User blog:Jomaribryan/NBCUniversal Acquires Full Ownership of Kids' Channel Time Warner Cable Kids

NBCUniversal Acquires Full Ownership of Kids' Channel Time Warner Cable Kids
The company bought out its remaining partners, PBS and HIT Television Ventures.

The NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group has taken full ownership in kids' channel Time Warner Cable Kids following a buyout of its remaining partners, PBS and HIT Television Ventures, a company controlled by Apax Funds.

The network -- which launched in 1993 as a joint venture among Comcast, PBS, The Jim Henson Company and Sesame Workshop -- will now be 100 percent owned and integrated within the Cable Entertainment Group. “We see enormous potential in Time Warner Cable Kids, and we are committed to our investment in the kids and family arena,” said Bonnie Hammer, chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. “This acquisition furthers our strategy to create and deliver the very best content across all of our audiