly OddParents.
 * Nickelodeon Land opened in September 2015 at Sea World, featuring multiple rides based on Nickelodeon programs including a SpongeBob junior roller coaster, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-themed flyer.

Closed areas

 * Nickelodeon Universe was also an area inside of Paramount's Kings Island featuring Nickelodeon-themed rides and attractions. It was one of the largest sections in the park and was voted "Best Kid's Area" by Amusement Today magazine from 2001 until its closure in 2009 after the park's sale to Cedar Fair (the Paramount Parks ended up with CBS Corporation in the 2006 CBS/Viacom split, which CBS immediately sold off as soon as possible as non-critical surplus assets for that company). In March 2008, another version of Nickelodeon Universe opened at Mall of America with many characters from the network's series including SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer.
 * Nickelodeon Studios was an attraction at the Universal Orlando Resort that opened on June 7, 1990, and housed production for many Nickelodeon programs (including Clarissa Explains It All, What Would You Do? and All That). It closed on April 30, 2005, after Nickelodeon's production facilities were moved to New York City and Burbank, California. The building that formerly housed it is now occupied by the Blue Man Group Sharp Aquos Theatre. Another Nickelodeon-themed attraction at the park, Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, opened in 2003 but closed in 2011 to make way for the new ride Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, which was based on the 2010 film Despicable Me. In 2012, a store based on SpongeBob SquarePants opened in Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone, replacing Universal's Cartoon Store.
 * Nickelodeon Central was an area inside of the Paramount Parks properties, including California's Great America, Carowinds, Kings Dominion, Canada's Wonderland, and Dreamworld that featured shows, attractions and themes featuring Nickelodeon characters, all of which were wound down when CBS Corporation was given ownership of the theme parks in the Viacom/CBS split and eventually sold most of the properties to Cedar Fair without renewal of the Nickelodeon licensing agreements. The only Nickelodeon Central remaining in existence was at Dreamworld in Australia, which is not under Cedar Fair ownership. The license was revoked in 2011 and became "Kid's World" and later DreamWorks Experience.
 * Nickelodeon Blast Zone was an area in Universal Studios Hollywood that featured attractions centered around Nickelodeon characters and themes. The four attractions that were present in the area were "Nickelodeon Splash", a waterpark-style area, "The Wild Thornberrys Adventure Temple," a jungle-themed foam ball play area, and "Nick Jr. Backyard," a medium-sized toddler playground. It ran from 2001 to 2007 and was rethemed as "The Adventures of Curious George" which closed in 2008 to make way for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Universal Studios Hollywood). Adjacent to Nickelodeon Blast Zone was the "Panasonic Theatre" which housed another Nickelodeon attraction called "Totally Nickelodeon", which was an audience participated game show which ran from 1997 to 2000. "Rugrats Magic Adventure", opened 2001 but closed in 2002 to make way for Shrek 4-D which ran from May 2003 to August 2017. It closed to make way for DreamWorks Theatre Featuring Kung Fu Panda which opened on June 15, 2018.
 * Nickelodeon Splat City was an area inside California's Great America (from 1995 to 2002), Kings Island (from 1995 to 2000) and Kings Dominion (from 1995 to 1999), that featured messy- and water-themed attractions. The slime refinery theme was carried out in the attractions such as the "Green Slime Zone Refinery", the "Crystal Slime Mining Maze", and the "Green Slime Transfer Truck". All of these areas were later transformed into either Nickelodeon Central or Nickelodeon Universe before being discontinued as mentioned above when sold off by CBS Corporation.

Nickelodeon Animation Studio
Nickelodeon Animation Studio (formerly Games Animation) is a production firm located in Burbank, California, which serves as the animation facilities for many of the network's Nicktoons series. It also houses the headquarters of the Nicktoons channel.

Nickelodeon on Sunset
Nickelodeon on Sunset is a studio complex in Hollywood, California, which serves the primary production facilities for Nickelodeon's series; the studio is designated by the National Register for Historic Places as a historical landmark as a result of its prior existence as the Earl Carroll Theater, a prominent dinner theater. It has served as the production facilities for several Nickelodeon series including iCarly (until it moved to Sunset Bronson Studios for its fifth season), All That (from 2002 to 2005, after it moved production from Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida), Victorious and Sam & Cat.

Hotel brands

 * Nickelodeon Suites Resort was a Nickelodeon-themed hotel in Orlando, Florida, located near the Universal Orlando Resort and 1 mi from Walt Disney World. It included one, two, and three-bedroom Nick-themed kid suites and various forms of entertainment themed after Nickelodeon shows. It also contained a Nick at Nite suite for adults. It got replaced with a Holiday Inn on June 1, 2016.
 * Nickelodeon Resorts by Marriott was a proposed hotel chain similar to the Nickelodeon Suites Resort, featuring a 110000 sqft waterpark area and 650 hotel rooms. Announced in 2007, the first location was scheduled to open in San Diego in 2010, however, the plans were canceled in 2009. Plans for the remaining 19 hotels originally slated to open remain unclear.
 * Nickelodeon Hotels is a hotel chain that opened its first location at Punta Cana in late 2016 in association with Karisma Hotels and Resorts.

Cruises

 * Nickelodeon at Sea is a series of Nickelodeon-themed cruise packages in partnership with Norwegian Cruise Line. They feature special amenities and entertainment themed to various Nickelodeon properties. This was later removed in 2015.
 * Norwegian Cruise Line also hosted some Nickelodeon Cruises on the Norwegian Jewel and Norwegian Epic liners, as part of Nickelodeon at Sea.

International
Between 1993 and 1995, Nickelodeon opened international channels in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany; by the later year, the network had provided its programming to broadcasters in 70 countries. Since the mid-1990s and early 2000s, Nickelodeon as a brand has expanded into include language- or culture-specific channels for various other territories in different parts of the world including Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Canada, and has licensed some of its cartoons and other content, in English and local languages, to free-to-air networks and subscription channels such as KI.KA and Super RTL in Germany, RTÉ Two (English language) and TG4 (Irish language) in Ireland, YTV (in English) and Vrak.TV (in French) in Canada, Canal J in France, Alpha Kids in Greece, and CNBC-e in Turkey.

Programming blocks
For list of all PBS Kids Programs, see List of programs broadcast by PBS.


 * The Game (1996 – September 6, 1999) – afternoon programming block aimed at children aged 6 to 8. (Aired on PTV)
 * PBS Kids Bookworm Bunch (September 30, 2000 – October 11, 2004) – a Saturday morning block consisting of six animated series produced by Nelvana Limited.
 * PBS Kids Go! (October 11, 2004 – October 7, 2013) – an afternoon programming block aimed at children aged 6 to 8.
 * PBS Kids Preschool Block (September 4, 2006 – October 7, 2013) – programming block aimed at preschoolers.

Network
PBS Kids is an American digital broadcast and online television network operated by the Public Broadcasting Service. The network features a broad mix of live-action and animated children's programs distributed to PBS by independent companies and select member stations, which are designed for improving the early literacy, math, and social-emotional skills of young children ages 2 to 11. Some PBS member stations, such as WETA-TV in Washington, D.C. maintain their own locally programmed PBS Kids feed, that is independent from the nationally sourced feed.

Network history
On September 6, 1999, PBS launched the PBS Kids Channel in several markets, in conjunction with the introduction of the PBS Kids brand to provide a unified branding for the service's children's programming offerings. The channel was launched on 33 PBS member stations: 19 of which offered PBS Kids Channel as a cable-only service, nine which carried the channel on their digital broadcast signals in standard-definition, and three which carried simulcasts of the channel on their analog signals. Of the initial 27 affiliates, sixteen of them planned to begin carrying PBS Kids Channel during the fall of 1999, with eleven additional stations choosing to debut it that winter.

FCC requirements mandated satellite providers to set aside 4% of their available channel space for noncommercial educational and informational programming. With these providers limited to offering one such service per programmer, PBS had put forth PBS Kids as a prospective channel to fulfill this mandate. However, El Segundo, California-based satellite provider DirecTV, which became the primary funding source for the channel, indicated that it would begin carrying the PBS Kids Channel outside of that mandate in early November 1999.

In the aftermath of DirecTV's decision not to renew its funding agreement with the channel, which ended in the third quarter of 2005, PBS decided to shut down the network on September 26 of that year. PBS Kids Channel was effectively supplanted on that date by PBS Kids Sprout, an advertiser-supported cable and satellite channel that PBS developed in a joint venture with HiT Entertainment, Sesame Workshop and Comcast. PBS gave licensees an option to sign on Sprout promoters, giving them cross-promotional and monetary benefits in exchange for giving up the ability to carry a competing preschool-targeted channel. 80 stations, making up about half of the member stations participants, signed up to be promoters; most of the remaining stations opted to develop independent children's programming services featuring programs distributed by PBS and through outside distributors such as American Public Television to fill space on digital subchannels that formerly served as PBS Kids Channel members. Many of the member stations that launched children's-focused subchannel or cable-only services reduced the amount of sourced programming from PBS Kids carried on their primary channel to a few hours of their weekday daytime schedules, in order to program more adult-targeted fare during the afternoon.

PBS relaunched children's network, PBS Kids, on January 16, 2017. Structured as a multi-platform service, it was made available for distribution to digital subchannels of participating PBS member stations, initially launching on 73 member stations (counting those operated as subregional PBS member networks), with an additional 34 agreeing to begin carrying the network at a later date. A live stream of the channel was also added to the PBS Kids website and video app upon the channel's debut, which will eventually allow viewers to toggle from the program being aired to a related educational game extending the interactivity introduced by Sesame Street. The network is counterprogrammed from the PBS Kids block, so that the same program would not be shown on either simultaneously. PBS Kids 24/7 mainly features double-runs of existing series on PBS Kids' schedule (including some not carried on the primary channels of certain member stations); as such, no additional programs had to be acquired to help fill the channel's schedule. On April 21, 2017, the network launched "PBS Kids Family Night," a weekly block on Friday evenings (with encore airings on Saturday and Sunday evenings) that showcase themed programming, premieres or special "movie-length" episodes of new and existing PBS Kids children's programs.

Affiliates
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! City of license/ market !! Station !! Channel !! Operator !! Affiliation tenure (original network) !! Local channel !! Affiliation date (revived network)
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Alabama

 * Birmingham || WBIQ ||10.2 || rowspan=9|Alabama Public Television || || || rowspan=9|January 16, 2017
 * Demopolis || WIIQ || 41.2 || ||
 * Dozier || WDIQ || 2.2 || ||
 * Florence || WFIQ || 36.2 || ||
 * Huntsville || WHIQ || 25.2 || ||
 * Louisville || WGIQ || 43.2 || ||
 * Mobile || WEIQ || 42.2 || ||
 * Montgomery || WAIQ || 26.2 || ||
 * Mount Cheaha || WCIQ || 7.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Louisville || WGIQ || 43.2 || ||
 * Mobile || WEIQ || 42.2 || ||
 * Montgomery || WAIQ || 26.2 || ||
 * Mount Cheaha || WCIQ || 7.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Montgomery || WAIQ || 26.2 || ||
 * Mount Cheaha || WCIQ || 7.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Alaska

 * Anchorage || KAKM || 7.4 || Alaska Public Telecommunications || || || rowspan=2|TBD
 * Fairbanks || KUAC-TV || 9.8 || University of Alaska Fairbanks || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Fairbanks || KUAC-TV || 9.8 || University of Alaska Fairbanks || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Arkansas

 * Arkadelphia || KETG || 9.3 || rowspan=6|Arkansas Educational Television Network || || || rowspan=6|January 16, 2017
 * El Dorado || KETZ || 12.3 || ||
 * Fayetteville || KAFT || 13.3 || ||
 * Jonesboro || KTEJ || 19.3 || ||
 * Little Rock || KETS || 2.3 || ||
 * Mountain View || KEMV || 6.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Jonesboro || KTEJ || 19.3 || ||
 * Little Rock || KETS || 2.3 || ||
 * Mountain View || KEMV || 6.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Mountain View || KEMV || 6.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Arizona

 * Phoenix || KAET || 8.4 || Arizona State University || || || rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Tucson || KUAT-TV || 6.2 || Arizona Public Media || 2003-2005 || 2005-2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Tucson || KUAT-TV || 6.2 || Arizona Public Media || 2003-2005 || 2005-2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

====California

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network that is a flagship property of Walt Disney Television, a subsidiary of the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, California on Riverside Drive, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building.

Since 2007, when ABC Radio (also known as Cumulus Media Networks) was sold to Citadel Broadcasting, ABC has reduced its broadcasting operations almost exclusively to television. The fifth-oldest major broadcasting network in the world and the youngest of the Big Three television networks, ABC is often nicknamed as "The Alphabet Network", as its initialism also represents the first three letters of the English alphabet, in order.

ABC launched as a radio network on October 12, 1943, serving as the successor to the NBC Blue Network, which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS and NBC. In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres, a chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Leonard Goldenson, who had been the head of UPT, made the new television network profitable by helping develop and greenlight many successful series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80 percent interest in cable sports channel ESPN, the network's corporate parent, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several print publications, and television and radio stations. In 1996, most of Capital Cities/ABC's assets were purchased by The Walt Disney Company.

The television network has eight owned-and-operated and over 232 affiliated television stations throughout the United States and its territories. Some of the ABC-affiliated stations can also be seen in Canada via pay-television providers, and certain other affiliates can also be received over-the-air in areas within the Canada–United States border. ABC News provides news and features content for select radio stations owned by Citadel Broadcasting, which purchased the ABC Radio properties in 2007 (however relaunched in 2014).

Blue Network (1927–1945)
In the 1930s, radio in the United States was dominated by three companies: the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the Mutual Broadcasting System, and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The last was owned by electronics manufacturer Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which owned two radio networks that each ran different varieties of programming, NBC Blue and NBC Red. The NBC Blue Network was created in 1927 for the primary purpose of testing new programs on markets of lesser importance than those served by NBC Red, which served the major cities, and to test drama series.

In 1934, Mutual filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding its difficulties in establishing new stations, in a radio market that was already being saturated by NBC and CBS. In 1938, the FCC began a series of investigations into the practices of radio networks and published its report on the broadcasting of network radio programs in 1940. The report recommended that RCA give up control of either NBC Red or NBC Blue. At that time, the NBC Red Network was the principal radio network in the United States and, according to the FCC, RCA was using NBC Blue to eliminate any hint of competition. Having no power over the networks themselves, the FCC established a regulation forbidding licenses to be issued for radio stations if they were affiliated with a network which already owned multiple networks that provided content of public interest.

Once Mutual's appeals against the FCC were rejected, RCA decided to sell NBC Blue in 1941, and gave the mandate to do so to Mark Woods. RCA converted the NBC Blue Network into an independent subsidiary, formally divorcing the operations of NBC Red and NBC Blue on January 8, 1942, with the Blue Network being referred to on-air as either "Blue" or "Blue Network". The newly separated NBC Red and NBC Blue divided their respective corporate assets. Between 1942 and 1943, Woods offered to sell the entire NBC Blue Network, a package that included leases on landlines, three pending television licenses (WJZ-TV in New York City, KGO-TV in San Francisco and WENR-TV in Chicago), 60 affiliates, four operations facilities (in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.), contracts with actors, and the brand associated with the Blue Network. Investment firm Dillon, Read & Co. offered $7.5 million to purchase the network, but the offer was rejected by Woods and RCA president David Sarnoff.

Edward J. Noble, the owner of Life Savers candy, drugstore chain Rexall and New York City radio station WMCA, purchased the network for $8 million. Due to FCC ownership rules, the transaction, which was to include the purchase of three RCA stations by Noble, would require him to resell his station with the FCC's approval. The Commission authorized the transaction on October 12, 1943. Soon afterward, the Blue Network was purchased by the new company Noble founded, the American Broadcasting System. Noble subsequently acquired the rights to the American Broadcasting Company name from George B. Storer in 1944; its parent company adopted the corporate name American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. Woods retained his position as president and CEO of ABC until December 1949, and was subsequently promoted to vice-chairman of the board before leaving ABC altogether on June 30, 1951.

Meanwhile, in August 1944, the West Coast division of the Blue Network, which owned San Francisco radio station KGO, bought Los Angeles station KECA from Earle C. Anthony for $800,000. Both stations were then managed by Don Searle, the vice-president of the Blue Network's West Coast division.

Entry into television (1945–1949)


The ABC Radio Network created its audience slowly. The network acquired Detroit radio station WXYZ from KingTrendle Broadcasting in 1946 for a little less than $3 million (the station remained under ABC ownership until 1984).

ABC became an aggressive competitor to NBC and CBS when, continuing NBC Blue's traditions of public service, it aired symphony performances conducted by Paul Whiteman, performances from the Metropolitan Opera, and jazz concerts aired as part of its broadcast of The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street announced by Milton Cross. The network also became known for such suspenseful dramas as Sherlock Holmes, Gang Busters and Counterspy, as well as several mid-afternoon youth-oriented programs. However, ABC made a name for itself by utilizing the practice of counterprogramming, with which it often placed shows of its own against the offerings of NBC and CBS, adopting the use of the Magnetophon tape recorder, brought to the U.S. from Nazi Germany after its conquest, to pre-record its programming. With the help of the Magnetophon, ABC was able to provide its stars with greater freedom in terms of time, and also attract several big names, such as Bing Crosby at a time when NBC and CBS did not allow pre-taped shows.

While its radio network was undergoing reconstruction, ABC found it difficult to avoid falling behind on the new medium of television. To ensure a space, in 1947, ABC submitted five applications for television station licenses, one for each market where it owned and operated a radio station (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Detroit). These applications all requested for the stations to broadcast on VHF channel 7, as Frank Marx, then ABC's vice-president of engineering, thought that the low-band VHF frequencies (corresponding to channels 2 through 6) would be requisitioned from broadcasting use and reallocated for the U.S. Army.

The ABC television network made its debut on April 19, 1948, with WFIL-TV in Philadelphia (now WPVI-TV) becoming its first primary affiliate. The first program ever broadcast on the network was On the Corner, featuring satirist Henry Morgan. Other stations carrying the initial broadcast were WMAR-TV in Baltimore, WMAL-TV in Washington, D.C., and WABD, the DuMont station in New York City, since ABC's New York station had yet to sign on.

The network's flagship owned-and-operated station, WJZ-TV in New York City (later re-called WABC-TV), signed on the air on August 10, 1948, with its first broadcast running for two hours that evening. ABC's other owned-and-operated stations launched over the course of the next 13 months: WENR-TV in Chicago signed on the air on September 17, while WXYZ-TV in Detroit went on the air on October 9, 1948. In October 1948, as a result of an influx of television station license applications that it had issued as well as a study it undertook on the use of the VHF spectrum for broadcasting purposes, the FCC implemented a freeze on new station applications. However, KGO-TV in San Francisco, which had received its license prior to the freeze, made its debut on May 5, 1949. On May 7, 1949, Billboard revealed that ABC had proposed an investment of $6.25 million, of which it would spend $2.5 million to convert 20 acre of land in Hollywood into what would become The Prospect Studios, and construct a transmitter on Mount Wilson, in anticipation of the launch of KECA-TV, which was scheduled to begin operations on August 1 (but would not actually sign on until September 16).

In the fall of 1949, ABC found itself in the position of an outsider, with less coverage than two of its competing networks, CBS and NBC, even though it was on par with them in some major cities and had a headstart over its third rival at the time, the DuMont Television Network. On November 3, 1949, The Ruggles starring Charlie Ruggles debuted, becoming the first family sitcom on the fledgling ABC network.

Before the freeze ended in 1952, there were only 108 existing television stations in the United States; a few major cities (such as Boston) had only two television stations, many other cities (such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis) had only one, and still many others (such as Denver and Portland) did not yet have any television service. The result was an uneven transition period where television flourished in certain areas and network radio remained the sole source of broadcast entertainment and news in others.

American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres
At the end of 1949, movie theater operator United Paramount Theatres (UPT) was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court to become an independent entity, separating itself from Paramount Pictures. For its part, ABC was on the verge of bankruptcy, with only five owned-and-operated stations and nine full-time affiliates. Its revenues, which were related to advertising and were indexed compared to the number of listeners/viewers, failed to compensate for its heavy investments in purchasing and building stations. In 1951, a rumor even mentioned that the network would be sold to CBS. In 1951, Noble held a 58% ownership stake in ABC, giving him $5 million with which to prevent ABC from going bankrupt; as banks refused further credit, that amount was obtained through a loan from the Prudential Insurance Company of America.

Leonard Goldenson, the president of UPT (which sought to diversify itself at the time), approached Noble in 1951 on a proposal for UPT to purchase ABC. Noble received other offers, including one from CBS founder William S. Paley; however, a merger with CBS would have forced that network to sell its New York City and Los Angeles stations at the very least. Goldenson and Noble reached a tentative agreement in the late spring of 1951 in which UPT would acquire ABC and turn it into a subsidiary of the company that would retain autonomy in its management. On June 6, 1951, the tentative agreement was approved by UPT's board of directors. However, the transaction had to be approved by the FCC because of the presence of television networks and the recent separation between Paramount and UPT. Insofar as Paramount Pictures was already a shareholder in the DuMont Television Network, the FCC conducted a series of hearings to ensure whether Paramount was truly separated from United Paramount Theatres, and whether it was violating antitrust laws.

In 1952, when the release of the FCC's Sixth Report and Order announced the end of its freeze on new station license applications, among the issues the Commission was slated to address was whether to approve the UPT-ABC merger. One FCC Commissioner saw the possibility of ABC, funded by UPT, becoming a viable and competitive third television network. On February 9, 1953, the FCC approved UPT's purchase of ABC in exchange for $25 million in shares. The merged company, renamed American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, Inc. and headquartered in the Paramount Building at 1501 Broadway in Manhattan, owned six AM and several FM radio stations, five television stations and 644 cinemas in 300 U.S. cities. To comply with FCC ownership restrictions in effect at the time that barred common ownership of two television stations in the same market, UPT sold its Chicago television station, WBKB-TV, to CBS (which subsequently changed the station's call letters to WBBM-TV) for $6 million, while it kept ABC's existing Chicago station, WENR-TV. The merged company acquired the WBKB call letters for channel 7, which would eventually become WLS-TV. Goldenson began to sell some of the older theaters to help finance the new television network.

On March 1, 1953, ABC's New York City flagship stations – WJZ, WJZ-FM and WJZ-TV – changed their respective callsigns to WABC, WABC-FM and WABC-TV, and moved their operations to facilities at 7 West 66th Street, one block away from Central Park. The WABC call letters were previously used by the flagship station of CBS Radio (now WCBS (AM)) until 1946. The WJZ calls would later be reassigned to the then-ABC affiliate in Baltimore in 1959, in an historical nod to the fact that WJZ was originally established by the Baltimore station's owner at the time, Westinghouse.

However, a problem emerged regarding the directions taken by ABC and UPT. In 1950, Noble appointed Robert Kintner to be ABC's president while he himself served as its CEO, a position he would hold until his death in 1958. Despite the promise of non-interference between ABC and UPT, Goldenson had to intervene in ABC's decisions because of financial problems and the FCC's long period of indecision. Goldenson added to the confusion when, in October 1954, he proposed a merger between UPT and the DuMont Television Network, which was also mired in financial trouble. As part of this merger, the network would have been renamed "ABC-DuMont" for five years, and DuMont would have received $5 million in cash, room on the schedule for existing DuMont programming, and guaranteed advertising time for DuMont Laboratories receivers. In addition, to comply with FCC ownership restrictions, it would have been required to sell either WABC-TV or DuMont owned-and-operated station WABD in the New York City market, as well as two other stations. The merged ABC-DuMont would have had the resources to compete with CBS and NBC.

Goldenson sought to develop the ABC television network by trying to convince local stations to agree to affiliate with the network. In doing this, he contacted local entrepreneurs who owned television stations themselves, many of whom had previously invested in Paramount cinemas and had worked with him when he undertook the responsibility of restructuring United Paramount Theatres.

Hollywood begins to produce television series
At the same time he made attempts to help grow ABC, Goldenson had been trying since mid-1953 to provide content for the network by contacting his old acquaintances in Hollywood, with whom he had worked when UPT was a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. ABC's merger with UPT led to the creation of relationships with Hollywood's film production studios, breaking a quarantine that had existed at that time between film and television, the latter of which had previously been more connected to radio. ABC's flagship productions at the time were The Lone Ranger, based on the radio program of the same title, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, the latter of which (at 14 seasons, running from 1952 to 1966) held the record for the longest-running prime time comedy in U.S. television history, until it was surpassed by The Simpsons in 2003.

Goldenson's efforts paid off, and on October 27, 1954, the network launched a campaign ushering in the "New ABC", with productions from several studios, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox.

Warner tried with mixed success to adapt some of its most successful films as ABC television series, and showcase these adaptations as part of the wheel series Warner Bros. Presents. Airing during the 1955–56 season, it showcased television adaptations of the 1942 films Kings Row and Casablanca; Cheyenne (adapted from the 1947 film Wyoming Kid); Sugarfoot (a remake of the 1954 film The Boy from Oklahoma); and Maverick. However, the most iconic of ABC's relationships with Hollywood producers was its agreement with Walt Disney; after the start of the network's bond with the Disney studio, James Lewis Baughman, who worked as a columnist at that time, observed that "at ABC's headquarters in New York, the secretaries [were now] wearing hats with Mickey Mouse ears".

First bonds with Disney
Walt Disney and his brother Roy contacted Goldenson at the end of 1953 for ABC to agree to finance part of the Disneyland project in exchange for producing a television program for the network. Walt wanted ABC to invest $500,000 and accrued a guarantee of $4.5 million in additional loans, a third of the budget intended for the park. Around 1954, ABC agreed to finance Disneyland in exchange for the right to broadcast a new Wednesday night program, Disneyland, which debuted on the network on October 27, 1954 as the first of many anthology television programs that Disney would broadcast over the course of the next 50 years.

When Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, ABC aired a special live broadcast commemorating the park's first day of operation, Dateline: Disneyland. Shortly thereafter, on October 3, 1955, a second regularly scheduled program produced by Disney made its debut, The Mickey Mouse Club, a children's program that aired Monday through Friday afternoons, which starred a group of 24 children known as the "Mouseketeers". The two Disney programs made 1955 the year that the network was first profitable and as a station owner.

Affiliate issues
By 1954, all U.S. networks had regained control of their programming, with higher advertising revenues: ABC's revenue increased by 67% (earning $26 million), NBC's went up by 30% ($100 million) and CBS's rose by 44% ($117 million). However that year, ABC had only 14 primary affiliates compared to the 74 that carried the majority of CBS programs and the 71 that were primarily affiliated with NBC. Most markets outside the largest ones were not large enough to support three full-time network affiliates. In some markets that were large enough for a third full-time affiliate, the only available commercial allocation was on the less-desirable UHF band. Until the All-Channel Receiver Act (passed by Congress in 1961) mandated the inclusion of UHF tuning, most viewers needed to purchase a converter to be able to watch UHF stations, and the signal quality was marginal at best even with a converter. Additionally, during the analog television era, UHF stations were not adequately receivable in rugged terrain. These factors made many prospective station owners skittish about investing in a UHF station, especially one that would have had to take on an affiliation with a weaker network.

As a result, with the exception of the largest markets, ABC was relegated to secondary status on one or both of the existing stations, usually via off-hours clearances (a notable exception during this time was WKST-TV in Youngstown, Ohio, now WYTV, despite the small size of the surrounding market and its close proximity to Cleveland and Pittsburgh even decades before the city's economic collapse). According to Goldenson, this meant that an hour of ABC programming reported five times lower viewership than its competitors. However, the network's intake of money at the time would allow it to accelerate its content production. Still, ABC's limited reach would continue to hobble it for the next two decades; several smaller markets would not grow large enough to support a full-time ABC affiliate until the 1960s, with some very small markets having to wait as late as the 1980s or even the advent of digital television in the 2000s, which allowed stations like WTRF-TV in Wheeling, West Virginia to begin airing ABC programming on a digital subchannel after airing the network's programs outside of recommended timeslots decades before.

The DuMont Television Network ceased broadcasting on September 15, 1955, and went bankrupt the next year. ABC then found itself as the third U.S. television network, dubbed the "little third network", but still continued to look for successful programming. That same year, Kintner was forced to resign due to disagreements between Noble and Goldenson, a consequence of Goldenson's many interventions in ABC's management.

Counterprogramming: successful, but criticized
It was not until the late 1950s that the ABC network became a serious contender to NBC and CBS, and this was in large part due to the diverse range of programming that met the expectations of the public, such as westerns and detective series. Despite an almost 500% increase in advertising revenues between 1953 and 1958, the network only had a national reach of between 10% and 18% of the total U.S. population, as it still had relatively fewer affiliates than NBC and CBS. In 1957, ABC Entertainment president Ollie Trez discovered that the locally produced variety show Bandstand had pulled very strong ratings in the Philadelphia market on WFIL-TV; Trez ultimately negotiated a deal to take the show national, under the revised title American Bandstand; the show quickly became a social phenomenon by presenting new musical talent and dances to America's youth and helped make a star out of its host, Dick Clark.

On September 3, 1958, the Disneyland anthology series was retitled Walt Disney Presents as it became disassociated with the theme park of the same name. The movement in westerns, which ABC is credited for having started, represented a fifth of all primetime series on American television in January 1959, at which point detective shows were beginning to rise in popularity as well. ABC requested additional productions from Disney. In late 1958, Desilu Productions pitched its detective series The Untouchables Starring Robert Stack to CBS; after that network rejected the show because of its use of violence, Desilu then presented it to ABC, which agreed to pick up the show, and debuted The Untouchables in April 1959. The series went on to quickly become "immensely popular".

These kinds of programs presented ABC with an image of the "philosophy of counterprogramming against its competitors", offering a strong lineup of programs that contrasted with those seen on its rival networks, which helped Goldenson give the network a continuum between film and television. ABC's western series (as well as series such as the actioner Zorro) went up against and defeated the variety shows aired by NBC and CBS in the fall of 1957, and its detective shows did the same in the fall of 1959. To captivate the network's audiences, short 66-minute series were scheduled a half-hour before their hour-long competition. In May 1961, Life criticized the public enthusiasm and sponsorship for these types of shows at the expense of news programming and denounced an unofficial law "replacing the good programs with the bad ones".

Transition to color (1960s)
During the 1960s, ABC continued on the same path that it began to take in the mid-1950s, by consolidating the network as part of its effort to gain loyalty from the public. The network's finances improved and allowed it to invest in other properties and programming. In May 1960, ABC purchased Chicago radio station WLS, which had shared airtime with WENR since the 1920s. This acquisition allowed ABC to consolidate its presence in the market. On May 9, 1960, WLS launched a new lineup consisting of ABC Radio programming. In 1960, Canadian entrepreneur John Bassett, who was trying to establish a television station in Toronto, sought the help of ABC to launch the station. Leonard Goldenson agreed to acquire a 25% interest in CFTO-TV; however, legislation by the Canadian Radio-Television Commission prohibited ABC's involvement, resulting in the company withdrawing from the project before the station's launch.

Children's programming and the debut of ABC Sports (1960–1965)
The 1960s would be marked by the rise of family-oriented series in an attempt by ABC to counterprogram its established competitors, but the decade was also marked by the network's gradual transition to color. On September 30, 1960, ABC premiered The Flintstones, another example of counterprogramming; although the animated series from William Hanna and Joseph Barbera was filmed in color from the beginning, it was initially broadcast in black and white, as ABC had not made the necessary technical upgrades to broadcast its programming in color at the time. The Flintstones allowed ABC to present a novelty, that of prime-time animated programming, but it also allowed the network to begin filling the hole opened by the conclusion of the Disney partnership by carrying family-oriented programming from other producers.

In 1959, Walt Disney Productions, having improved its financial situation, had purchased ABC's shares in the Disneyland theme park for $7.5 million and initiated discussions to renew ABC's television contract for Walt Disney Presents, which was due to expire in 1961. Walt Disney was approached by NBC to produce color broadcasts of his anthology series (which would be renamed Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color). Goldenson said ABC could not counter the offer, because the network did not have the technical and financial resources to carry the program in the format. As a result, ABC and Disney's first television collaboration ended in 1961 (the network would resume its relationship with Disney in 1985, when the anthology series returned to the network for a three-season run as the Disney Sunday Movie until it lost the rights to NBC again in 1988; the Disney anthology series would return to ABC in 1996, following the company's purchase of the future Capital Cities/ABC, as The Wonderful World of Disney).

However, in 1961, ABC continued with its niche in animated series with Calvin and the Colonel, Matty's Funday Funnies, Top Cat and The Bugs Bunny Show, the latter of which showcased classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts.

Always in search of new programs that would help it compete with NBC and CBS, ABC's management believed that sports could be a major catalyst in improving the network's market share. On April 29, 1961, ABC debuted Wide World of Sports, an anthology series created by Edgar Scherick through his company Sports Programs, Inc. and produced by a young Roone Arledge which featured a different sporting event each broadcast. ABC purchased Sports Programs, Inc. in exchange for shares in the company, leading it to become the future core of ABC Sports, with Arledge as the executive producer of that division's shows. Wide World of Sports, in particular, was not merely devoted to a single sport, but rather to generally all sporting events.

Due to pressure from film studios wanting to increase their production, as the major networks began airing theatrically released films, ABC joined CBS and NBC in broadcasting films on Sunday nights in 1962, with the launch of the ABC Sunday Night Movie, which debuted a year behind its competitors and was initially presented in black-and-white. Despite a significant increase in viewership (with its audience share having increased to 33% from the 15% share it had in 1953), ABC remained in third place; the company had a total revenue of $15.5 million, a third of the revenue pulled in by CBS at the same period. To catch up, ABC followed up The Flintstones with another animated series from Hanna-Barbera, The Jetsons, which debuted on September 23, 1962 as the first television series to be broadcast in color on the network. On April 1, 1963, ABC debuted the soap opera General Hospital, which would go on to become the television network's long-running entertainment program. That year also saw the premiere of The Fugitive (on September 17), a drama series centering on a man on the run after being accused of committing a murder he did not commit.

The 1964–65 season was marked by the debuts of several classic series including Bewitched (on September 17) and The Addams Family (on September 18). Arledge's success with acquiring prime sports content was confirmed in 1964 when he was appointed vice-president of ABC Sports.

New regulations and the radio network's recovery (1966–1969)
It was not until the 1965–66 season that color became the dominant format for the three broadcast television networks. ABC, meanwhile, remained in third place and still needed money to grow itself into a major competitor. However, ABC's issues with its transition to color became secondary compared to the network's financial problems; in 1964, the network found itself, as Goldenson later wrote in the 1991 book Beating the Odds: The Untold Story Behind the Rise of ABC, "in the middle of a war [where] the battlefield was Wall Street". Many companies sought to take over ABC, including Norton Simon, General Electric, Gulf and Western Industries, International Telephone and Telegraph and Litton Industries.

In 1965, the corporate entity, American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, was renamed as the American Broadcasting Companies, while its cinema division became ABC Theatres; its recording division was renamed ABC Records in 1966. In December of that year, the ABC television network premiered The Dating Game, a pioneer series in its genre, which was a reworking of the blind date concept in which a suitor selected one of three contestants sight unseen based on the answers to selected questions. This was followed up in July 1966 by The Newlywed Game, featuring three recently married couples who guessed the responses to their partner's questions (some of which were fairly risque). As ABC began to outgrow its facilities at 7 West 66th Street, Goldenson found a new headquarters for ABC in a 44-story building located at 1330 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, at the corner of 54th Street (now occupied by The Financial Times's New York office). This operation allowed for the conversion of the premises at 66th Street into production facilities for television and radio programs.

On December 7, 1965, Goldenson announced a merger proposal with ITT to ABC management; the two companies agreed to the deal on April 27, 1966. The FCC approved the merger on December 21, 1966; however, the previous day (December 20), Donald F. Turner, head antitrust regulator for the United States Department of Justice, expressed doubts related to such issues as the emerging cable television market, and concerns over the journalistic integrity of ABC and how it could be influenced by the overseas ownership of ITT. ITT management promised that the company would allow ABC to retain autonomy in the publishing business. The merger was suspended, and a complaint was filed by the Department of Justice in July 1967, with ITT going to trial in October 1967; the merger was officially canceled after the trial's conclusion on January 1, 1968.

On January 12, 1966, ABC replaced The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet with Batman, an action series based on the DC Comics series starring Adam West that was known for its kitschy style. In 1967, WLS radio CEO Ralph Beaudin was appointed as the president of ABC Radio. Under his leadership, ABC Radio was divided into four "networks" devoted to different types of programming: news, informative series, pop music, and talk shows. Two other networks were later created to provide rock music and traffic reporting.

In 1968, ABC took advantage of new FCC ownership regulations that allowed broadcasting companies to own a maximum of seven radio stations nationwide in order to purchase Houston radio stations KXYZ and KXYZ-FM for $1 million in shares and $1.5 million in bonds. That year, Roone Arledge was named president of ABC Sports; the company also founded ABC Pictures, a film production company which released its first picture that year, the Ralph Nelson-directed Charly. It was renamed ABC Motion Pictures in 1979; the unit was dissolved in 1985. The studio also operated two subsidiaries, Palomar Pictures International and Selmur Pictures. In July 1968, ABC continued its acquisitions in the amusement parks sector with the opening of ABC Marine World in Redwood City, California; that park was sold in 1972 and demolished in 1986, with the land that occupied the park later becoming home to the headquarters of Oracle Corporation.

In July 1968, ABC Radio launched a special programming project for its FM stations, which was spearheaded by Allen Shaw, a former program manager at WCFL in Chicago who was approached by ABC Radio president Harold L. Neal to develop a format to compete with the new progressive rock and DJ-helmed stations. The new concept called "LOVE Radio", which featured a limited selection of music genres, was launched on ABC's seven owned-and-operated FM stations in late November 1968; the concept replaced nearly all of the programming provided by these stations; however, several affiliates (such as KXYZ) retained the majority of their content. In August 1970, Shaw announced that ABC FM's music choice policy should be reviewed to allow listeners access to many styles of music.

On the television side, in September 1969, ABC launched the Movie of the Week, a weekly showcase aimed at capitalizing on the growing success of made-for-TV movies since the early 1960s. The Movie of the Week broadcast feature-length dramatic films directed by such talented filmmakers as Aaron Spelling, David Wolper and Steven Spielberg (the latter of whom gained early success through the showcase for his 1971 film Duel) that were produced on an average budget of $400,000–$450,000. One of those movies –  A Matter of Humanities, broadcast in early 1969 –  became the basis for the hit show Marcus Welby, M.D. which, in its second season (1970–1971), became ABC's first Number One show in the Nielsen ratings (Bewitched was the closest the network had come prior to this, reaching #2 in its debut season, 1964–1965). Other hits for the television network during the late 1960s and early 1970s included the comedies The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, the now-iconic That Girl, the Emmy-winning Room 222, and the drama The Mod Squad.

Success in television (1971–1980)
In the early 1970s, ABC completed its transition to color; the decade as a whole would mark a turning point for ABC, as it began to pass CBS and NBC in the ratings to become the first place network. It also began to use behavioral and demographic data to better determine what types of sponsors to sell advertising slots to and provide programming that would appeal towards certain audiences. ABC's gains in audience share were greatly helped by the fact that several smaller markets had grown large enough to allow full-time affiliations from all three networks.

In 1970, ABC debuted Monday Night Football as part of its Monday prime time schedule; the program became a hit for the network and served as the National Football League (NFL)'s premier game of the week until 2006, when Sunday Night Football, which moved to NBC that year as part of a broadcast deal that in turn saw MNF move to ESPN, took over as the league's marquee game. According to Goldenson, Monday Night Football helped earn ABC regularly score an audience share of 15%–16%; ABC Sports managed the budget for the Monday night time slot to reallocate the weekly budget for ABC's prime time schedule to just six days, as opposed to seven on competing networks. 1970 also saw the premieres of several soap operas including the long-running All My Children, which ran on the network for 41 years.

In 1970, the FCC voted to pass the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, a set of regulations aimed at preventing the major networks from monopolizing the broadcast landscape by barring them from owning any of the prime time programming that they broadcast. In 1972, the new rules resulted in the company's decision to split ABC Films into two separate companies: the existing Worldvision Enterprises, which would produce and distribute programming for U.S. syndication, and ABC Circle Films as a production unit. Worldvision was sold to a consortium of ABC executives for nearly $10 million.

In April 1970, Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act which banned cigarette advertising from all television and radio networks, including ABC, when it took effect on January 2, 1971. Citing limited profitability of its cinemas, ABC Great States, the Central West division of ABC Theatres, was sold to Henry G. Plitt in 1974. On January 17, 1972, Elton Rule was named President and Chief Operating Officer of ABC a few months after Goldenson reduced his role in the company after suffering a heart attack.

In the early 1970s, Michael Eisner, who joined ABC in 1966, became the network's program development manager. He helped bring about ideas for many series including Happy Days (which originated as a segment on the anthology series Love, American Style), as well as several soap operas; however, Eisner's main credit at ABC was for developing youth-oriented programming. He was responsible for reacquiring the rights to the Looney Tunes-Merrie Melodies library, bringing the shorts back to ABC after spending several years on CBS, as well as developing The Jackson 5ive animated series and a series about the Osmonds, and greenlighting Super Friends, based on DC Comics' Justice League of America series He also laid ground-work for the development of educational children's programming (predating the 1990 Congressional passage of the Children's Television Act) through interstitials such as Time for Timer, The Bod Squad and, perhaps most famously, Schoolhouse Rock!. Eisner left ABC in 1976 to become president of Paramount Pictures; he would later become the President of ABC's eventual parent company, Disney.

In the spring of 1975, Fred Pierce, the newly appointed president of ABC Television, convinced Fred Silverman to become the first president and director of programming of the independent television production subsidiary ABC Entertainment, created from the network's namesake programming division. In 1974, ABC premiered the police series S.W.A.T. That same year, the network made the decision to compete with NBC's morning news-talk program Today. Its first attempt at such competition was AM America; however, that show's success was not straightforward. One of its affiliates, WCVB-TV premiered morning show Good Day!. First premiering in 1973 as Good Morning!, it was groundbreaking for being entirely produced on the road and broadcasting from locations outside the Boston area. Also, in the summer of 1975, ABC discovered that its Cleveland affiliate WEWS-TV was producing its own morning program The Morning Exchange, which debuted in 1972 and was now locally pre-empting AM America; it was the first morning show to utilize a set modeled after a living room, and established a concept now commonplace among network morning shows in which news and weather updates were featured at the top and bottom of each hour. Discovering that their formats seemed to appeal to their viewers, the network became the first to adopt them for a new national morning show, Good Morning America, which debuted on November 3, 1975.

The 1970s were highlighted by several successful comedy, fantasy, action and superhero-themed series for the network including Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, Starsky & Hutch, Charlie's Angels, The Bionic Woman, Fantasy Island and Battlestar Galactica. Many of these series were greenlit by Silverman, who left ABC in 1978 to become president of NBC's entertainment division. The rousing success of Happy Days also led to a successful spin-off series, Laverne & Shirley, which debuted during the 1975–76 season. Charlie's Angels and Three's Company (which debuted during the 1976–77 season) were two prime examples of a trend among the major networks during the 1970s known as "jiggle TV", featuring attractive, often buxom, women in main and guest roles.

In 1977, Henry Plitt, who at the time was associated with Thomas Klutznick, a real estate entrepreneur in Chicago, purchased the southern division of ABC Theatres, ABC Southern. The sale stripped ABC of control over its theaters as a result of changes in the theater operation sector, mainly the fact that the population was migrating to the suburbs and moving away from older cinemas in larger cities (Plitt Theatres was later purchased by Cineplex Odeon Corporation in 1987).

For its part, the television network produced a few new hits during 1977: January saw the premiere of Roots, a miniseries based on an Alex Haley novel that was published the previous year. Roots went on to become one of the highest-rated programs in American television history, with unprecedented ratings for its finale. In September, The Love Boat, a comedy-drama anthology series produced by Aaron Spelling which was based around the crew of a cruise ship and featured three stories centered partly on the ship's various passengers; although critically lambasted, the series turned out to be a ratings success and lasted nine seasons. The success of Roots, Happy Days and The Love Boat allowed the network to take first place in the ratings for the first time in the 1976–77 season. On September 13, 1977, the network debuted Soap, a controversial soap opera parody which became known for being the first television series to feature an openly gay main character (played by a then-unknown Billy Crystal); it last ran on the network on April 20, 1981.

Meanwhile, ABC News, which formed as a newly separate division, sought to become a global leader in television news. In 1977, Roone Arledge was named president of the new ABC News in addition to being president of ABC Sports. That same year, ABC launched a major expansion of its office facilities in New York City. The company first constructed a new 10-story building on land previously occupied by an abandoned warehouse on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 66th Street; the facility that was built in its place is nicknamed "7 Lincoln Square" (although it is actually located at 149 Columbus Avenue). Meanwhile, a former parking lot, located at 30 West 67th Street, was transformed into an impressive 15-story building. Both buildings were completed in June 1979. WABC-TV moved its operations from offices at 77 West 66th Street to 149 Columbus Avenue, freeing up space for the ABC network to house some of its operations.

In June 1978, Arledge created the newsmagazine 20/20; after its first episode received harshly negative reviews, the program – which debuted as a summer series, before becoming a year-round program in 1979 – was immediately revamped to feature a mix of in-depth stories and interviews, with Hugh Downs appointed as its anchor (later paired alongside his former Today colleague Barbara Walters). In February 1979, ABC sold its recording division to MCA Inc. for $20 million; the label was discontinued by March 5 of that year, and all of its 300 employees were laid off (the rights to the works of ABC Records and all of MCA's other labels have since been acquired by Universal Music Group).

Merger with Capital Cities, purchase of ESPN and reprogramming Friday nights (1981–1990)
ABC dominated the American television landscape during the 1970s and early 1980s (by 1980, the three major networks represented 90% of all prime-time television viewership in the U.S. ). Several flagship series debuted on the network during this time including Dynasty, an opulent drama from Aaron Spelling that became a hit when it premiered as a midseason series in 1981, five months before Spelling's other ABC hit Charlie's Angels ended its run. The network was also propelled during the early 1980s by the continued successes of Happy Days, Three's Company, Laverne & Shirley and Fantasy Island, and gained new hits in Too Close for Comfort, Soap spinoff Benson and Happy Days spinoff Mork & Mindy. In 1981, ABC (through its ABC Video Services division) launched the Alpha Repertory Television Service (ARTS), a cable channel operated as a joint venture with the Hearst Corporation offering cultural and arts programming, which aired as a nighttime service over the channel space of Nickelodeon.

On August 9, 1982, ABC purchased a 10% stake in the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) for $20 million; in exchange for the interest, ESPN gained the U.S. television rights to the British Open, which ABC had not been able to broadcast in its entirety. The purchase provided ABC the option of purchasing additional shares of up to 49% under certain conditions, which included the option to purchase at least 10% of Getty Oil's shares in the channel prior to January 2, 1984.

In 1983, ABC sold KXYZ to the Infinity Broadcasting Corporation. On January 4, 1984, The New York Times reported that ABC, through its subsidiary ABC Video Enterprises, had exercised its option to purchase up to 15% (or between $25 million and $30 million) of Getty Oil's shares in ESPN, which would allow it to expand its shares at a later date. In June 1984, ABC's executive committee approved the company's interest acquisition in ESPN, and ABC arranged with Getty Oil to obtain an 80% stake in the channel, while selling the remaining 20% to Nabisco. That year, ABC and Hearst reached an agreement with RCA to merge ARTS and competing arts service, The Entertainment Channel, into a single cable channel called Arts & Entertainment Television (A&E); the new channel subsequently leased a separate satellite transponder, ending its sharing agreement with Nickelodeon to become a 24-hour service. Meanwhile, ABC withdrew from the theme park business for good when it sold the Silver Springs Nature Theme Park.

In December 1984, Thomas S. Murphy, chief executive officer of Capital Cities Communications, contacted Leonard Goldenson about a proposal to merge their respective companies. On March 16, 1985, ABC's executive committee accepted the merger offer, which was formally announced on March 18, 1985, with Capital Cities purchasing ABC and its related properties for $3.5 billion and $118 for each of ABC's shares as well as a guarantee of 10% (or $3) for a total of $121 per share. The merger shocked the entertainment industry, as Capital Cities was some 4 times smaller than ABC was at the time. To finance the purchase, Capital Cities borrowed $2.1 billion from a consortium of banks, which sold certain assets that Capital Cities could not acquire or retain due to FCC ownership rules for a combined $900 million and sold off several cable television systems, which were sold to The Washington Post Company (forming the present-day Cable One). The remaining $500 million was loaned by Warren Buffett, who promised that his company Berkshire Hathaway would purchase $3 million in shares, at $172.50 apiece. Due to an FCC ban on same-market ownership of television and radio stations by a single company (although the deal would have otherwise complied with new ownership rules implemented by the FCC in January 1985, that allowed broadcasters to own a maximum of 12 television stations), ABC and Capital Cities respectively decided to sell WXYZ-TV and Tampa independent station WFTS-TV to the E. W. Scripps Company (although Capital Cities/ABC originally intended to seek a cross-ownership waiver to retain WXYZ and Capital Cities-owned radio stations WJR and WHYT).

The merger between ABC and Capital Cities received federal approval on September 5, 1985. After the ABC/Capital Cities merger was finalized on January 3, 1986, the combined company – which became known as Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. – added four television stations (WPVI-TV/Philadelphia, KTRK-TV/Houston, KFSN-TV/Fresno and WTVD/Raleigh) and several radio stations to ABC's broadcasting portfolio, and also included Fairchild Publications and four newspapers (including The Kansas City Star and Fort Worth Star-Telegram). It also initiated several changes in its management: Frederick S. Pierce was named president of ABC's broadcasting division; Michael P. Millardi became vice president of ABC Broadcasting, and president of ABC Owned Stations and ABC Video Enterprises; John B. Sias was appointed president of the ABC Television Network; Brandon Stoddard became president of ABC Entertainment (a position to which he had been appointed in November 1985); and Roone Arledge became president of ABC News and ABC Sports. In February 1986, Thomas S. Murphy, who had been serving as CEO of Capital Cities since 1964, was appointed chairman and CEO emeritus of ABC. Jim Duffy stepped down as ABC Television president for a management position at ABC Communications, a subsidiary that specialized in community service programming, including shows related to literary education.

As far as programming is concerned, four of ABC's marquee shows of the 1970s ended their runs during the mid-1980s: Laverne & Shirley ended its run in 1983, Happy Days and Three's Company ended in 1984 (with the latter producing a short-lived spinoff that year), while The Love Boat ended its run in 1986. After nearly a decade of ratings trouble, NBC had regained the ratings lead among the Big Three networks in 1984 on the success of series such as The Cosby Show, Cheers and Miami Vice. To counteract NBC, ABC decided to refocus itself on comedies and family-oriented series beginning in the mid-1980s including Who's the Boss?, Mr. Belvedere, Growing Pains, Perfect Strangers, Head of the Class, Full House, The Wonder Years, Just the Ten of Us and Roseanne.

Following the initial success of these series, ABC revamped its Friday night schedule around family-friendly comedies in the late 1980s, culminating in the 1989 debut of the "TGIF" block (which promotions referenced stood for "Thank Goodness It's Funny"). Many of the series featured during the run of the block were produced by Miller-Boyett Productions, a Warner Bros.-based studio that briefly programmed the entire Friday lineup during the 1990–91 season (with Going Places joining Family Matters, Full House and Perfect Strangers on the "TGIF" schedule) and through its development deal with Paramount Television prior to 1986 (as Miller-Milkis, and later, Miller-Milkis-Boyett Productions), had earlier produced Happy Days and its various spinoffs among other series for the network.

In 1988, ABC constructed a new building to serve as the network's headquarters, located near the studios of WABC-TV on West 66th Street. The television network's restructuring program, launched in 1974, helped with the purchases and exchanges of nearly 70 stations during the late 1980s, and aided in increasing its ratings by more than 2 million viewers.

Sale to Disney (1991–2000)
In 1990, Thomas S. Murphy delegated his position as president to Daniel B. Burke while remaining ABC's chairman and CEO. Capital Cities/ABC reported revenues of $465 million. Now at a strong second place, the network entered the 1990s with additional family-friendly hits including America's Funniest Home Videos (which has gone on to become the longest-running prime time entertainment program in the network's history), Step by Step, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Boy Meets World and Perfect Strangers spinoff Family Matters, as well as series such as Doogie Howser, M.D., Life Goes On, cult favorite Twin Peaks and The Commish. In September 1991, the network premiered Home Improvement, a sitcom starring stand-up comic Tim Allen centering on the family and work life of an accident-prone host of a cable-access home improvement show. Lasting eight seasons, its success led ABC to greenlight additional sitcom projects helmed by comedians during the 1990s including The Drew Carey Show; Brett Butler vehicle Grace Under Fire; and Ellen, which became notable for a 1997 episode which served as the coming out of series star Ellen DeGeneres (as well as her character in the series) as a lesbian.

In 1993, the FCC repealed the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, once again allowing networks to hold interests in television production studios. That same year, Capital Cities/ABC purchased the French animation studio DIC Entertainment; it also signed an agreement with Time Warner Cable to carry its owned-and-operated television stations on the provider's systems in ABC O&O markets. By that year, ABC had a total viewership share of 23.63% of American households, just below the limit of 25% imposed by the FCC.

Daniel Burke departed from Capital Cities/ABC in February 1994, with Thomas Murphy taking over as president before ceding control to Robert Iger. September 1993 saw the debut of NYPD Blue, a gritty police procedural from Steven Bochco (who created Doogie Howser, M.D. and the critically pilloried Cop Rock for ABC earlier in the decade); lasting twelve seasons, the drama became known for its boundary pushing of network television standards (particularly its occasional use of graphic language and rear nudity), which led some affiliates to initially refuse to air the show in its first season.

In order to compete with CNN, ABC proposed a 24-hour news channel called ABC Cable News, with plans to launch the network in 1995; however, the plan would ultimately be shelved by company management. ABC would reattempt such a concept in July 2004 with the launch of ABC News Now, a 24-hour news channel distributed for viewing on the Internet and mobile phones. On August 29, 1994, ABC purchased Flint, Michigan affiliate WJRT-TV and WTVG in Toledo, Ohio (which was previously affiliated with ABC from 1958 to 1970) from SJL Broadcast Management, with the latter switching to ABC once its contract with NBC expired two months after the purchase was finalized in early 1995. Both stations were acquired as a contingency plan in the event that CBS reached an affiliation deal with WXYZ-TV (to replace WJBK, which switched to Fox as a result of that network's group affiliation agreement with New World Communications) in order to allow the network to retain some over-the-air presence in the Detroit market (the E.W. Scripps Company and ABC would reach a group affiliation deal that renewed affiliation agreements with WXYZ and WEWS, and switch four other stations, including two whose Fox affiliations were displaced by the New World deal, with the network).

On July 31, 1995, The Walt Disney Company announced an agreement to merge with Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion. Disney shareholders approved the merger at a special conference in New York City on January 4, 1996, with the acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC being completed on February 9; following the sale, Disney renamed its new subsidiary ABC Inc. In addition to the ABC network, the Disney acquisition integrated ABC's ten owned-and-operated television and 21 radio stations; its 80% interest in ESPN, ownership interests in The History Channel, A&E Television Networks, and Lifetime Entertainment; and Capital Cities/ABC's magazine and newspaper properties into the company. As FCC ownership rules forbade the company from keeping both it and KABC-TV, Disney sold Los Angeles independent station KCAL-TV to Young Broadcasting for $387 million. On April 4, Disney sold the four newspapers that ABC had controlled under Capital Cities to Knight Ridder for $1.65 billion. Following the merger, Thomas S. Murphy left ABC with Robert Iger taking his place as president and CEO. Around the time of the merger, Disney's television production units had already produced series for the network such as Home Improvement and Boy Meets World, while the deal also allowed ABC access to Disney's children's programming library for its Saturday morning block. In 1998, ABC premiered the Aaron Sorkin-created sitcom Sports Night, centering on the travails of the staff of a SportsCenter-style sports news program; despite earning critical praise and multiple Emmy Awards, the series was cancelled in 2000 after two seasons.

On May 10, 1999, Disney reorganized its publishing division, the Buena Vista Publishing Group, renaming it as Disney Publishing Worldwide; the rechristened division became a subsidiary of Disney Consumer Products while Hyperion Books became affiliated with ABC. On July 8, 1999, Disney consolidated Walt Disney Television Studio, Buena Vista Television Productions and ABC's primetime division into the ABC Entertainment Television Group.

In August 1999, ABC premiered a special series event, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, a game show based on the British program of the same title. Hosted throughout its ABC tenure by Regis Philbin, the program became a major ratings success throughout its initial summer run, which led ABC to renew Millionaire as a regular series, returning on January 18, 2000. At its peak, the program aired as much as six nights a week. Buoyed by Millionaire, during the 1999–2000 season, ABC became the first network to move from third to first place in the ratings during a single television season. Millionaire ended its run on the network's primetime lineup after three years in 2002, and in September of that year, Buena Vista Television relaunched the show as a syndicated program which throughout its run starred various hosts, of whom the first and longest-tenured, Meredith Vieira, became the first woman to win multiple Emmy Awards for hosting a game show.

New century, new programs; divisional restructuring (2001–2010)
In addition to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the network entered the 2000s with hits held over from the previous decade such as The Practice, NYPD Blue and The Wonderful World of Disney and new series such as My Wife and Kids and According to Jim, all of which managed to help ABC stay ahead of the competition in the ratings in spite of the later departure of Millionaire. 2000 saw the end of the original "TGIF", which was struggling to find new hits following the loss of Family Matters and Step by Step to CBS as part of its own failed attempt at a family-oriented Friday comedy block in the 1997–98 season. Outside of 20/20, Friday nights remained a weak spot for ABC for the next 11 years.

On April 30, 2000, as a result of a carriage dispute with ABC, Time Warner Cable removed ABC owned-and-operated stations from the cable provider's systems in four markets (WABC-TV in New York City, KABC-TV in Los Angeles, KTRK in Houston and WTVD in Raleigh-Durham). The network had earlier reached an eleventh-hour deal to renew its carriage agreement with the provider on December 31, 1999. ABC filed an emergency petition to the Federal Communications Commission on May 1 to force TWC to restore the affected stations; the FCC ruled in favor of ABC, ordering Time Warner Cable to restore the stations, doing so on the afternoon of May 2. ABC ended the 2000–01 season as the most-watched network, ahead of NBC.

Networks affiliates approved a two-year affiliate agreement in 2002. In September 2006, Disney Chairman/CEO Michael Eisner outlined a proposed realignment of the ABC broadcast network day parts with the similar unit in its cable channels: ABC Saturday mornings with Disney Channels (Toon & Playhouse), ABC daytime with Soapnet and ABC prime time with ABC Family. 2002 saw the debut of the network's first hit reality series, The Bachelor (the elimination-style dating show's success led to a spinoff, The Bachelorette, which premiered the following year, as well as two additional spinoffs that later debuted in the early 2010s).

In 2004, ABC's average viewership declined by ten ratings points, landing the network in fourth place, behind NBC, CBS and Fox (by the following year, the combined season-ending average audience share of ABC, NBC and CBS represented only 32% of U.S. households ). However, during the 2004–05 season, the network experienced unexpected success with new series such as Desperate Housewives, Lost and Grey's Anatomy as well as reality series Dancing with the Stars, which helped ABC rise to second place, jumping ahead of CBS, but behind a surging Fox. On April 21, 2004, Disney announced a restructuring of its Disney Media Networks division with Marvin Jacobs being named president of ABC parent Disney–ABC Television Group, and ESPN president George Bodenheimer becoming co-CEO of the division with Jacobs, as well as president of ABC Sports. On December 7, 2005, ABC Sports and ESPN signed an eight-year broadcast rights agreement with NASCAR, allowing ABC and ESPN to broadcast 17 NASCAR Cup Series races each season (comprising just over half of the 36 races held annually) effective with the 2006 season.

Separation of the radio network
Between May and September 2005, rumors circulated that Disney–ABC was considering a sale of ABC Radio, with Clear Channel Communications and Westwood One (which had earlier purchased NBC's radio division, as well as the distribution rights to CBS's, and the Mutual Broadcasting System during the 1990s) as potential buyers. On October 19, 2005, ABC announced the restructuring of the group into six divisions: Entertainment Communications, Communications Resources, Kids Communications, News Communications, Corporate Communications, and International Communications.

On February 6, 2007, The Walt Disney Company announced an agreement with Citadel Broadcasting to merge the ABC Radio Network with Citadel. The new entity, Citadel Communications, was majority owned (52%) by Disney, in conjunction with Forstmann Little (32%) and former shareholders of Citadel Broadcasting (16%). Citadel eventually merged with Cumulus Media in September 2011.

Entertainment reorganization and struggles with new shows (2007–2009)
In February 2007, Disney announced that it would rename its Touchstone Television production unit as the ABC Television Studio (simplified to ABC Studios by that summer), as part of a corporate move to eliminate secondary production brands such as Buena Vista. In May 2007, ABC unveiled a new image campaign, revolving around the slogan "Start Here", which highlighted the multi-platform availability of ABC's program content.

The Writers Guild of America strike that halted production of network programs for much of the 2007–08 season affected the network in 2007–08 and 2008–09, as various ABC shows that premiered in 2007, such as Dirty Sexy Money, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone and Samantha Who?, did not live to see a third season; other series such as Boston Legal and the U.S. version of Life on Mars suffered from low viewership, despite the former, a spin off of The Practice, being a once-highlighted breakout series when it debuted in 2005. One of the network's strike-replacement programs during that time was the game show Duel, which premiered in December 2007. The program would become a minor success for the network during its initial six-episode run, which led ABC to renew Duel as a regular series starting in April 2008. However, Duel suffered from low viewership during its run as a regular series, and ABC canceled the program after sixteen episodes. On August 15, 2008, Disney denied rumors started by Caris & Co. that it would be selling the ten ABC owned-and-operated stations.

In early 2009, Disney–ABC Television Group merged ABC Entertainment and ABC Studios into a new division, ABC Entertainment Group, which would be responsible for both its production and broadcasting operations. During this reorganization, the group announced that it would lay off 5% of its workforce. On April 2, 2009, Citadel Communications announced that it would rebrand ABC Radio as Citadel Media; however, ABC News continued to provide news content for Citadel. On December 22, Disney–ABC Television Group announced a partnership with Apple Inc. to make individual episodes of ABC and Disney Channel programs available for purchase on iTunes.

Current state
In March 2010, reports suggested that The Walt Disney Company was considering spinning off ABC into an independent company because "it [did not] add a lot of value to Disney's other divisions". The company entered advanced negotiations with two private equity firms to sell ABC; however, the planned sale was cancelled as a result of an FBI investigation into allegations of attempted insider trading by an ex-employee which they later denied.

The network began running into some trouble in the ratings by 2010. That year, the sixth and final season of Lost became the drama's lowest-rated season since its debut in 2004. Ratings for the once instant-hit Ugly Betty collapsed dramatically after it was moved to Fridays at the start of its fourth season in the fall of 2009; an attempt to boost ratings by moving the dramedy to Wednesdays failed, with its ultimate cancellation by the network eliciting negative reaction from the public, and particularly the show's fanbase. With the network's two former hit shows now out of the picture, the network's remaining top veteran shows Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, and another hit drama Brothers & Sisters, all ended the 2009–10 season having recorded their lowest ratings ever.

Among the few bright spots during this season were the midseason crime dramedy Castle as well as the success of two family sitcoms that anchored the network's revamped Wednesday comedy lineup, The Middle and Modern Family, the latter of which was both a critical and commercial success. Shark Tank (based on the Dragon's Den reality format) also became a midseason sleeper hit on Sundays in the spring of 2010; the following season, it became the tentpole of the network's Friday night schedule, gradually helping make ABC a strong competitor (after being paired with 20/20 and beginning with the 2012–13 season, the Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing) against CBS' long-dominant drama/reality lineup on that night for the first time since the "TGIF" lineup ended in 2000.

The network's troubles with sustaining existing series and gaining new hits spilled over into its 2010–11 schedule: ABC's dramas during that season continued to fail, with the midseason forensic investigation drama Body of Proof being the only one that was renewed for a second season. The network also struggled to establish new comedies to support the previous year's debuts, with only late-season premiere Happy Endings earning a second season. Meanwhile, the new lows hit by Brothers & Sisters led to its cancellation, and the previous year's only drama renewal, V, also failed to earn another season after a low-rated midseason run. Despite this and another noticeable ratings decline, ABC would manage to outrate NBC for third place by a larger margin than the previous year.

With relatively little buzz surrounding its 2010–11 pilots, compounded by a sexual harassment lawsuit against him, Stephen McPherson resigned as ABC Entertainment Group president on July 27, 2010. Paul Lee (who previously served as the president of sister cable channel ABC Family) was announced as his replacement that same day.

On April 14, 2011, ABC canceled the long-running soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live after 41 and 43 years on the air, respectively (following backlash from fans, ABC sold the rights to both shows to Prospect Park, which eventually revived the soaps on Hulu for one additional season in 2013 and with both companies suing one another for allegations of interference with the process of reviving the shows, failure to pay licensing fees and issues over ABC's use of certain characters from One Life to Live on General Hospital during the transition ). The talk/lifestyle show that replaced One Life to Live, The Revolution, failed to generate satisfactory ratings and was in turn canceled after only seven months. The 2011–12 season saw ABC drop to fourth place in the 18–49 demographic despite renewing a handful of new shows (including freshmen dramas Scandal, Revenge and Once Upon a Time) for second seasons.

In 2012, ABC News and Univision Communications announced a partnership to launch an English-language cable news channel primarily aimed at younger English-speaking Hispanics; the new network, Fusion, launched on October 28, 2013. The 2012–13 season failed to live up to the previous year, with only one drama, Nashville, and one comedy, The Neighbors, earning a second season renewal.

The 2013–14 season was a slight improvement for ABC with three new hits in The Goldbergs, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Resurrection, all of which were renewed; however, that season saw the cancellations of holdovers The Neighbors (which languished in its new Friday time slot despite being bookended by Last Man Standing and Shark Tank) and Suburgatory. NBC, which had lagged behind ABC for eight years, finished the season in first place in the 18–49 demographic for the first time since 2004, and in second place in total viewership behind long-dominant CBS. ABC itself would finish the season in third place as Fox crashed to fourth in both demographics.

The 2014–15 season saw moderate hits in Black-ish (the first series on the four major U.S. networks to feature a predominately African-American cast since 2006) and major successes in How to Get Away with Murder (which, alongside Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, became one of the centerpieces of a new Thursday drama lineup, "TGIT", composed of dramas executive produced by Shonda Rhimes). New hits came in with fellow new comedy Fresh Off the Boat, a new drama Secrets and Lies and a low rated but critically acclaimed show American Crime, all of which were renewed. However, that season saw cancellations of Resurrection and Revenge.

The 2015–16 season saw breakout hits such as Quantico, The Real O'Neals, The Catch, and Dr. Ken. On April 18, 2016, ABC and ABC Productions announced that Stana Katic and Tamala Jones would not return for Castle's ninth season, should it be renewed. Despite several other cast members having signed on for a ninth season, on May 12, 2016, it was announced that the show would be cancelled instead; the final episode aired on May 16, 2016.

The 2016–17 season saw a successful expansion of the network's Tuesday night comedy line-up by an extra hour, with long-time Wednesday staple The Middle leading the night, along with the returning Fresh Off the Boat and The Real O'Neals, and new series American Housewife, Imaginary Mary, and Downward Dog. Wednesday's comedy block, with The Goldbergs leading the night in place of The Middle, introduced Speechless. Both American Housewife and Speechless were renewed for second seasons. This season also saw the cancellation of long-running sitcom Last Man Standing and Dr. Ken. The former stirred controversy due to allegations that Last Man Standing was cancelled due to the star Tim Allen's and the show's right-leaning viewpoints. ABC also saw the success of freshman series Designated Survivor. However, the previous season's breakout hit Quantico saw its ratings decline during its sophomore year.

The 2017–18 season saw ABC acquire a breakout hit with The Good Doctor, which lead to the series getting an early full-season pickup. Additionally, ABC revived former Fox series American Idol which premiered during the mid-season. As a result, veteran dramas Once Upon a Time and Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were displaced to Friday nights, while Shark Tank was moved to Sunday nights in order to accommodate a time slot for American Idol. This season also saw veteran series The Middle, Once Upon a Time, and Scandal end their runs. ABC also revived Roseanne, which originally ran from 1988 to 1997, for a tenth season, which saw ratings success. While Roseanne was initially renewed for an eleventh season, the series was abruptly cancelled due to a Twitter scandal involving Roseanne Barr. However, the series returned without Barr, under the new title of The Conners.

Leadership reshuffle
A major reshuffle in executive leadership also occurred after Disney announced its acquisition of 21st Century Fox On November 16, 2018, Freeform President Karey Burke had succeeded Channing Dungey as head of ABC Entertainment. It was also announced that former head of 20th Century Fox Television Dana Walden had been appointed to take over as head of ABC, Freeform, and all other Disney television-studio operations. Former Fox executive Peter Rice will also manage non-sports television programming for ABC and other Disney networks as well.

Programming
The ABC television network provides 89 hours of regularly scheduled network programming each week. The network provides 22 hours of prime time programming to affiliated stations from 8:00–11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday (all times Eastern and Pacific Time) and 7:00–11:00 p.m. on Sundays.

Daytime programming is also provided from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. weekdays (with a one-hour break at 12:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific for stations to air newscasts, other locally produced programming such as talk shows, or syndicated programs) featuring the talk/lifestyle shows The View and The Chew and the soap opera General Hospital. ABC News programming includes Good Morning America from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. weekdays (along with one-hour weekend editions); nightly editions of ABC World News Tonight (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into the program's timeslot), the Sunday political talk show This Week, early morning news programs World News Now and America This Morning and the late night newsmagazine Nightline. Late nights feature the weeknight talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

The network's three-hour Saturday morning children's programming timeslot is programmed by syndication distributor Litton Entertainment, which produces Litton's Weekend Adventure under an arrangement in which the programming block is syndicated exclusively to ABC owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, rather than being leased out directly by the network to Litton.

Daytime
ABC's daytime schedule currently features the talk show The View and the soap opera General Hospital, the latter of which is the longest-running entertainment program in the history of the ABC television network, having aired since 1963. ABC also broadcasts the morning news program Good Morning America and has done so since 1975, though that program is not considered to be part of the ABC Daytime block. In addition to the long-running All My Children (1970–2011) and One Life to Live (1968–2012), notable past soap operas seen on the daytime lineup include Ryan's Hope, Dark Shadows, Loving, The City and Port Charles. ABC also aired the last nine years of the Procter & Gamble-produced soap The Edge of Night, following its cancellation by CBS in 1975. ABC Daytime has also aired a number of game shows, including The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, Let's Make a Deal, Password, Split Second, The $10,000/$20,000 Pyramid, Family Feud, The Better Sex, Trivia Trap, All-Star Blitz and Hot Streak.

Sports
Sports programming is provided on occasion, primarily on weekend afternoons; since 2006, the ABC Sports division has been defunct, with all sports telecasts on ABC being produced in association with sister cable network ESPN under the branding ESPN on ABC. While ABC has, in the past, aired notable sporting events such as the NFL's Monday Night Football, and various college football bowl games (including, most prominently for a period, the Bowl Championship Series), general industry trends and changes in rights have prompted reductions in sports broadcasts on broadcast television (the BCS's successor, the College Football Playoff and national championship, air exclusively on ESPN).

ABC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with its package (under the NBA on ESPN branding) traditionally beginning with its Christmas Day games, followed by a series of Sunday afternoon games through the remainder of the season, weekend playoff games, and all games of the NBA Finals. During college football season, ABC typically carries an afternoon doubleheader on Saturdays, along with the primetime Saturday Night Football. ABC also airs coverage of selected bowl games. The Saturday afternoon lineup outside of football season typically features airings of ESPN Films documentaries or other studio programs under the banner ESPN Sports Saturday, while Sunday afternoons usually feature either brokered programming, or encore and burn-off airings of ABC programs.

Specials
ABC currently holds the broadcast rights to the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards (which are rotated across all four major networks on a year-to-year basis), American Music Awards, and the Country Music Association Awards (along with two associated specials, the CMA Music Festival and CMA Country Christmas). ABC has also aired the Miss America competition from 1954 to 1956, 1997 to 2005 (with the television rights being assumed by cable channel TLC in 2006, when the event moved from its longtime home in Atlantic City to Las Vegas, before returning to Atlantic City in 2013) and since 2011. Under its current contract with the Miss America Organization, ABC continued to broadcast the event through 2016.

Since 2000, ABC has also owned the television rights to most of the Peanuts television specials, having acquired the broadcast rights from CBS, which originated the specials in 1965 with the debut of A Charlie Brown Christmas (other Peanuts specials broadcast annually by ABC, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, include It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving). ABC also broadcasts the annual Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade special on Christmas morning.

Since 1974, ABC has generally aired Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on New Year's Eve, hosted first by its creator Dick Clark, and later by his successor Ryan Seacrest. The only exception was in 1999, when ABC instead broadcast ABC 2000—a day-long telecast produced by ABC News and hosted by Peter Jennings, covering festivities from around the world (although Clark would join Jennings to cover Times Square). ABC is also among one of several broadcasters of the Tournament of Roses Parade the next day (although the Rose Bowl Game itself now airs exclusively on ESPN after previously airing on ABC).

In 2015, ABC began airing the ESPY Awards, which normally aired on ESPN before 2015. In the ABC debut of the ESPY's, Caitlyn Jenner was awarded the Arthur Ash Award for courage, after she announced in a 20/20 interview, that she was becoming transgender.

Programming library
ABC owns nearly all its in-house television and theatrical productions made from the 1970s onward, with the exception of certain co-productions with producers (for example, The Commish is now owned by the estate of its producer, Stephen Cannell). Worldwide video rights are currently owned by various companies, for example, MGM Home Entertainment via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment owns U.S. video rights to many of ABC's feature films.

When the FCC imposed its fin-syn rules in 1970, ABC proactively created two companies: Worldvision Enterprises as a syndication distributor, and ABC Circle Films as a production company. However, between the publication and implementation of these regulations, the separation of the network's catalog was made in 1973. The broadcast rights to pre-1973 productions were transferred to Worldvision, which became independent in the same year. The company has been sold several times since Paramount Television acquired it in 1999, and has most recently been absorbed into CBS Television Distribution, a unit of CBS Corporation. Nonetheless, Worldvision sold portions of its catalog, including the Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera libraries, to Turner Broadcasting System in 1991. With Disney's 1996 purchase of ABC, ABC Circle Films was absorbed into Touchstone Television, a Disney subsidiary which in turn was renamed ABC Studios in 2007.

Also part of the library are most films in the David O. Selznick library, the Cinerama Productions/Palomar theatrical library (with the exception of those films produced in Cinerama which are now under the control of Pacific Theatres and Flicker Alley), the Selmur Productions catalog that the network acquired some years back, and the in-house productions it continues to produce (such as America's Funniest Home Videos, Grey's Anatomy, Modern Family, General Hospital, ABC News productions, ABC Studios and 20th Century Fox Television), although Disney–ABC Domestic Television (formerly known as Buena Vista Television) handles domestic television distribution, while Disney–ABC International Television (formerly known as Buena Vista International Television) handles international television distribution.

Stations
ksat.com

Since its inception, ABC has had many affiliated stations, which include WABC-TV and WPVI-TV, the first two stations to carry the network's programming. , ABC has eight owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 236 additional television stations encompassing 49 states, the District of Columbia, four U.S. possessions, Bermuda and Saba; this makes ABC the largest U.S. broadcast television network by total number of affiliates. The network has an estimated national reach of 97.76% of all households in the United States (or 305,477,424 Americans with at least one television set).

Currently, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware are the only U.S. states where ABC does not have a locally licensed affiliate (New Jersey is served by New York City O&O WABC-TV and Philadelphia O&O WPVI-TV; Rhode Island is served by New Bedford, Massachusetts-licensed WLNE, though outside of the transmitter, all other operations for the station are based in Providence; and Delaware is served by WPVI and Salisbury, Maryland affiliate WMDT). ABC maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in a few markets, such as Birmingham, Alabama (WBMA-LD), Lima, Ohio (WPNM-LP) and South Bend, Indiana (WBND-LD). In some markets, including the former two mentioned, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a co-owned/co-managed full-power television station.

The network has the unusual distinction of having separately owned and operated affiliates which serve the same market in Tampa, Florida (WFTS-TV and WWSB), Lincoln, Nebraska (KLKN-TV and KHGI-TV), and Grand Rapids, Michigan (WZZM and WOTV), with an analogous situation arising in Kansas City, Missouri (KMBC-TV and KQTV). KQTV is licensed to St. Joseph, Missouri, which is designated by Nielsen as a separate market from Kansas City despite being located within 55 mi of one another (though in the 2010s through digital subchannels, KQTV's competitor in the market, News-Press & Gazette Company, has established locally based affiliates of the other four major networks and Telemundo on three low-power stations to end St. Joseph's dependence on Kansas City), while WWSB, KHGI and WOTV serve areas that do not receive an adequate signal from their market's primary ABC affiliate (in the case of WWSB, this dates back to when WTSP was Tampa's primary ABC affiliate prior to 1994, with the former being necessitated to serve the southern part of the Tampa market including the station's city of license, Sarasota, due to WTSP's transmitter being short-spaced to avoid interfering with the analog signal of Miami affiliate WPLG – which like WTSP, broadcast on VHF channel 10).

The Sinclair Broadcast Group is the largest operator of ABC stations by numerical total, owning or providing services to 28 ABC affiliates and two additional subchannel-only affiliates; Sinclair owns the largest ABC subchannel affiliate by market size, WABM-DT2/WDBB-DT2 in the Birmingham market, which serve as repeaters of WBMA-LD (which itself is also simulcast on a subchannel of former WBMA satellite WGWW, owned by Sinclair partner company Howard Stirk Holdings). The E. W. Scripps Company is the largest operator of ABC stations in terms of overall market reach, owning 15 ABC-affiliated stations (including affiliates in larger markets such as Cleveland, Phoenix, Detroit and Denver), and through its ownership of Phoenix affiliate KNXV, Las Vegas affiliate KTNV-TV and Tucson affiliate KGUN-TV, it is the only provider of ABC programming for the majority of Arizona (outside the Yuma-El Centro market) and Southern Nevada. Scripps also owns and operates several ABC stations in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, including in Denver, San Diego, Bakersfield, California, and Boise, Idaho, and when combined with the ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles, Fresno, and San Francisco, the affiliations from the News-Press & Gazette Company in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Yuma-El Centro, and Colorado Springs-Pueblo, and Sinclair's affiliations in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, these four entities control the access of ABC network programming in most of the Western United States, particularly in terms of audience reach.

Facilities and studios
All of ABC's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates have had their own facilities and studios, but transverse entities have been created to produce national programming. As a result, television series were produced by ABC Circle Films beginning in 1962 and by Touchstone Television beginning in 1985, before Touchstone was reorganized as ABC Studios in February 2007. Since the 1950s, ABC has had two main production facilities: the ABC Television Center (now The Prospect Studios) on Prospect Avenue in Hollywood, California, shared with the operations of KABC-TV until 1999; and the ABC Television Center, East, a set of studios located throughout the New York City.

In addition to the headquarters building on Riverside Drive, other ABC facilities in Burbank include a building at 3800 West Alameda, known as "Burbank Center," which is primarily associated with Disney–ABC Television Group, and functions as the headquarters and broadcast center for Disney Junior, Disney Channel, Disney XD, FreeForm, as well as Radio Disney. Additionally, Disney Television Animation has a facility on Empire Avenue near the Hollywood Burbank Airport. In nearby Glendale, Disney/ABC also maintains the Grand Central Creative Campus, which houses other company subsidiaries, including the studios of KABC-TV and the Los Angeles bureau of ABC News.

ABC owns several facilities in New York grouped mainly on West 66th Street. The main set of facilities is on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 66th Street. In total, ABC's facilities occupy a combined 9755 m² of the 14864 m² of the blocks they encompass. The aforementioned set includes:
 * 77 West 66th Street, a 22-story building built in 1988 on a 175 x plot, built partially on the site of the former St. Nicholas Arena;
 * A pair of buildings at 147–155 Columbus Avenue (with one building comprising 10 stories and the other seven, and both containing glass bays connecting them to each other), constructed on a 150 x plot;
 * 30 West 67th Street, a 15-story building with a facade on 67th Street on a 100 x plot;
 * The former First Battery of the New York National Guard, a five-story building located at number 56 on the other side of the street, on a 174 x plot;
 * ABC also owns 7, 17 and 47 West 66th Street, three buildings on a 375 x plot; the first two being the original Durland's Riding Academy buildings;
 * From 1983 to 2013, Disney leased 70000 sqft at 157 Columbus Avenue, just on the other side of 67th Street.

ABC also owns the Times Square Studios at 1500 Broadway on land in Times Square owned by a development fund for the 42nd Street Project; opened in 1999, Good Morning America and Nightline are broadcast from this particular facility. ABC News has premises a little further on West 66th Street, in a six-story building occupying a 196 x plot at 121–135 West End Avenue. The block of West 66th street between Central Park West and Columbus Ave which houses the ABC News building was renamed Peter Jennings Way in 2006 in honor of the recently deceased longtime ABC News chief anchor and anchor of World News Tonight.

On July 9, 2018, the Walt Disney Company announced that it was selling its two West 66th Street campuses (except for the National Guard Amory) to Silverstein Properties and purchasing one square block of property in lower Manhattan to build a new New York based broadcast center.

Video-on-demand services
ABC maintains several video on demand services for delayed viewing of the network's programming, including a traditional VOD service called ABC on Demand, which is carried on most traditional cable and IPTV providers. The Walt Disney Company is also a part-owner of Hulu (as part of a consortium that includes, among other parties, the respective parent companies of NBC and Fox, NBCUniversal and 21st Century Fox), and has offered full-length episodes of most of ABC's programming through the streaming service since July 6, 2009 (which are available for viewing on Hulu's website and mobile app, and since July 2016, through Yahoo! View as part of Hulu's spin-off of their free service to Yahoo), as part of an agreement reached in April that year that also allowed Disney to acquire a 27% ownership stake in Hulu.

In May 2013, ABC launched "WatchABC", a revamp of its traditional multi-platform streaming services encompassing the network's existing streaming portal at ABC.com and a mobile app for smartphones and tablet computers; in addition to providing full-length episodes of ABC programs, the service allows live programming streams of local ABC affiliates in select markets (the first such offering by a U.S. broadcast network). Similar to sister network ESPN's WatchESPN service, live streams of ABC stations are only available to authenticated subscribers of participating pay television providers in certain markets. New York City O&O WABC-TV and Philadelphia O&O WPVI-TV were the first stations to offer streams of their programming on the service (with a free preview for non-subscribers through June 2013), with the six remaining ABC O&Os offering streams by the start of the 2013–14 season. Hearst Television also reached a deal to offer streams of its ABC affiliates (including stations in Boston, Kansas City, Milwaukee and West Palm Beach) on the service, though these stations are only available for live-streaming for DirecTV subscribers.

In November 2015, it was reported that ABC had been developing a slate of original digital series for the WatchABC service, internally codenamed "ABC3", with one series set to feature Iliza Shlesinger. In July 2016, ABC re-launched its streaming platforms, dropping the "WatchABC" brand, adding a streaming library of 38 classic ABC series, as well as introducing seven original short-form series under the blanket branding ABCd.

The most recent episodes of the network's shows are usually made available on the ABC app, Hulu and ABC on Demand the day after their original broadcast. In addition, ABC on Demand (like the video-on-demand television services provided by the other U.S. broadcast networks) disallows fast forwarding of accessed content. Restrictions implemented on January 7, 2014 restrict streaming of the most recent episode of any ABC program on Hulu and the ABC app until eight days after their initial broadcast, in order to encourage live or same-week (via both DVR and cable on demand) viewing, with day-after-air streaming on either service limited to subscribers of participating pay television providers (such as Comcast, Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable) using an ISP account via an authenticated user login.

ABC HD
ABC's network feeds are transmitted in 720p high definition, the native resolution format for The Walt Disney Company's U.S. television properties. However, most of Hearst Television's 16 ABC-affiliated stations transmit the network's programming in 1080i HD, while 11 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry ABC programming on a digital subchannel or because a primary feed ABC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD.

ABC began its conversion to high definition with the launch of its simulcast feed, ABC HD, on September 16, 2001 at the start of the 2001–02 season, with its scripted prime time series becoming the first shows to upgrade to the format. The network's slate of freshmen scripted series were broadcast in HD from their debuts, while all scripted series held over from the 2000–01 season were converted from standard-definition to high definition beginning that season.

With the 2011 cancellation of Supernanny, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition became the only remaining program on the network's schedule that was broadcast in 4:3 standard definition. All of the network's programming has been presented in HD since January 2012 (with the exception of certain holiday specials produced prior to 2005 – such as the Peanuts specials – which continue to be presented in 4:3 SD), when Extreme Makeover: Home Edition ended its run as a regular series and One Life to Live (which had been presented in 16:9 standard definition since 2010) also ended its ABC run. The affiliate-syndicated Saturday morning E/I block Litton's Weekend Aventure is also broadcast in HD, and was the first children's program block on any U.S. broadcast network to feature programs available in the format upon its September 2011 debut.

On September 1, 2016, ABC began to use 16:9 framing for all of most graphical imaging (primarily the network's logo bug, in-program promotions and generic closing credit sequences as well as sports telecasts, where the BottomLine and scoreboard elements now extend outside the 4:3 frame), requiring its stations and pay television providers to display its programming in a compulsory widescreen format, either in high definition or standard definition; with the change, some programs (such as Grey's Anatomy, The Goldbergs and Quantico) also began positioning their main on-screen credits outside the 4:3 aspect ratio. This left CBS and The CW as the last two major networks to continue to prefer 4:3 framing for graphics, with CBS converting to 16:9 framing effective September 24, 2018.

Visual identity
The ABC logo has evolved many times since the network's creation in 1943. The network's first logo, introduced in 1946, consisted of a television screen containing the letters "T" and "V", with a vertical ABC microphone in the center, referencing the network's roots in radio. When the ABC-UPT merger was finalized in 1953, the network introduced a new logo based on the seal of the Federal Communications Commission, with the letters "ABC" enclosed in a circular shield surmounted by the bald eagle. In 1957, just before the television network began its first color broadcasts, the ABC logo consisted of a tiny lowercase "abc" in the center of a large lowercase letter a, a design known as the "ABC Circle A".

In 1962, graphic designer Paul Rand redesigned the ABC logo into its best-known (and current) form, with the lowercase letters "abc" enclosed in a single black circle. The new logo debuted on-air for ABC's promos at the start of the 1963–64 season. The letters are strongly reminiscent of the Bauhaus typeface designed by Herbert Bayer in the 1920s, but also share similarities with several other fonts, such as ITC Avant Garde and Horatio, and most closely resembling Chalet. The logo's simplicity made it easier to redesign and duplicate, which conferred a benefit for ABC (mostly before the advent of computer graphics). A color version of this logo was also developed around 1963, and animated as a brief 10-second intro to be shown before the then-small handful of network programs broadcast in color (similar to the NBC "Laramie" peacock intro used during that era). The "a" was rendered in red, the "b" in blue, and the "c" in green, against the same single black circle. A variant of this color logo, with the colored letters against a white circle, was also commonly used throughout the 1960s.

The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of many graphical imaging packages for the network which based the logo's setting mainly on special lighting effects then under development including white, blue, pink, rainbow neon and glittering dotted lines. Among the "ABC Circle" logo's many variants was a 1977 ID sequence that featured a bubble on a black background representing the circle with glossy gold letters, and as such, was the first ABC identification card to have a three-dimensional appearance.

In 1983, for the 40th anniversary of the network's founding, ID sequences had the logo appear in a gold CGI design on a blue background, accompanied by the slogan "That Special Feeling" in a script font. Ten years later, in 1993, the "ABC Circle" logo reverted to its classic white-on-black color scheme, but with gloss effects on both the circle and the letters, and a bronze border surrounding the circle. The ABC logo first appeared as a on-screen bug in the 1993–94 season, appearing initially only for 60 seconds at the beginning of an act or segment, before appearing throughout programs (except during commercial breaks) beginning in the 1995–96 season; the respective iterations of the translucent logo bug were also incorporated within program promotions until the 2011–12 season.

During the 1997–98 season, the network began using a minimalist graphical identity, designed by Pittard Sullivan, featuring a small black-and-white "ABC Circle" logo on a yellow background (promotions during this time also featured a sequence of still photos of the stars of its programs during the timeslot card as well as the schedule sequence that began each night's prime time lineup). A new four-note theme tune was introduced alongside the package, based around the network's "We Love TV" image campaign introduced in January 1998, creating an audio signature on par with the NBC chimes, CBS' various three-note soundmarks (including the current version used since 1992) and the Fox Fanfare. The four-note signature has been updated with every television season thereafter (though variants of it remain in use during the production company vanity cards shown following the closing credits of most programs).

In 2000, ABC launched a web-based promotional campaign focused around its circle logo, also called "the dot", in which comic book character Little Dot prompted visitors to "download the dot", a program which would cause the ABC logo to fly around the screen and settle in the bottom-right corner. The network hired the Troika Design Group to design and produce its 2001–02 identity, which continued using the black-and-yellow coloring of the logo and featured dots and stripes in various promotional and identification spots.

On June 16, 2007, ABC began to phase in a new imaging campaign for the upcoming 2007–08 season, "Start Here". Also developed by Troika, the on-air design was intended to emphasize the availability of ABC content across multiple platforms (in particular, using a system of icons representing different devices, such as television, computers and mobile devices), and "simplify and bring a lot more consistency and continuity to the visual representation of ABC". The ABC logo was also significantly redesigned as part of the transition, with a glossy "ball" effect that was specifically designed for HD. On-air, the logo was accompanied by animated water and ribbon effects. Red ribbons were used to represent the entertainment division, while blue ribbons were used for ABC News.

A revised version of the ABC logo was introduced for promotions for the 2013–14 season during the network's upfront presentation on May 14, 2013, and officially introduced on-air on May 30 (although some affiliates implemented the new design prior to then), as part of an overhaul of ABC's identity by design agency LoyalKaspar. The updated logo carries a simpler gloss design than the previous version, and contains lettering more closely resembling Paul Rand's original version of the circle logo. A new custom typeface inspired by the ABC logotype, "ABC Modern", was also created for use in advertising and other promotional materials. The logo was used in various color schemes, with a gold version used primarily for ABC's entertainment divisions, a red version used primarily for ESPN on ABC, steel blue and dark grey versions used primarily by ABC News, and all four colors used interchangeably in promotions. As part of a reimaging for the 2018–19 season, the color variants were dropped in favor of the dark grey version.

The Circle 7 logo, designed in 1962, is also commonly associated with ABC affiliates who broadcast on channel 7, including its flagship local stations WABC-TV (New York City), KABC-TV (Los Angeles), KGO-TV (San Francisco) and WLS-TV (Chicago). This logo was intended to be used somewhat interchangeably by these stations with the main circular network logo, and has itself also become an iconic symbol of the ABC network.

International development
The first attempts to internationalize the ABC television network date back to the 1950s, after Leonard Goldenson, following the United Paramount Theatres model, tried to use on ABC the same strategies he had made in expanding UPT's theater operation to the international market. Leonard Goldenson said that ABC's first international activity was broadcasting the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953; CBS and NBC were delayed in covering the coronation due to flight delays. Goldenson tried international investing, having ABC invest in stations in the Latin American market, acquiring a 51% interest in a network covering Central America and in 1959 established program distributor Worldvision Enterprises Goldenson also cited interest in Japan in the early 1950s, acquiring a 5% stake in two new domestic networks, the Mainichi Broadcasting System in 1951 and Nihon Educational Television in 1957. Goldenson also invested in broadcasting properties in Beirut in the mid-1960s.

The idea was to create a network of wholly and partially owned channels, and affiliates to rebroadcast the network's programs. In 1959, this rerun activity was completed with program syndication, with ABC Films selling programs to networks not owned by ABC. The arrival of satellite television ended the need for ABC to hold interests in other countries; many governments also wanted to increase their independence and strengthen legislation to limit foreign ownership of broadcasting properties. As a result, ABC was forced to sell all of its interests in international networks, mainly in Japan and Latin America, in the 1970s.

A second period of international expansion is linked to that of the ESPN network in the 1990s, and policies enacted in the 2000s by Disney Media Networks (which included the expansion of several of the company's U.S.-based cable networks including Disney Channel and its spinoffs Toon Disney, Playhouse Disney and Jetix; although Disney also sold its 33% stake in European sports channel Eurosport for $155 million in June 2000 ). In contrast to Disney's other channels, ABC is broadcast in the United States, although the network's programming is syndicated in many countries. The policy regarding wholly owned international networks was revived in 2004 when on September 27 of that year, ABC announced the launch of ABC1, a free-to-air channel in the United Kingdom owned by the ABC Group. However, on September 8, 2007, Disney announced that it would discontinue ABC1 citing to the channel's inability to attain sustainable viewership. With ABC1's shutdown that October, the company's attempt to develop ABC International were discontinued.

Prior to the ABC1 closure, on October 10, 2006, Disney–ABC Television Group entered into an agreement with satellite provider Dish TV to carry its ABC News Now channel in India. However, nothing has been heard from either parties thereafter.

Canada
Most Canadians have access to at least one U.S.-based ABC affiliate, either over-the-air (in areas located within proximity to the Canada–United States border) or through a cable, satellite or IPTV provider, although most ABC programs are subject to simultaneous substitution regulations imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that allow pay television providers to replace an American station's signal with the feed of a Canadian broadcaster to protect domestic programming rights and advertising revenue.

Colorado

 * Denver || KRMA-TV || 6.2 || rowspan=5|Rocky Mountain PBS || || || rowspan=5|TBD
 * Durango || KRMU || 20.2 || ||
 * Grand Junction || KRMJ || 18.2 || ||
 * Pueblo || KTSC || 8.2 || ||
 * Steamboat Springs || KRMZ || 24.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Pueblo || KTSC || 8.2 || ||
 * Steamboat Springs || KRMZ || 24.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Steamboat Springs || KRMZ || 24.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Connecticut

 * Bridgeport || WEDW || 49.4 ||rowspan=2| LocusPoint Networks || || rowspan=4|TBD
 * New Haven || WEDY || 65.4 ||
 * Hartford || WEDH || 24.4 || rowspan=2| Connecticut Public Television ||
 * Norwich (serves eastern Connecticut, including New London) || WEDN || 53.4 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Hartford || WEDH || 24.4 || rowspan=2| Connecticut Public Television ||
 * Norwich (serves eastern Connecticut, including New London) || WEDN || 53.4 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

District of Columbia

 * rowspan=2|Washington || WETA-TV || 26.3 || Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association || || 2007– present ||
 * WHUT-TV || 32.2 || Howard University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * WHUT-TV || 32.2 || Howard University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Florida

 * Fort Myers || WGCU || 30.5 || Florida Gulf Coast University || || || rowspan=6|January 16, 2017
 * Jacksonville || WJCT || 7.5 || WJCT, Inc. ||
 * Miami || WPBT || 2.4
 * rowspan=2| South Florida PBS
 * West Palm Beach || WXEL-TV || 42.3 || ||
 * Orlando || WUCF-TV || 24.3 || University of Central Florida ||
 * Panama City || WFSG || 56.4
 * rowspan=2| Florida State University
 * Tallahassee || WFSU-TV || 11.4 || || ||
 * Pensacola || WSRE || 23.4 || Pensacola Junior College || || || TBD
 * Orlando || WUCF-TV || 24.3 || University of Central Florida ||
 * Panama City || WFSG || 56.4
 * rowspan=2| Florida State University
 * Tallahassee || WFSU-TV || 11.4 || || ||
 * Pensacola || WSRE || 23.4 || Pensacola Junior College || || || TBD
 * Tallahassee || WFSU-TV || 11.4 || || ||
 * Pensacola || WSRE || 23.4 || Pensacola Junior College || || || TBD
 * Tallahassee || WFSU-TV || 11.4 || || ||
 * Pensacola || WSRE || 23.4 || Pensacola Junior College || || || TBD
 * Pensacola || WSRE || 23.4 || Pensacola Junior College || || || TBD


 * rowspan=2|Tampa-St. Petersburg
 * WEDU || 3.2 || Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, Inc. || || || TBD
 * WEDQ || 16.2 || University of South Florida || || Currently ||
 * WEDQ || 16.2 || University of South Florida || || Currently ||
 * WEDQ || 16.2 || University of South Florida || || Currently ||


 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Georgia

 * Atlanta || APS (evenings) || 22 (cable-only) || Atlanta Public Schools || September 6, 1999 – 2005 || ||
 * Athens (Atlanta) || WGTV || 8.4 || rowspan=9|Georgia Public Broadcasting || || || rowspan=9|January 16, 2017
 * Chatsworth || WNGH-TV || 18.4 ||
 * Cochran || WMUM-TV || 29.4 || ||
 * Columbus || WJSP-TV || 28.4 || ||
 * Dawson || WACS-TV || 25.4 || ||
 * Pelham || WABW-TV || 14.4 || ||
 * Savannah || WVAN-TV || 9.4 || ||
 * Waycross (serves Valdosta and Brunswick) || WXGA-TV || 8.4 || ||
 * Wrens || WCES-TV || 20.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Dawson || WACS-TV || 25.4 || ||
 * Pelham || WABW-TV || 14.4 || ||
 * Savannah || WVAN-TV || 9.4 || ||
 * Waycross (serves Valdosta and Brunswick) || WXGA-TV || 8.4 || ||
 * Wrens || WCES-TV || 20.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Waycross (serves Valdosta and Brunswick) || WXGA-TV || 8.4 || ||
 * Wrens || WCES-TV || 20.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Hawaii

 * Honolulu || KHET || 11.2 || rowspan=2|Hawaii Public Television || || rowspan=2|Current ||
 * Wailuku (serves Maui) || KMEB || 10.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Wailuku (serves Maui) || KMEB || 10.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Idaho

 * Boise || KAID || 4.5 || rowspan=5|Idaho State Department of Education || || || February 1, 2018
 * Coeur D'Alene (part of the Spokane, Washington market) || KCDT || 26.5 || ||
 * Moscow || KUID-TV || 12.5 || ||
 * Pocatello || KISU-TV || 10.5 || ||
 * Twin Falls || KIPT || 13.5 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Pocatello || KISU-TV || 10.5 || ||
 * Twin Falls || KIPT || 13.5 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Twin Falls || KIPT || 13.5 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Illinois

 * Carbondale || WSIU-TV || 8.5
 * rowspan=2| Southern Illinois University || ||
 * rowspan=2| TBD
 * Olney || WUSI-TV || 19.5 || ||
 * Chicago || WTTW || 11.4 || Window to the World Communications || ||
 * rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Peoria || WTVP || 47.2 || Illinois Valley Public Telecommunications Corporation || ||
 * Urbana (Springfield) || WILL-TV || 12.2 || University of Illinois || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Peoria || WTVP || 47.2 || Illinois Valley Public Telecommunications Corporation || ||
 * Urbana (Springfield) || WILL-TV || 12.2 || University of Illinois || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Urbana (Springfield) || WILL-TV || 12.2 || University of Illinois || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Indiana

 * Bloomington || WTIU || 30.4 || Indiana University || || .3 (12:00-6:00 p.m.) TIU Family (ended January 30, 2017)|| January 30, 2017
 * Fort Wayne || WFWA || 39.2 || Fort Wayne Public Television || || || January 16, 2017
 * Indianapolis || WFYI || 20.2 || Metropolitan Indianapolis Public Broadcasting || || || rowspan=2|TBD
 * South Bend || WNIT || 34.3 || Michiana Public Broadcasting || ||
 * Vincennes (serves Southwestern Indiana including Evansville and Terre Haute) || WVUT || 22.3 || Vincennes University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * South Bend || WNIT || 34.3 || Michiana Public Broadcasting || ||
 * Vincennes (serves Southwestern Indiana including Evansville and Terre Haute) || WVUT || 22.3 || Vincennes University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Vincennes (serves Southwestern Indiana including Evansville and Terre Haute) || WVUT || 22.3 || Vincennes University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Iowa

 * Council Bluffs || KBIN-TV || 32.4 || rowspan=9|Iowa Public Television || || rowspan=9|current (all .2) IPTV Learn (10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.) || rowspan=9|TBD
 * Davenport || KQIN || 36.4
 * Des Moines || KDIN-TV || 11.4
 * Fort Dodge || KTIN || 21.4
 * Iowa City || KIIN || 12.4
 * Mason City || KYIN || 24.4
 * Red Oak || KHIN || 36.4
 * Sioux City || KSIN-TV || 27.4
 * Waterloo || KRIN || 32.4
 * colspan=7|
 * Mason City || KYIN || 24.4
 * Red Oak || KHIN || 36.4
 * Sioux City || KSIN-TV || 27.4
 * Waterloo || KRIN || 32.4
 * colspan=7|
 * Sioux City || KSIN-TV || 27.4
 * Waterloo || KRIN || 32.4
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Kansas

 * Colby || KWKS || 19.2 || rowspan=4|Smoky Hills Public Television || || || rowspan=4|January 16, 2017
 * Dodge City || KDCK || 21.2 || ||
 * Hays || KOOD || 9.2 || ||
 * Lakin || KSWK || 3.2 || ||
 * Topeka || KTWU || 11.2 || Washburn University || || Current ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Lakin || KSWK || 3.2 || ||
 * Topeka || KTWU || 11.2 || Washburn University || || Current ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Topeka || KTWU || 11.2 || Washburn University || || Current ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Kentucky

 * Ashland || WKAS || 25.4 || rowspan=15|Kentucky Authority for Educational Television || || || rowspan=15|January 16, 2017
 * Bowling Green || WKGB-TV || 53.4 || ||
 * Covington || WCVN-TV || 54.4 || ||
 * Elizabethtown || WKZT-TV || 23.4 || ||
 * Hazard || WKHA || 35.4 || ||
 * Lexington || WKLE || 46.4 || ||
 * Louisville || WKPC-TV || 15.4 || ||
 * Madisonville || WKMA-TV || 35.4 || ||
 * Morehead || WKMR || 38.4 || ||
 * Murray || WKMU || 21.4 || ||
 * Owensboro || WKOH || 31.4 || ||
 * Owenton || WKON || 52.4 || ||
 * Paducah || WKPD || 29.4 || ||
 * Pikeville || WKPI-TV || 22.4 || ||
 * Somerset || WKSO-TV || 29.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Morehead || WKMR || 38.4 || ||
 * Murray || WKMU || 21.4 || ||
 * Owensboro || WKOH || 31.4 || ||
 * Owenton || WKON || 52.4 || ||
 * Paducah || WKPD || 29.4 || ||
 * Pikeville || WKPI-TV || 22.4 || ||
 * Somerset || WKSO-TV || 29.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Paducah || WKPD || 29.4 || ||
 * Pikeville || WKPI-TV || 22.4 || ||
 * Somerset || WKSO-TV || 29.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Somerset || WKSO-TV || 29.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Louisiana

 * Alexandria || KLPA-TV || 25.2
 * rowspan=5|Louisiana Educational Television Authority || ||
 * rowspan=5|January 16, 2017
 * Baton Rouge || WLPB-TV || 27.2 || ||
 * Lafayette || KLPB-TV || 24.2 || ||
 * Lake Charles || KLTL-TV || 24.2 || ||
 * Monroe || KLTM-TV || 13.2 || ||
 * New Orleans || WYES-TV || 12.4 || Greater New Orleans Educational Television Foundation || || || TBD
 * Shreveport || KLTS-TV || 24.2 || Louisiana Educational Television Authority || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Monroe || KLTM-TV || 13.2 || ||
 * New Orleans || WYES-TV || 12.4 || Greater New Orleans Educational Television Foundation || || || TBD
 * Shreveport || KLTS-TV || 24.2 || Louisiana Educational Television Authority || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Shreveport || KLTS-TV || 24.2 || Louisiana Educational Television Authority || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Massachusetts

 * Boston || WGBX-TV || 44.4
 * rowspan=2|WGBH Educational Foundation || || || rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Springfield || WGBY-TV || 57.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Springfield || WGBY-TV || 57.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Maryland

 * Annapolis || WMPT || 22.3 || rowspan=6|Maryland Public Television || rowspan=6|MPT Select (daytime hours only) || rowspan=6|January 16, 2017
 * Baltimore || WMPB || 67.3 ||
 * Frederick || WFPT || 62.3 ||
 * Hagerstown || WWPB || 31.3 ||
 * Oakland || WGPT || 36.3 ||
 * Salisbury || WCPB || 28.3 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Hagerstown || WWPB || 31.3 ||
 * Oakland || WGPT || 36.3 ||
 * Salisbury || WCPB || 28.3 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Salisbury || WCPB || 28.3 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Maine

 * Augusta || WCBB || 10.4 || rowspan=5|Maine Public Broadcasting || ||
 * rowspan=5|January 16, 2017
 * Biddeford (Portland)|| WMEA-TV || 26.4 || ||
 * Calais || WMED-TV || 13.4 || ||
 * Orono (Bangor) || WMEB-TV || 12.4 || ||
 * Presque Isle || WMEM-TV || 10.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Orono (Bangor) || WMEB-TV || 12.4 || ||
 * Presque Isle || WMEM-TV || 10.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Presque Isle || WMEM-TV || 10.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Michigan

 * Alpena || WCML || 6.2
 * rowspan=4| Central Michigan University || ||
 * rowspan=3| January 16, 2017
 * Cadillac || WCMV || 27.2 || ||
 * Mount Pleasant (part of the Bay City/Saginaw/Midland market) || WCMU-TV || 26.2 || ||
 * Flint || WCMZ-TV || 28.2 || || || January 16, 2017 – April 23, 2018
 * Bad Axe (serves Saginaw and Bay City) || WDCQ-TV || 19.4 || Delta College || || Current ||
 * Detroit || WTVS || 56.2 || Detroit Educational Television Foundation || || || January 16, 2017
 * East Lansing || WKAR-TV || 23.4 || Michigan State University || || || January 16, 2017
 * Grand Rapids || WGVU-TV || 35.5 || rowspan=2|Grand Valley State University || || || rowspan=2|TBD
 * Kalamazoo || WGVK || 52.5 || ||
 * Marquette || WNMU || 13.2 || Northern Michigan University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Detroit || WTVS || 56.2 || Detroit Educational Television Foundation || || || January 16, 2017
 * East Lansing || WKAR-TV || 23.4 || Michigan State University || || || January 16, 2017
 * Grand Rapids || WGVU-TV || 35.5 || rowspan=2|Grand Valley State University || || || rowspan=2|TBD
 * Kalamazoo || WGVK || 52.5 || ||
 * Marquette || WNMU || 13.2 || Northern Michigan University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Kalamazoo || WGVK || 52.5 || ||
 * Marquette || WNMU || 13.2 || Northern Michigan University || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Minnesota

 * Appleton || KWCM-TV || 10.5 || West Central Minnesota Educational Television || || || TBD
 * Bemidji || KAWE || 9.3 || rowspan=2|Northern Minnesota Public Television || || || rowspan=4|January 16, 2017
 * Brainerd || KAWB || 22.3 || ||
 * Crookston || KCGE-DT || 16.4 || Prairie Public Television || ||
 * St. Paul || KTCA-TV || 2.4 || Twin Cities PBS || ||
 * Worthington || KSMN || 20.5 || West Central Minnesota Educational Television || || || TBD
 * colspan=7|
 * Crookston || KCGE-DT || 16.4 || Prairie Public Television || ||
 * St. Paul || KTCA-TV || 2.4 || Twin Cities PBS || ||
 * Worthington || KSMN || 20.5 || West Central Minnesota Educational Television || || || TBD
 * colspan=7|
 * Worthington || KSMN || 20.5 || West Central Minnesota Educational Television || || || TBD
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Mississippi

 * Biloxi || WMAH-TV || 19.2 || rowspan=8|Mississippi Public Broadcasting || || || rowspan=8|January 16, 2017
 * Booneville || WMAE-TV || 12.2 || ||
 * Bude || WMAU-TV || 17.2 || ||
 * Greenwood || WMAO-TV || 23.2 || ||
 * Jackson || WMPN-TV || 29.2 || ||
 * Meridian || WMAW-TV || 14.2 || ||
 * Mississippi State || WMAB-TV || 2.2 || ||
 * Oxford || WMAV-TV || 18.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Jackson || WMPN-TV || 29.2 || ||
 * Meridian || WMAW-TV || 14.2 || ||
 * Mississippi State || WMAB-TV || 2.2 || ||
 * Oxford || WMAV-TV || 18.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Oxford || WMAV-TV || 18.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Missouri

 * Joplin || KOZJ || 26.2 || rowspan=2| Missouri State University || || || rowspan=5|January 16, 2017
 * Springfield || KOZK || 21.2 || ||
 * Kansas City || KCPT || 19.4 || Public TV 19, Inc. || ||
 * Sedalia || KMOS-TV || 6.4 || University of Central Missouri || ||
 * Kansas City || KCPT || 19.4 || Public TV 19, Inc. || ||
 * Sedalia || KMOS-TV || 6.4 || University of Central Missouri || ||
 * Sedalia || KMOS-TV || 6.4 || University of Central Missouri || ||
 * Sedalia || KMOS-TV || 6.4 || University of Central Missouri || ||


 * St. Louis || KETC || 9.2 || St. Louis Regional Public Media, Inc. || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Montana

 * Billings || KBGS-TV || 16.2 || rowspan=5|Montana State University || || || rowspan=5|January 16, 2017
 * Bozeman || KUSM-TV || 9.2 || ||
 * Helena || KUHM-TV || 10.2 || ||
 * Kalispell || KUKL-TV || 46.2 || ||
 * Missoula || KUFM-TV || 11.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Kalispell || KUKL-TV || 46.2 || ||
 * Missoula || KUFM-TV || 11.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Missoula || KUFM-TV || 11.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Nebraska

 * Alliance || KTNE-TV || 13.4 || rowspan=9|Nebraska Educational Telecommunications || || || rowspan=9|March 1, 2017
 * Bassett || KMNE-TV || 7.4 || ||
 * Hastings || KHNE-TV || 29.4 || ||
 * Lexington || KLNE-TV || 3.4 || ||
 * Lincoln || KUON-TV || 12.4 || ||
 * Merriman || KRNE-TV || 12.4 || ||
 * Norfolk || KXNE-TV || 19.4 || ||
 * North Platte || KPNE-TV || 9.4 || ||
 * Omaha || KYNE-TV || 26.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Merriman || KRNE-TV || 12.4 || ||
 * Norfolk || KXNE-TV || 19.4 || ||
 * North Platte || KPNE-TV || 9.4 || ||
 * Omaha || KYNE-TV || 26.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * North Platte || KPNE-TV || 9.4 || ||
 * Omaha || KYNE-TV || 26.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Nevada

 * Las Vegas || KLVX || 10.3 || Clark County School District || || || rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Reno || KNPB || 5.3 || Channel 5 Public Broadcasting || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Reno || KNPB || 5.3 || Channel 5 Public Broadcasting || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

New Jersey

 * Newark (New York City) || WNET || 13.2 || Educational Broadcasting Corporation || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

New Mexico

 * Albuquerque || KNME-TV || 5.2 || University of New Mexico || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

New York

 * Binghamton || WSKG-TV || 46.6
 * rowspan=2| WSKG Public Telecommunications Council || || || February 1, 2017
 * Corning || WSKA || 30.6 || || || February 1, 2017
 * Buffalo || WNED-TV || 17.3 || Western New York Public Broadcasting Association || || || TBD
 * Corning || WSKA || 30.6 || || || February 1, 2017
 * Buffalo || WNED-TV || 17.3 || Western New York Public Broadcasting Association || || || TBD
 * Buffalo || WNED-TV || 17.3 || Western New York Public Broadcasting Association || || || TBD


 * Norwood || WNPI-DT || 18.4 || rowspan=2| St. Lawrence Valley Educational TV Council, Inc. || || || rowspan=3|January 16, 2017
 * Watertown || WPBS-DT || 16.4 || ||
 * Plattsburgh || WCFE-TV || 57.3 || Mountain Lake Public Telecommunications Council || ||
 * Rochester || WXXI-TV || 21.4 || WXXI Public Broadcasting Council || || || February 2017
 * Schenectady (Albany) || WMHT || 17.4 || WMHT Educational Telecommunications || || || rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Syracuse || WCNY-TV || 24.4 || Public Broadcasting Council of Central New York || ||
 * Rochester || WXXI-TV || 21.4 || WXXI Public Broadcasting Council || || || February 2017
 * Schenectady (Albany) || WMHT || 17.4 || WMHT Educational Telecommunications || || || rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Syracuse || WCNY-TV || 24.4 || Public Broadcasting Council of Central New York || ||
 * Schenectady (Albany) || WMHT || 17.4 || WMHT Educational Telecommunications || || || rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Syracuse || WCNY-TV || 24.4 || Public Broadcasting Council of Central New York || ||
 * Syracuse || WCNY-TV || 24.4 || Public Broadcasting Council of Central New York || ||


 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

North Carolina

 * Asheville || WUNF-TV || 33.2 || rowspan=12|University of North Carolina || || || rowspan=12|January 16, 2017
 * Canton || WUNW || 27.3 || ||
 * Chapel Hill || WUNC-TV || 4.2 || ||
 * Concord || WUNG-TV || 58.2 || ||
 * Edenton || WUND-TV || 2.2 || ||
 * Greenville || WUNK-TV || 25.2 || ||
 * Jacksonville || WUNM-TV || 19.3 || ||
 * Linville || WUNE-TV || 17.3 || ||
 * Lumberton || WUNU || 31.2 || ||
 * Roanoke Rapids || WUNP-TV || 36.3 || ||
 * Wilmington || WUNJ-TV || 39.2 || ||
 * Winston-Salem || WUNL-TV || 26.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Jacksonville || WUNM-TV || 19.3 || ||
 * Linville || WUNE-TV || 17.3 || ||
 * Lumberton || WUNU || 31.2 || ||
 * Roanoke Rapids || WUNP-TV || 36.3 || ||
 * Wilmington || WUNJ-TV || 39.2 || ||
 * Winston-Salem || WUNL-TV || 26.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Wilmington || WUNJ-TV || 39.2 || ||
 * Winston-Salem || WUNL-TV || 26.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Winston-Salem || WUNL-TV || 26.2 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

North Dakota

 * Bismarck || KBME-TV || 3.4 || rowspan=7|Prairie Public Television || || || rowspan=7|January 16, 2017
 * Devils Lake || KMDE || 25.4 || ||
 * Dickinson || KDSE || 9.4 || ||
 * Ellendale || KJRE || 19.4 || ||
 * Fargo || KFME || 13.4 || ||
 * Minot || KSRE || 6.4 || ||
 * Williston || KWSE || 4.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Fargo || KFME || 13.4 || ||
 * Minot || KSRE || 6.4 || ||
 * Williston || KWSE || 4.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Williston || KWSE || 4.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Ohio

 * Athens || OU Telecomm. Center || cable-only || Ohio University || September 6, 1999–present (mornings and weekends) || ||
 * Bowling Green || WBGU-TV || 27.2 || Bowling Green State University || || Current ||
 * Cleveland || WVIZ || 25.5 || Ideastream || || || January 16, 2017
 * Columbus || WOSU-TV || 34.4
 * rowspan=2| WOSU Public Media || ||
 * rowspan=2| TBD
 * Portsmouth || WPBO-TV || 42.4 || ||
 * Dayton || WPTD || 16.5
 * rowspan=2| Public Media Connect
 * || || January 16, 2017
 * Oxford || WPTO || 14.3 || || || January 16, 2017
 * Portsmouth || WPBO-TV || 42.4 || ||
 * Dayton || WPTD || 16.5
 * rowspan=2| Public Media Connect
 * || || January 16, 2017
 * Oxford || WPTO || 14.3 || || || January 16, 2017
 * Oxford || WPTO || 14.3 || || || January 16, 2017
 * Oxford || WPTO || 14.3 || || || January 16, 2017


 * Toledo || WGTE-TV || 30.2 || Public Broadcasting Foundation of Northwest Ohio || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Oklahoma

 * Cheyenne || KWET || 12.4 || rowspan=5|Oklahoma Educational Television Authority || rowspan=4| .4 (2006-2009)
 * Cheyenne || KWET || 12.4 || rowspan=5|Oklahoma Educational Television Authority || rowspan=4| .4 (2006-2009)

OETA OKLA .2

(daytime: 2009-2013)

.4 (2013-2017) || || rowspan=4|January 16, 2017
 * Eufaula || KOET || 3.4 ||
 * Oklahoma City || KETA-TV || 13.4 ||
 * Tulsa || KOED-TV || 11.4 ||
 * Oklahoma City and Tulsa || OETA Kids || cable || || 2009-2013 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Tulsa || KOED-TV || 11.4 ||
 * Oklahoma City and Tulsa || OETA Kids || cable || || 2009-2013 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Oregon

 * Bend || KOAB-TV || 11.3 || rowspan=5|Oregon Public Broadcasting || || || rowspan=5|January 16, 2017
 * Corvallis || KOAC-TV || 7.3 || ||
 * Eugene || KEPB-TV || 29.3 || ||
 * La Grande || KTVR || 13.3 || ||
 * Portland || KOPB-TV || 10.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * La Grande || KTVR || 13.3 || ||
 * Portland || KOPB-TV || 10.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Portland || KOPB-TV || 10.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Pennsylvania

 * Clearfield || WPSU-TV || 3.4 || Penn State Public Media || ||
 * rowspan="4" |January 16, 2017
 * Philadelphia || WHYY || 12.3 || WHYY Inc. || ||
 * Pittsburgh || WQED || 13.5 || WQED Multimedia || ||
 * Scranton || WVIA-TV || 44.2 || Northeast Pennsylvania Educational Television Association || ||
 * Pittsburgh || WQED || 13.5 || WQED Multimedia || ||
 * Scranton || WVIA-TV || 44.2 || Northeast Pennsylvania Educational Television Association || ||
 * Scranton || WVIA-TV || 44.2 || Northeast Pennsylvania Educational Television Association || ||
 * Scranton || WVIA-TV || 44.2 || Northeast Pennsylvania Educational Television Association || ||

Puerto Rico

 * Fajardo || WMTJ || 40.2 || rowspan=2|Ana G. Méndez University System || || rowspan=2|Current || rowspan="2" | January 16, 2017
 * Ponce || WQTO || 26.2 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Ponce || WQTO || 26.2 ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

South Carolina

 * Allendale || WEBA-TV || 14.4 || rowspan=11|South Carolina Educational Television || || || rowspan=11|TBD
 * Beaufort || WJWJ-TV || 16.4 || ||
 * Charleston || WITV || 7.4 || ||
 * Columbia || WRLK-TV || 35.4 || ||
 * Conway || WHMC || 23.4 || ||
 * Florence || WJPM-TV || 33.4 || ||
 * Greenville || WNTV || 29.4 || ||
 * Greenwood || WNEH || 38.4 || ||
 * Rock Hill || WNSC-TV || 30.4 || ||
 * Spartanburg || WRET-TV || 49.4 || ||
 * Sumter || WRJA-TV || 27.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Greenville || WNTV || 29.4 || ||
 * Greenwood || WNEH || 38.4 || ||
 * Rock Hill || WNSC-TV || 30.4 || ||
 * Spartanburg || WRET-TV || 49.4 || ||
 * Sumter || WRJA-TV || 27.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Spartanburg || WRET-TV || 49.4 || ||
 * Sumter || WRJA-TV || 27.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Sumter || WRJA-TV || 27.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

South Dakota

 * Aberdeen || KDSD-TV || 16.4 || rowspan=9|South Dakota Public Broadcasting || || || rowspan=9|January 16, 2017
 * Brookings || KESD-TV || 8.4 || ||
 * Eagle Butte || KPSD-TV || 13.4 || ||
 * Lowry || KQSD-TV || 11.4 || ||
 * Martin || KZSD-TV || 8.4 || ||
 * Pierre || KTSD-TV || 10.4 || ||
 * Rapid City || KBHE-TV || 9.4 || ||
 * Sioux Falls || KCSD-TV || 23.4 || ||
 * Vermillion || KUSD-TV || 2.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Pierre || KTSD-TV || 10.4 || ||
 * Rapid City || KBHE-TV || 9.4 || ||
 * Sioux Falls || KCSD-TV || 23.4 || ||
 * Vermillion || KUSD-TV || 2.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Sioux Falls || KCSD-TV || 23.4 || ||
 * Vermillion || KUSD-TV || 2.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Tennessee

 * Chattanooga || WTCI || 45.3 || Greater Chattanooga Public Television || || || January 2017
 * Cookeville || WCTE || 22.4 || Upper Cumberland Broadcast Council || || || TBD
 * Knoxville || WKOP-TV || 15.2 || East Tennessee PBS || || || rowspan=3|January 16, 2017
 * Lexington (Jackson) || WLJT-DT || 11.2 || West Tennessee Public Television Council, Inc. || ||
 * Memphis || WKNO || 10.3 || Mid-South Public Communications Foundation || ||
 * Nashville || WNPT-TV || 8.3 || Nashville Public Television, Inc. || || 2017–present || June 30, 2017
 * Sneedville || WETP-TV || 2.2 || East Tennessee PBS || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Memphis || WKNO || 10.3 || Mid-South Public Communications Foundation || ||
 * Nashville || WNPT-TV || 8.3 || Nashville Public Television, Inc. || || 2017–present || June 30, 2017
 * Sneedville || WETP-TV || 2.2 || East Tennessee PBS || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Sneedville || WETP-TV || 2.2 || East Tennessee PBS || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Texas

 * Amarillo || KACV-TV || 2.2 || Amarillo College || || || TBD
 * Austin || KLRU || 18.4 || Capital of Texas Public Telecommunications Council || || || rowspan=6|January 16, 2017
 * Belton (Waco) || KNCT || 46.2 || Central Texas College || ||
 * College Station || KAMU-TV || 12.3 || Texas A&M University || ||
 * Dallas || KERA-TV || 13.2 || North Texas Public Broadcasting || ||
 * Houston || KUHT || 8.3 || University of Houston || ||
 * Lubbock || KTTZ-TV || 5.3 || Texas Tech University || ||
 * San Antonio || KLRN || 9.3 || Alamo Public Telecommunications Council || || || April 1, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * Dallas || KERA-TV || 13.2 || North Texas Public Broadcasting || ||
 * Houston || KUHT || 8.3 || University of Houston || ||
 * Lubbock || KTTZ-TV || 5.3 || Texas Tech University || ||
 * San Antonio || KLRN || 9.3 || Alamo Public Telecommunications Council || || || April 1, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * San Antonio || KLRN || 9.3 || Alamo Public Telecommunications Council || || || April 1, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Utah

 * Salt Lake City || KUED || 7.3 || rowspan=2|University of Utah || || || rowspan=2|March 7, 2017
 * St. George || KUEW || 18.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * St. George || KUEW || 18.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Virginia

 * Hampton-Norfolk || WHRO-TV || 15.3 || Hampton Roads Educational Telecommunications Association || || || rowspan=2|January 16, 2017
 * Roanoke || WBRA-TV || 15.3 || Blue Ridge PBS || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Roanoke || WBRA-TV || 15.3 || Blue Ridge PBS || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Virgin Islands

 * Charlotte Amalie || WTJX-TV || 12.2 || Virgin Islands Public Broadcasting System || || || January 16, 2017
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Vermont

 * Burlington || WETK || 33.4 || rowspan=4|Vermont PBS || || || rowspan=4|January 16, 2017
 * Rutland || WVER || 28.4 || ||
 * St. Johnsbury || WVTB || 20.4 || ||
 * Windsor || WVTA || 41.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * St. Johnsbury || WVTB || 20.4 || ||
 * Windsor || WVTA || 41.4 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Washington

 * Seattle || KCTS-TV || 9.2 || rowspan=2|Cascade Public Media || || || rowspan=2|TBD
 * Yakima || KYVE || 47.2 || ||
 * Spokane || KSPS-TV || 7.4 || KSPS Public Television || || || September 2017 (April 1, 2017 on cable)
 * colspan=7|
 * Spokane || KSPS-TV || 7.4 || KSPS Public Television || || || September 2017 (April 1, 2017 on cable)
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Wisconsin

 * Green Bay || WPNE-TV || 38.4 || rowspan=6|Wisconsin Public Television || || || rowspan=7|January 16, 2017
 * La Crosse || WHLA-TV || 31.4 || ||
 * Madison || WHA-TV || 21.4 || ||
 * Menomonie || WHWC-TV || 28.4 || ||
 * Park Falls || WLEF-TV || 36.4 || ||
 * Wausau || WHRM-TV || 20.4 || ||
 * Milwaukee || WMVS || 10.3 || Milwaukee PBS Milwaukee Area Technical College || ||
 * Menomonie || WHWC-TV || 28.4 || ||
 * Park Falls || WLEF-TV || 36.4 || ||
 * Wausau || WHRM-TV || 20.4 || ||
 * Milwaukee || WMVS || 10.3 || Milwaukee PBS Milwaukee Area Technical College || ||
 * Wausau || WHRM-TV || 20.4 || ||
 * Milwaukee || WMVS || 10.3 || Milwaukee PBS Milwaukee Area Technical College || ||
 * Milwaukee || WMVS || 10.3 || Milwaukee PBS Milwaukee Area Technical College || ||


 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

West Virginia

 * Grandview || WSWP-TV || 9.3 || rowspan=3|West Virginia Public Broadcasting || || || rowspan=3|January 16, 2017
 * Huntington || WVPB-TV || 33.3 || ||
 * Morgantown || WNPB-TV || 24.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * Morgantown || WNPB-TV || 24.3 || ||
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|
 * colspan=7|

Wyoming

 * Casper || KPTW || 6.3 || rowspan=3|Central Wyoming College || || || rowspan=3|TBD
 * Lander || KCWC-DT || 4.3 || ||
 * Laramie || KWYP-DT || 8.3 || ||
 * }
 * Laramie || KWYP-DT || 8.3 || ||
 * }
 * }

Promotion Tour
 Main Article: Barney's Zoo Tour

Barney's Zoo Tour was a tour to promote the home video, "Let's Go to the Zoo". It originally toured at different zoos in the United States from July 2001 until August 2001.

Trivia

 * This video marked:
 * The final Barney project in which Richard C. Leach served as the executive in charge of production.
 * The final Barney project produced and distributed by Lyrick Studios.
 * The final Barney project produced by Timothy Clott.
 * The first installment in the Let's Go series in the Barney franchise.
 * The last appearance of Miss Kepler.
 * Although Love to Read, with Barney was first, this video was marketed as the first Barney video to be filmed on location.
 * Originally, this video was supposed to be released on DVD on August 28, 2001, but it was delayed until April 8, 2003.
 * The 1996 BJ costume is used briefly during the scene where BJ gets wet. (This is done so the costume in the video wouldn't get damaged by the splash).
 * Tim Dever's name is incorrectly credited as "Tim Devers" in the end of this video.
 * On April 12, 2002, this video was featured in the Blockbuster Exclusive video,  Barney's Island Safari  (along with  Imagination Island ).
 * Barney's Pajama Party  is a  Barney Clip Show  that was released on October 30, 2001. It features clips from  Season 5 - 6  episodes. Pajama_Party_VHS.png

Plot
<p style="font-size:

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and television program distributor. It is a nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educational television programming to public television stations in the United States, distributing series such as American Experience, America's Test Kitchen, Antiques Roadshow, Arthur, Downton Abbey, Finding Your Roots, Frontline, The Magic School Bus, Masterpiece, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Nature, Nova, the PBS NewsHour, Sesame Street, and This Old House.

PBS is funded by member station dues, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, corporate contributions, National Datacast, pledge drives, private foundations, and individual citizens. All proposed funding for programming is subject to a set of standards to ensure the program is free of influence from the funding source.

Since the mid-2000s, Roper Opinion Research polls commissioned by PBS have consistently placed the service as the most-trusted national institution in the United States. A 2016–2017 study by Nielsen Media Research found 80% of all US television households view the network's programs. However, PBS is not responsible for all programming carried on public television stations, a large proportion of which may come from affiliates, including such member stations as WGBH, WETA, WNET, WTTW, American Public Television, and independent producers. This distinction regarding the origin of different programs is a frequent source of viewer confusion.

The Public Broadcasting Service has more than 350 member television stations, many owned by educational institutions, nonprofit groups affiliated with one particular local public school district or collegiate educational institution, or entities owned by or related to state government.

Overview
Founded by Hartford N. Gunn Jr., PBS began operations on October 5, 1970, taking over many of the functions of its predecessor, National Educational Television (NET), which later merged with Newark, New Jersey station WNDT to form WNET. In 1973, it merged with Educational Television Stations.

Unlike the five major commercial broadcast television networks in the United States, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and The CW – which compensate their affiliate stations to carry their programs – PBS is not a network but a program distributor that provides television content and related services to its member stations. Each station is charged with the responsibility of programming local content such as news, interviews, cultural and public affairs programs for their individual market or state that supplements content provided by PBS and other public television distributors.

In a television network structure, affiliates give up portions of their local advertising airtime in exchange for carrying network programming, and the network pays its affiliates a share of the revenue it earns from advertising. By contrast, PBS member stations pay fees for the shows acquired and distributed by the national organization. Under this relationship, PBS member stations have greater latitude in local scheduling than their commercial broadcasting counterparts. Scheduling of PBS-distributed series may vary greatly depending on the market. This can be a source of tension as stations seek to preserve their localism, and PBS strives to market a consistent national lineup. However, PBS has a policy of "common carriage," which requires most stations to clear the national prime time programs on a common programming schedule to market them nationally more effectively. Management at former Los Angeles member KCET cited unresolvable financial and programming disputes among its major reasons for leaving PBS after over 40 years in January 2011.

Although PBS has a set schedule of programming, particularly in regard to its prime time schedule, member stations reserve the right to schedule PBS-distributed programming in other time slots or not clear it at all if they choose to do so; few of the service's members carry all its programming. Most PBS stations timeshift some distributed programs. Once PBS accepts a program offered for distribution, PBS, rather than the originating member station, retains exclusive rebroadcasting rights during an agreed period. Suppliers retain the right to sell the program in non-broadcast media such as DVDs, books, and sometimes PBS licensed merchandise.

In 1991, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting resumed production for most PBS shows that debuted prior to 1977, with the exceptions of Washington Week in Review and Wall Street Week (CPB resumed production of Washington Week in 1997).

In 1994, The Chronicle of Philanthropy released the results of the largest study on the popularity and credibility of charitable and non-profit organizations. PBS ranked as the 11th "most popular charity/non-profit in America" from over 100 charities researched in the study conducted by the industry publication, with 38.2% of Americans over the age of 12 choosing "love" and "like a lot" for PBS.

In December 2009, PBS signed up for the Nielsen ratings audience measurement reports, and began to be included in its primetime and daily "Television Index" reports, alongside the major commercial broadcast networks. In May 2011, PBS announced that it would incorporate breaks containing underwriter spots for corporate and foundation sponsors, program promotions and identification spots within four breaks placed within episodes of Nature and NOVA, airing episodes broken up into segments of up to 15 minutes, rather than airing them as straight 50- to 55-minute episodes. The strategy began that fall, with the intent to expand the in-program breaks to the remainder of the schedule if successful.

In 2011, PBS released apps for iOS and Android to allow viewing of full-length videos on mobile devices. An update in 2015 added Chromecast support.

On February 28, 2012, PBS partnered with AOL to launch Makers: Women Who Make America, a digital documentary series focusing on high-achieving women in male-dominated industries such as war, comedy, space, business, Hollywood and politics.

PBS initially struggled to compete with online media such as YouTube for market share. In a 2012 speech to 850 top executives from PBS stations, Senior Vice President of Digital Jason Seiken warned that PBS was in danger of being disrupted by YouTube studios such as Maker Studios. In the speech, later described as a "seminal moment" for public television, he laid out his vision for a new style of PBS digital video production. Station leadership rallied around his vision and Seiken formed PBS Digital Studios, which began producing educational but edgy videos, something Seiken called "PBS-quality with a YouTube sensibility." The studio's first hit, an auto-tuned version of the theme from one of their most famous television programs, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, was one of YouTube's 10 most viral videos of 2012. By 2013, monthly video views on PBS.org had risen from 2 million to a quarter-billion, PBS.org traffic had surpassed that of the CBS, NBC, and ABC web sites, PBSKids.org had become the dominant US children's site for video, and PBS had won more 2013 Webby Awards than any other media company in the world.

On May 8, 2013, full-length episodes of PBS' prime time, news and children's programs were made available through the Roku streaming player; programming is available on Roku as separate streaming channels for PBS and PBS Kids content.

Programming
The evening and primetime schedule on PBS features a diverse array of programming including fine arts (Great Performances); drama (Masterpiece, Downton Abbey, American Family: Journey of Dreams); science (Nova, Nature); history (American Experience, American Masters, History Detectives, Antiques Roadshow); music (Austin City Limits, Soundstage); public affairs (Frontline, PBS NewsHour, Washington Week, Nightly Business Report); independent films and documentaries (P.O.V., Independent Lens); home improvement (This Old House); and interviews (Amanpour & Company, Tavis Smiley, The Dick Cavett Show). In 2012, PBS began organizing much of its prime time programming around a genre-based schedule (for example, drama series encompass the Sunday schedule, while science-related programs are featured on Wednesdays).

PBS broadcasts children's programming as part of the service's (and including content supplied by other distributors not programmed by the service, its member stations') morning and afternoon schedule. As the children's programs it distributes are intended to educate as well as entertain its target audience, PBS and its stations have long been in compliance with educational programming guidelines set by the Federal Communications Commission in response to the enactment of the Children's Television Act of 1990. Many member stations have historically also broadcast distance education and other instructional television programs, typically during daytime slots; though with the advent of digital television, which has allowed stations to carry these programs on digital subchannels in lieu of the main PBS feed or exclusively over the Internet, many member stations/networks have replaced distance education content with children's and other programming,.

Unlike its radio counterpart, National Public Radio, PBS does not have a central program production arm or news division. All of the programming carried by PBS, whether news, documentary or entertainment, is created by (or in most cases produced under contract with) other parties, such as individual member stations. Boston member WGBH-TV is one of the largest producers of educational television programming, including shows like American Experience, Arthur, Masterpiece Theatre, Nova, Antiques Roadshow and Frontline, as well as many other children's and lifestyle programs. News programs are produced by WETA-TV (PBS Newshour) in Washington, D.C., WNET in New York City and WPBT in Miami. Newark, New Jersey/New York City member WNET produces or distributes programs such as Secrets of the Dead, Nature, and Cyberchase. PBS also works with other networks for programming such as CNN International for Amanpour & Company which is a co-production of CNN International and WNET.

PBS member stations are known for rebroadcasting British television costume dramas, comedies and science fiction programs (acquired from the BBC and other sources) such as Downton Abbey; 'Allo 'Allo!; Are You Being Served?; The Benny Hill Show, Red Dwarf; The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin; Father Ted; Fawlty Towers; Harry Enfield and Chums; Keeping Up Appearances; Monty Python's Flying Circus; Mr. Bean, The Vicar of Dibley, Doctor Who, and Sherlock; consequently, this has led to jocular references that the service's name stands for "Primarily British Series". However, a significant amount of sharing takes place. The BBC and British broadcasters such as Channel 4 often cooperate with PBS stations, producing material that is shown on both sides of the Atlantic. Less frequently, Canadian, Australian and other international programming appears on PBS stations (such as The Red Green Show, currently distributed by syndicator Executive Program Services); public broadcasting syndicators are more likely to offer this programming to U.S.-based public television stations.

PBS is not the only distributor of public television programming to the member stations. Other distributors have emerged from the roots of companies that maintained loosely held regional public television stations in the 1960s. Boston-based American Public Television (which, among other names, was formerly known as Eastern Educational Network and the American Program Service) is second only to PBS for distributing programs to U.S. non-commercial stations. Another distributor is NETA (formerly SECA), whose properties have included The Shapies and Jerry Yarnell School of Fine Art. In addition, the member stations themselves also produce a variety of local shows, some of which subsequently receive national distribution through PBS or other distributors.

Rerun programming is generally uncommon on PBS or its member stations, with some exceptions. The Lawrence Welk Show has aired continuously in reruns on PBS (through the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority) almost every weekend since 1986. Other programs that have been aired in reruns are generally past PBS series whose hosts have retired or are now deceased (for example, The Joy of Painting and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood) or have simply ended production (such as DragonflyTV and Clifford the Big Red Dog).

PBS Kids
Launched in 1994 as PTV, PBS Kids is the brand for children's programs aired by PBS. The PBS Kids network, which was launched in 1999 and operated until 2005, was largely funded by satellite provider DirecTV. The channel ceased operations on September 26, 2005, in favor of PBS Kids Sprout, a commercial digital cable and satellite television channel originally operated as a joint venture with Comcast, Sesame Workshop and Apax Partners (NBCUniversal, which Comcast acquired in 2011, later acquired the other partners' interests in the channel in 2012). However, the original programming block still exists on PBS, filling daytime and in some cases, weekend morning schedules on its member stations; many members also carry 24-hour locally programmed children's networks featuring PBS Kids content on one of their digital subchannels. As of 2018, PBS Kids and KidsClick are the only two children's programming blocks on U.S. broadcast television.

As PBS is often known for doing, PBS Kids has broadcast imported series from other countries; these include British series originally broadcast by the BBC and ITV. Through American Public Television, many PBS stations also began airing the Australian series Raggs on June 4, 2007. Some of the programs broadcast as part of the service's children's lineup or through public broadcast syndication directly to its members have subsequently been syndicated to commercial television outlets (such as Ghostwriter and The Magic School Bus).

Sports
Many PBS member stations and networks – including Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MHSAA), Georgia Public Broadcasting (GHSA), Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPA), Iowa Public Television (IGHSAU), Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NSAA), and WKYU-TV (Western Kentucky Hilltoppers) – locally broadcast high school and college sports. From the 1980s onward, the national PBS network has not typically carried sporting events, mainly because the broadcast rights to most sporting events have become more cost-prohibitive in that timeframe, especially for nonprofits with limited revenue potential; in addition, starting with the respective launches of the MountainWest Sports Network (now defunct) and Big Ten Network in 2006 and 2007 and the later launches of the Pac-12 Network and ESPN's SEC Network, athletic conferences have acquired rights for all of their member university's sports programs for their cable channels, restricting their use from PBS member stations, even those associated with their own universities.

From 1976 to 1989, KQED produced a series of Bundesliga matches under the banner Soccer Made in Germany, with Toby Charles announcing. PBS also carried tennis events, as well as Ivy League football. Notable football commentators included Upton Bell, Marty Glickman, Bob Casciola, Brian Dowling, Sean McDonough and Jack Corrigan. Other sports programs included interview series such as The Way It Was and The Sporting Life.

Governance
The board of directors is responsible for governing and setting policy for PBS, consisting of 27 members: 14 professional directors (station managers), 12 general directors (outside directors), and the PBS president. All PBS Board members serve three-year terms, without pay. PBS member stations elect the 14 professional directors; the board elects the 12 general directors and appoints the PBS president and CEO; and the entire board elects its officers.

Member stations
, PBS maintains current memberships with 354 television stations encompassing 50 states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. possessions; as such, it is the only television broadcaster in the United States – commercial or non-commercial – which has station partners licensed in every U.S. state (by comparison, none of the five major commercial broadcast networks has affiliates in certain states where PBS has members, most notably New Jersey). The service has an estimated national reach of 93.74% of all households in the United States (or 292,926,047 Americans with at least one television set).

PBS stations are commonly operated by nonprofit organizations, state agencies, local authorities (such as municipal boards of education), or universities in their city of license; this is similar (albeit more centralized in states where a licensee owns multiple stations rebroadcasting the main PBS member) to the early model of commercial broadcasting in the U.S., in which network-affiliated stations were initially owned by companies that owned few to no other television stations elsewhere in the country. In some U.S. states, a group of PBS stations throughout the entire state may be organized into a single regional "subnetwork" (such as Alabama Public Television and the Arkansas Educational Television Network); in this model, PBS programming and other content is distributed by the originating station in the subnetwork to other full-power stations that serve as satellites as well as any low-power translators in other areas of the state. Some states may be served by such a regional network and simultaneously have PBS member stations in a certain city (such as the case with secondary member KBDI-TV in Denver, which is not related to Colorado member network Rocky Mountain PBS and its flagship station and primary Denver PBS member, KRMA-TV) that operate autonomously from the regional member network.

As opposed to the present commercial broadcasting model in which network programs are often carried exclusively on one television station in a given market, PBS may maintain more than one member station in certain markets, which may be owned by the licensee of the market's primary PBS member station or owned by a separate licensee (as a prime example, KOCE-TV, KLCS and KVCR-DT – which are all individually owned – serve as PBS stations for the Los Angeles market; KCET served as the market's primary PBS member until it left the service in January 2011, at which time it was replaced by KOCE). KCET expects to rejoin PBS later in 2018, thus giving the Los Angeles area four different member stations.

For these cases, PBS utilizes the Program Differentiation Plan, which divides by percentage the amount of programs distributed by the service that each member can carry on their schedule; often, this assigns a larger proportion of PBS-distributed programming to the primary member station, with the secondary members being allowed to carry a lesser amount of program offerings from the service's schedule. Unlike public broadcasters in most other countries, PBS cannot own any of the stations that broadcasts its programming; therefore it is one of the few television programming bodies that does not have any owned-and-operated stations. This is partly due to the origins of the PBS stations themselves, and partly due to historical broadcast license issues.

Participating stations
Most PBS member stations have produced at least some nationally distributed programs. Current regularly scheduled programming on the PBS national feed is produced by a smaller group of stations, including:


 * WGBH-TV (Arthur, NOVA, Masterpiece, Frontline, etc.)
 * WNET (Nature, PBS NewsHour Weekend, Cyberchase, Amanpour & Company etc.)
 * WETA-TV (PBS NewsHour, Washington Week, A Capitol Fourth (annually), etc.)
 * WTTW (Nature Cat, WordWorld)
 * Maryland Public Television (MotorWeek)
 * KLRU (Austin City Limits)
 * KOCE-TV (Sid the Science Kid)
 * KQED (The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!)
 * Oregon Public Broadcasting (History Detectives)
 * UNC-TV (The Woodwright's Shop)
 * South Carolina ETV (A Chef's Life)
 * WQED (Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood)

PBS networks
PBS has spun off a number of television networks, often in partnership with other media companies. PBS YOU, a distance education and how-to service operated until January 2006, and was largely succeeded by Create (a similarly formatted network owned by American Public Television); PBS Kids Channel was superseded by Sprout at the start of October 2005. The PBS Kids Channel relaunched January 16, 2017. World began operations in 2007 as a service operated by PBS but is now managed by American Public Television.

PBS has also restructured its satellite feed system, simplifying HD02 (PBS West) into a timeshift feed for the Pacific Time Zone, rather than a high-definition complement to its formerly primary SD feed. PBS Kids Go! was proposed as a replacement broadcast network for PBS Kids Channel, however, plans to launch the network were folded in 2006. Programming from the PBS Satellite Service has also been carried by certain member stations or regional member networks to fill their overnight schedules (particularly those that have transitioned to a 24-hour schedule since the late 1990s), in lieu of providing programming sourced from outside public television distributors or repeats of local programming (program promotions shown on the satellite feed advertise upcoming programs as being aired on PBS during the timeslot card normally used as a placeholder for member outlets to insert local airtime information).

Some or all of these services are available on a digital cable tier of many cable providers, on a free-to-air (FTA) satellite receiver receiving from PBS Satellite Service, as well as via subscription-based direct broadcast satellite providers. With the exception of Sprout, some of these services, including those from PBS member stations and networks, have not made contracts with Internet-distributed over-the-top MVPD services such as PlayStation Vue and Sling TV. With the transition to over-the-air digital television broadcasts, many of the services are also often now available as standard-definition multicast channels on the digital signals of some member stations, while HD02 (PBS West) serves as a secondary HD feed. With the absence of advertising, network identification on these PBS networks was limited to utilization at the end of the program, which includes the standard series of bumpers from the "Be More" campaign.

Independent networks
While not operated or controlled by PBS proper, additional public broadcasting networks are available and carried by PBS member stations.

From 2002 to 2011, Buffalo, New York member station WNED-TV operated ThinkBright TV, a service that was carried on several stations in upstate New York.

A separate but related concept is the state network, where a group of stations across a state simulcast a single programming schedule from a central facility, which may include specialty subchannels unique to that broadcaster.

On-air fundraising
Since 53% to 60% of public television's revenues come from private membership donations and grants, most stations solicit individual donations by methods including fundraising, pledge drives or telethons, which disrupt regularly scheduled programming. This has been perceived as potentially annoying since regularly scheduled programming is often replaced with specials aimed at a wider audience (such as music specials aimed at the Baby Boomer generation and financial, health and motivational programs) to solicit new members and donations; during fundraising events, these programs are often interrupted within the broadcast by long-form segments (of six to eight minutes in length) encouraging viewers to donate to their PBS member. Underwriting spots are aired at the end of each program, which differ from traditional commercials in several ways. Each spot must be approved to meet several guidelines. The main guidelines state that underwriting spots cannot be qualitative in any way, nor can they have any call to action.

Accusations of political/ideological bias
A 1982 broadcast of the United States Information Agency program Let Poland be Poland about the martial law declared in Poland in 1981 was widely viewed in the U.S., but met with skepticism on the part of eastern European broadcasters (communist countries at the time) due to concerns that the program's "provocative and anticommunist" tone was intended as propaganda.

In 1999 at least three public television stations were caught selling or trading their mailing lists with the Democratic National Committee. Under IRS regulations nonprofit organizations are prohibited from participating in political actions. Officials from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting condemned the practice and conducted an investigation into the matter. The stations involved were in New York, Boston, and Washington.

Individual programs aired by PBS have been the targets of organized campaigns by individuals and groups with opposing views, including former United States Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

Bill Moyers resigned in 2005 after more than three decades as a PBS regular, citing political pressure to alter the content of his program and saying Chairman of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Kenneth Tomlinson had mounted a "vendetta" against him. Moyers eventually returned to host Bill Moyers Journal, after Tomlinson's resignation from CPB. Subsequently, PBS made room temporarily for rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson, formerly of MSNBC and co-host of CNN's Crossfire, and The Journal Editorial Report with Paul Gigot, an editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page (this program has since moved to Fox News Channel) to partially balance out the perceived left-leaning PBS shows.

Lawsuit with Pacific Arts
In the 1990s, PBS became involved in a dispute over home video licensing rights with Pacific Arts Corporation, a multimedia company owned and operated by former Monkees guitarist Michael Nesmith.

In 1990, Pacific Arts secured a contract with PBS to distribute their back catalog of programming on VHS under the PBS Home Video banner. However, in the early 1990s, Pacific Arts and PBS went through a series of serious disagreements. Lawsuits were filed: by Nesmith and Pacific Arts against PBS for breach of contract, intentional misrepresentation, intentional concealment, negligent misrepresentation, and interference with contract; and by PBS against Nesmith and Pacific Arts for lost royalties. The lawsuits escalated in 1994 and 1995 into major litigation between the parties over these rights and payments. PBS and Nesmith and Pacific Arts vigorously prosecuted these multimillion-dollar counter-suits.

The six plaintiffs included PBS, WGBH, WNET, the Ken Burns-owned American Documentaries and Radio Pioneers Film Project and the Children's Television Workshop. They sought approximately $5 million in disputed royalties, advances, guarantees and license fees for programs and the use of the PBS logo from the defendants Pacific Arts and Nesmith.

Due to the cost of the litigation, Pacific Arts was forced to cease distribution operations and suspended the use of the PBS logo on the Pacific Arts videos. Though Pacific Arts distribution system had ceased operating, the various plaintiffs were counting on capturing a personal financial guarantee Nesmith had made to PBS in the original PBS deal in 1990.

The cases went to jury trial in Federal Court in Los Angeles in February 1999. After three days of deliberation, the jury unanimously sided with Nesmith. The court awarded Pacific Arts $14,625,000 for loss of its rights library, plus $29,250,000 in punitive damages. The jury awarded $3 million to Nesmith personally, including $2 million in punitive damages for a total award to Nesmith and Pacific Arts of $48,875,000. The jury resolved the outstanding license fee issues by ordering Pacific Arts and Nesmith to pay approximately $1.2 million to American Documentaries for The Civil War, about $230,000 to WGBH, and $150,000 to WNET.

Following the ruling, Nesmith expressed his personal disappointment with PBS and was quoted by BBC News as stating "It's like finding your grandmother stealing your stereo. You're happy to get your stereo back, but it's sad to find out your grandmother is a thief."

The decision never went to an appeals court and the final amount paid to Pacific Arts and Nesmith was an undisclosed sum agreed to in an out-of-court settlement.

Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN)
PBS provides an alternate path for WEA alerts to wireless carriers. The alerts are transmitted through the PBS satellite network on the AMC-21 satellite to PBS stations who broadcast the messages over their transmitters for reception by wireless carriers at their cell sites.

The network is funded by a grant through National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

History
In 1977, Walt Disney Productions executive Jim Jimirro brought forth the idea of a cable television network that would feature television and film content sourced from the studio. Disney chairman Card Walker turned down the proposal, citing the company's focus on developing the Epcot Center at Walt Disney World. The idea was revived in November 1981, when Disney entered into a partnership with Group W Satellite Communications. In September 1982, Group W rescinded its interest in the intended joint venture, due to disagreements over creative control of the channel and financial obligations that would have had Group W shoulder 50% of the service's start-up costs. Walt Disney Productions continued on with the channel's development with help from the channel's founding president Alan Wagner, and formally announced the launch of its family-oriented cable channel in early 1983.

The Disney Channel launched nationally as a premium channel at 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time on April 18, 1983. The channel – which initially maintained a 16-hour-per-day programming schedule from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time – would become available on cable providers in all 50 U.S. states by September 1983, and accrue a base of more than 611,000 subscribers by December of that year. ; In October 1983, the channel debuted its first made-for-cable movie, Tiger Town, which earned the channel a CableACE Award. The channel had reached profitability by January 1985, with its programming reaching 1.75 million subscribers by that point.

In September 1990, TCI's Montgomery, Alabama, system became the first cable provider to carry the channel as a basic cable service. Between 1991 and 1996, a steadily increasing number of cable providers began shifting The Disney Channel from a premium add-on offering to their basic tiers, either experimentally or on a full-time basis; however, Walt Disney Company executives denied any plans to convert the channel into an ad-supported basic service, stating that the premium-to-basic shifts on some providers was part of a five-year "hybrid" strategy that allowed providers to offer the channel in either manner.

On April 6, 1997, the channel – which was officially renamed as simply Disney Channel and, until September 2002, alternatively identified only as "Disney" in on-air promotions and network identifications – underwent a significant rebranding and introducing a new logo styled as a Mickey ear-shaped TV set designed by Lee Hunt Associates. Programming-wise, it maintained a programming format similar to that which it carried as a full-fledged premium service; however, Disney Channel's target audience began shifting more toward a focus on kids, while continuing to cater to family audiences at night. Disney Channel also began to air break interruptions within shows to promote its programming and Disney film and home video releases, decreased the number of older films that aired on its schedule, and began catering its music programming more towards acts popular with pre-teens and teenagers (incorporating music videos and refocusing its concert specials to feature younger and up-and-coming musicians popular with that demographic). On August 23, 1997, the channel relaunched its slate of made-for-television movies – Disney Channel Original Movies - with Northern Lights, supplanting the previous Disney Channel Premiere Films banner. Disney Channel also started to increase its original programming development, launching with the 1997 debut of the sitcom Flash Forward.

The channel would eventually split its programming into three distinct blocks: Playhouse Disney (which debuted in May 1997, focusing on series aimed at preschoolers), Vault Disney (which began as a Sunday-only nighttime block in September 1997 before expanding to seven nights a week by late 1998, featuring older Disney programs, older television specials and some of the older feature films shifted off its daytime and prime time lineup), and Zoog Disney (a weekend afternoon and evening lineup hosted by anthropomorphic robot/alien hybrid characters called "Zoogs" that was introduced in August 1998, compromising original and acquired series aimed at preteens and teens). The Zoog Disney brand would later expand to encompass most of the channel's weekend daytime and evening schedule under the "Zoog Weekendz" banner in June 2000.

In 1999, Disney Channel began mandating that TV providers which continued to offer it as a premium service shift the channel to their basic channel tiers or else it would decline to renew carriage agreements with providers (such as Time Warner Cable and Comcast, the last major TV providers to carry the channel as a pay service) that chose to continue offering it as an add-on to their service. In the fall of 2002, Disney Channel discontinued the Zoog Weekendz and Vault Disney blocks – phasing out the "Zoog" brand on-air, and replacing the latter block with a lineup of same-day repeats of the channel's original and acquired programming – and reduced its nightly prime time movie lineup from showcasing an average of two to three features to a single feature daily. Its original programming slate also became heavily reliant on live-action sitcoms and animated series, eschewing reality series and scripted dramas.

The channel's original programming efforts of the 2000s also led to a marketing effort to cross over the stars of its series into music through record deals with sister music label Hollywood Records, beginning with Hilary Duff, who became the channel's first teen idol through the 2001–04 sitcom Lizzie McGuire. The success of the 2003 original television film The Cheetah Girls led to other music-themed original programs being developed, including the 2006 hit original movie High School Musical and sitcom Hannah Montana (which launched the career of its star Miley Cyrus). The August 17, 2007 premiere of High School Musical 2 became the highest-rated non-sports program in the history of basic-tier TV and the highest-rated made-for-cable movie premiere on record (as well as the highest-rated television program – either free-to-air or subscription-based– of Summer 2007) with 17.2 million viewers. In 2012, Disney Channel ended Nickelodeon's 17-year run as the highest-rated cable channel in the United States, placing its first ever win in total-day viewership among all cable networks as measured by ACNielsen.

Movie library
High School Musical 2 is currently the most successful DCOM in terms of popularity and accolades, setting a basic cable record for the single most-watched television program, as its August 2007 debut was watched by 17.2 million viewers (counting sports, this record stood until a December 3, 2007 telecast of a New England Patriots-Baltimore Ravens game on corporate sibling ESPN's Monday Night Football, which was watched by 17.5 million viewers). The Cheetah Girls films were also notably successful in terms of merchandise and sales for its concert tour and soundtrack albums. The first film in 2003 was the first made-for-TV movie musical in Disney Channel's history, and had a worldwide audience of over 84 million viewers. The second movie was the most successful of the series, bringing in 8.1 million viewers in the U.S. An 86-date concert tour featuring the group was ranked as one of the top 10 concert tours of 2006; the tour broke a record at the Houston Rodeo that was set by Elvis Presley in 1973, selling out with 73,500 tickets sold in three minutes.

In addition to its made-for-cable films, Disney Channel has rights to theatrically released feature films, with some film rights shared with sister network Freeform. Along with films released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (mainly consisting of releases from Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar), the channel also maintains rights to films from other studios. Some films released by Bagdasarian Productions (such as The Chipmunk Adventure and Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein) have also aired on Disney Channel, although most of them are not presently owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Current

 * Disney Junior – "Disney Junior" is a block that features shows targeted at children aged 3–9. which debuted on February 14, 2011; it airs Monday through Fridays from 8:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. (6:00–10:00 a.m. during the summer months, other designated school break periods and on major holidays) and weekends from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time (the block primarily targets preschoolers as Disney Channel's usual target audience of pre-teens and young adolescents are in school during its designated time period on weekdays). Shows include Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Mickey and the Roadster Racers, Puppy Dog Pals, Vampirina, Elena of Avalor, Sofia the First, Miles from Tomorrowland, The Lion Guard and Doc McStuffins.

Former

 * Disney Night Time – As a premium channel from April 18, 1983 to April 6, 1997, The Disney Channel featured programming aimed at adult audiences during the evening and overnight hours under the banner title "Disney Nighttime". Unlike the nighttime content aired on the channel's then-competitors (such as HBO and Showtime) at the time of its launch, the "adult" programming featured on The Disney Channel was largely devoid of any overt sexual and violent content. Programming seen during Disney Nighttime included older feature films (similar to those seen at the time on American Movie Classics, and eventually Turner Classic Movies, with both Disney film titles and movies from other film studios mixed in), along with original concert specials (featuring artists ranging from Rick Springfield to Jon Secada to Elton John), variety specials and documentaries.
 * The Magical World of Disney – used as a Sunday night umbrella for movies and specials on The Disney Channel from September 23, 1990 to November 24, 1996, originally airing exclusively on Sunday evenings at 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. From December 1, 1996 to 1999, The Magical World of Disney served as the overall branding for Disney Channel's nightly evening lineup of films starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific.
 * The American Legacy – ran on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific from January 7, 1992 to August 27, 1996. Originally launched in honor the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the United States, the block featured movies, documentaries and specials about the contributions, history and scenic wonders of the nation.
 * Toonin' Tuesday – Running from October 5, 1993 to August 27, 1996, "Toonin' Tuesday" was a weekly program block featuring various animated programs. Each Tuesday from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, "Toonin' Tuesday" featured primarily animated films and specials (though reruns of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show sometimes aired as part of the block). The block ended on August 27, 1996 due to changes to the channel's programming schedule.
 * Bonus! Thursday – From October 7, 1993 to August 29, 1996, The Disney Channel ran a weekly program block called "Bonus! Thursday" (or "Bonus!" for short), which ran each Thursday from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. The block featured programs aimed at teens, including series such as Kids Incorporated, The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, various Mickey Mouse Club serials (including Teen Angel and Match Point), and Eerie Indiana, followed by movies and specials.  The block ended on August 29, 1996 due to changes to the channel's programming schedule.
 * Totally Kids Only ("TKO") – a weekday morning lineup of live-action and animated series, which became the brand for the channel's morning and midday block (from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific) aimed at children ages 2 to 8 that ran from 1993 to April 1997
 * Triple Feature Friday – ran each Friday starting at 5:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific from October 8, 1993 to May 30, 1997, featured three different films – sometimes regardless of each film's genre – that were tied to a specific subject
 * Disney Drive-In – ran each Saturday starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern/Pacific from October 8, 1994 to August 31, 1996, featured Disney series such as Zorro, Texas John Slaughter and Spin and Marty, followed by Disney films and specials The block ended on August 31, 1996 due to changes in the channel's schedule.
 * Block Party – From October 2, 1995 to August 28, 1996, four animated series that previously aired in syndication on The Disney Afternoon (Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers) were rerun together on The Disney Channel as a two-hour programming block called "Block Party", which aired weekdays from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. The "Block Party" branding was dropped on September 3, 1996, when Darkwing Duck was removed as the block's lead-in and Goof Troop was added to end the lineup. This unnamed block continued to air into 1997.
 * Playhouse Disney – a daily morning program block aimed at preschoolers that debuted on May 8, 1997, replacing the mixture of shows targeted at preschoolers and shows aimed at older children that aired as part of Disney Channel's morning lineup. The block was discontinued on February 13, 2011, and replaced the following day by Disney Junior.
 * Magical World of Animals – an hour-long block of wildlife series aimed at children that ran from August 1997 to 1999. Promoted as an offshoot of the Magical World of Disney and airing Sunday evenings from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the block consisted of two series: Going Wild with Jeff Corwin and Omba Mokomba.
 * Vault Disney – debuted in September 1997, five months after Disney Channel's first major rebrand, replacing the Disney Nighttime lineup. Originally airing only on Sunday nights from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, Vault Disney expanded to seven nights a week in September 1998 (the Monday through Saturday editions of the block at this time aired from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Eastern/Pacific; the start time of the block as a whole was moved uniformally to midnight daily in September 1999). The vintage programming featured during the late night schedule changed to feature only Disney-produced television series and specials (such as Zorro, Spin and Marty, The Mickey Mouse Club and the Walt Disney anthology television series), along with older Disney television specials. Older Disney feature films also were part of the lineup from 1997 to 2000, but aired in a reduced capacity. The block also featured The Ink and Paint Club, an anthology series featuring Disney animated shorts, which became the only remaining program on the channel to feature these shorts by 1999, upon the removal of Quack Pack from the schedule. The channel discontinued the block in September 2002, in favor of running reruns of its original and acquired series during the late evening and overnight hours (which comparative to the adult-focused Vault Disney, are aired at children and teenagers, an audience that is typically asleep during that time period).
 * Zoog Disney – launched in August 1998, a program block that originally aired only on weekend afternoons from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. The hosts for the block were "Zoogs", animated anthropomorphic robot/alien creature-hybrid characters with human voices (some of whom acted like teenagers). The block unified television and the internet, allowing viewer comments and scores from players of ZoogDisney.com's online games to be aired on the channel during regular programming in a ticker format (which the channel continued to use after the block was discontinued, however the ticker has been all but completely dropped from on-air usage ). From September 2001 to August 2002, the afternoon and primetime lineups on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays were branded under the umbrella title "Zoog Weekendz". The Zoogs were redesigned with cel shading and given mature voices in 2001, though the remade Zoog characters were discontinued after less than a year; the entire Zoog Disney block was phased out by September 2002.
 * Disney Replay – "Disney Replay" was a block that debuted on April 17, 2013, featuring episodes of defunct Disney Channel Original Series that premiered between 2000 and 2007 (such as Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven and Hannah Montana). Airing Wednesday nights/early Thursday mornings (as a nod to the popular social media trend "Throwback Thursday"), originally from 12:00 to 1:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, the block expanded to six hours (running until 6:00 a.m. Eastern/Pacific) on August 14, 2014. Programs featured on Disney Replay were added to the WATCH Disney Channel service on August 16, 2014. The block was discontinued on April 28, 2016 and moved to Freeform with a new name: That's So Throwback.
 * Disney XD on Disney Channel – "Disney XD on Disney Channel" is the defunct branding of two blocks airing on Friday and Saturday nights; an animated block airing Fridays from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., showing series mainly exclusive to Disney XD such as Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Milo Murphy's Law, and DuckTales, and a live-action block airing Saturdays from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., airing series such as MECH-X4 and Walk the Prank. It was discontinued as Disney XD's carriage became equivalent to that of Disney Channel.

Disney Junior
On May 26, 2010, Disney-ABC Television Group announced the launch of a new digital cable and satellite channel targeted at preschool-aged children called Disney Junior, which debuted on March 23, 2012. The Disney Junior channel – which like Disney Channel (though unlike Disney XD or the channel Disney Junior replaced, Soapnet), is commercial-free – competes with other preschooler-skewing cable channels such as Nick Jr., Qubo and Sprout. The channel features programs from Disney Channel's existing preschool programming library and movies from the Walt Disney Pictures film library. Disney Junior took over the channel space held by Soapnet – a Disney-owned cable channel featuring soap operas – due to that genre's decline in popularity on broadcast television, and the growth of video on demand, online streaming and digital video recorders, negating the need for a linear channel devoted to the soap opera genre. An automated Soapnet feed continued to exist for providers that had not yet made carriage agreements for Disney Junior (such as Dish Network) and those that have kept Soapnet as part of their lineups while adding Disney Junior as an additional channel (such as DirecTV and Cox Communications); After a period during which cable providers unwilling to drop the network immediately retained it to prevent subscriber cancellations, Soapnet ceased full operations on December 31, 2013.

The former Playhouse Disney block on Disney Channel was rebranded as Disney Junior on February 14, 2011; the 22 existing Playhouse Disney-branded cable channels and program blocks outside the United States rebranded under the Disney Junior name over the next two years, concluding with the rebranding of the Russian and Chinese versions in September 2013. Disney-ABC Television Group previously planned to launch a domestic Playhouse Disney Channel in the U.S. (which would have served the same target audience as Disney Junior) in 2001, however, this planned network never launched, although dedicated Playhouse Disney Channels did launch outside of the United States.

Disney XD
Disney XD is a digital cable and satellite television channel in the United States, which is aimed at boys and girls (originally aimed at young male audiences) aged 6–15. The channel was launched on February 13, 2009, replacing predecessor Toon Disney; it carries action and comedy programming from Disney Channel and the former Jetix block from Toon Disney, along with some first-run original programming and off-network syndicated shows. Like its predecessor Toon Disney, but unlike parent network Disney Channel and its sister channel Disney Junior, Disney XD operates as an advertiser-supported service. The channel carries the same name as an unrelated mini-site and media player on Disney.com, which stood for Disney Xtreme Digital, though it is said that the "XD" in the channel's name does not have an actual meaning.

Toon Disney
Toon Disney launched on April 18, 1998 (coinciding with the 15th anniversary of parent network Disney Channel's launch), and was aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 18 years old. The network's main competitors were Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner's Cartoon Network and Boomerang, and Viacom/MTV Networks' Nicktoons. Toon Disney originally operated as a commercial-free service from April 1998 to September 1999, when it became advertiser-supported (unlike Disney Channel). The channel carried a mix of reruns of Walt Disney Television Animation and Disney Channel-produced animated programming, along with some third-party programs from other distributors, animated films and original programming. In 2004, the channel debuted a nighttime program block aimed at children ages 7–14 called Jetix, which featured action-oriented animated and live-action series. During Toon Disney's first year on the air, Disney Channel ran a sampler block of Toon Disney's programming on Sunday nights for interested subscribers. The network ceased operations on February 13, 2009, and was replaced by Disney XD, a channel aimed at children, which features broader array of programming, with a heavier emphasis on live-action programs.

Criticism and controversies
Anne Sweeney, who was president of Disney Channel from 1996 to 2014, has been the target of criticism. Some critics have disapproved of the marketing strategy that was drafted during her tenure, which has resulted in the slanting of the target audience of Disney Channel's programs toward teenyboppers, as well as a decrease in animated programming and an increase in live-action shows and made-for-TV movies. In 2008, Sweeney had stated that Disney Channel, resulting from its multi-platform marketing strategy using television and music, would become "the major profit driver for the [Walt Disney] Company."

The channel has also pulled episodes (even once having to reshoot an episode) that have featured subject matter deemed inappropriate due to its humor, the timing of the episode's airing with real-life events, or subject matter considered inappropriate for Disney Channel's target audience. In December 2008, the Hannah Montana episode "No Sugar, Sugar" was pulled before its broadcast after complaints from parents who saw the episode through video on demand services due to misconceptions regarding diabetics and sugar intake (the Mitchel Musso character of Oliver Oken is revealed in the episode to have been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes). Portions of that episode were subsequently rewritten and re-filmed to become the season three episode "Uptight (Oliver's Alright)," which aired in September 2009.

In December 2011, Disney Channel pulled episodes of two of its original series from the network's broadcast cycle – the season one Shake It Up episode "Party It Up," and the So Random! episode "Colbie Caillat" – after Demi Lovato (star of So Random! parent series Sonny with a Chance, who was treated for bulimia nervosa in 2010) objected on Twitter to jokes featured in both episodes (the Shake It Up episode, in particular) that made light of eating disorders. On May 17, 2013, the channel pulled "Quitting Cold Koala", a second-season episode of Jessie, prior to its scheduled premiere broadcast, due to parental concerns over a scene in which a character's gluten-free diet leads to his being ridiculed.

Video games
In 2010, Disney Channel All Star Party was released for the Nintendo Wii. The four-player mascot party game, in which the stages resemble board games, features characters from Disney Channel programs such as Sonny with a Chance, Wizards of Waverly Place, and JONAS L.A.. Several video games based on the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb were released by Disney Interactive Studios. The Disney Channel website also features various Flash games incorporating characters from the channel's various program franchises. There have also been games based on Kim Possible and Hannah Montana.

International
Disney Channel has established its channels in various countries worldwide including Canada, France, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, India, Australia, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, the Middle East, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean, the Netherlands, Israel and Flanders. Disney Channel also licenses its programming to air on certain other broadcast and cable channels outside the United States (previously like Family Channel in Canada) regardless of whether or not an international version of Disney Channel exists in the country.

New Content Cast

 * Barney (Voice: Tim Dever; Costume: Antwaun Steele)
 * Baby Bop (Voice: Julie Johnson; Costume: Jeff Ayers)
 * BJ (Voice: Patty Wirtz; Costume: Jeff Brooks)
 * Mr. Pizza Delivery Man (Steven G. McAffe)

Additional Costume Performers

 * Baby Bop (Jennifer Romano)

Series Cast

 * Barney (Voice: Bob West, Costume: David Joyner)
 * Keesha (Mera Baker)
 * Jeff (Austin Ball)
 * Curtis (Monté Black)
 * Chip (Lucien Douglas)
 * Stephen (Chase Gallatin)
 * Kristen (Sara Hickman)
 * Danny (Jeffrey Hood)
 * Linda (Adrianne Kangas)
 * Hannah (Marisa Kuers)
 * Emily (Hannah Owens)
 * Kim (Erica Rhodes)
 * Robert (Angel Velasco)
 * Jill (Lana Whittington)
 * Mother Goose (Barbara Lowin)
 * Scooter McNutty (Todd Duffey)
 * Miss Etta Kette (Brice Armstrong)
 * Riders in ihe Sky (Too Slim, Ranger Doug, & Woody Paul)

Song List

 * 1) Barney Theme Song
 * 2) If You're Happy and You Know It (Scene Taken from: "Brushing Up on Teeth")
 * 3) London Bridge (Scene Taken from:  Barney's Rhyme Time Rhythm / "A Little Mother Goose")
 * 4) Colors Make Me Happy (Scene Taken from: "You've Got to Have Art")
 * 5) Down on Grandpa's Farm (Scene Taken from: "You've Got to Have Art")
 * 6) Nothing Beats a Pizza (Scene Taken from: "Try It, You'll Like It!")
 * 7) The Popcorn Song (Scene Taken from: "How Does Your Garden Grow?")
 * 8) The Muffin Man (Scene Taken from: "Five Kinds of Fun!")
 * 9) This is the Day We Grow the Corn (Scene Taken from: "Seven Days a Week")
 * 10) Twinkle Little Lightning Bug (Scene Taken from: "Itty Bitty Bugs")
 * 11) The Rocket Song (Scene Taken from: "Stick with Imagination!")
 * 12) How Does He Yodel? (Scene Taken from: "Howdy, Friends! My Party with Barney  is a personalized  Barney Video  that was released in March 1998. A parent/child who wished to purchase this video had to send in a photo of the kid and said kids' name, and as the previews said "[they would] do the rest." Mypartywithbarney.png

Plot
Does your child love to watch Barney? If so, now your child can star with Barney in the first ever personalized Barney home video, My Party with Barney. The Barney video that makes your child a star. Your child actually stars on screen with Barney again and again and Barney says your child's name. In the video, Barney, Baby Bop, and BJ throw a surprise birthday party for your child and even interact with him or her. Imagine the excitement when your child stars on screen in My Party with Barney.

Cast

 * Barney (Voice: Bob West / Duncan Brannan, Costume: David Joyner)
 * Baby Bop (Voice: Julie Johnson, Costume: Jeff Ayers)
 * BJ (Voice: Patty Wirtz, Costume: Jeff Brooks)

Songs

 * 1) Hey, Look at You! You Can Fly!
 * 2) Hooray! It's Your Birthday
 * 3) By Yourself
 * 4) Colors All Around
 * 5) A Silly Hat
 * 6) I Love You

Gallery
See the gallery of releases

Trivia

 * Throughout April 1998, this video was packaged with a personalized book with stickers.
 * A short-lived DVD version of the video was released in 2007.
 * In the 2007 DVD version, all Kideo crew members are removed from the credits.

Full Video
")
 * 1) The Raindrop Song (Scene Taken from: "Sweet as Honey")
 * 2) Squishy, Squashy, Washy (Scene Taken from: "How Does Your Garden Grow?")
 * 3) Brushing My Teeth (Scene Taken from: "Brushing Up on Teeth")
 * 4) A Silly Hat (Scene Taken from: "Count Me In!")
 * 5) It's C-C Cold BRRRR! (Scene Taken from: "A Sunny, Snowy Day")
 * 6) Roll Over (Scene Taken from: "The One and Only You")
 * 7) The Baby Bop Hop (Scene Taken from: "You Can Do It!")
 * 8) Listen to the Night Time (Scene Taken from: "Itty Bitty Bugs")
 * 9) I Love You

Trivia
See the gallery of releases  ==Gallery== See the gallery of releases
 * This video marked:
 * The first home video where Tim Dever voices Barney alone.
 * The last home video to have Antwaun Steele as Barney's costume performance.
 * The last home video to feature Barney's House. Season 7 of  Barney & Friends  was originally intended to take place there, but then they decided to have it take place at the park.
 * A clip from this video is also shown in the movie "8 Mile", staring rapper Eminem.
 * When Baby Bop goes over to the books and says "When I grow up, I want to be a cowboy," you would see the Mother Goose book that is also used in "Let's Help Mother Goose!" and "Honk! Honk! A Goose on the Loose!".
 * Despite Tim Dever voicing Barney in this home video, "I Love You" uses an archive recording of Bob West (Keeping the trend of Tim doing mainly the speaking).
 * The preview for this video is announced by Dean Barnett.==Gallery==
 * On March 12, 2002, this video was used in the Blockbuster Exclusive video,  Barney's Night Light Stories  (along with  Barney's Good Day, Good Night ).


 * Goof: During the end credits, Baby Bop's name was mispelled "Baby Bob".

Gallery
See the gallery of releases

Full Video


 Production for this video took place in July 2000.

Full Video

 * Finnish
 * Peten Joulukiireet
 * Bob's Busy Christmas
 * }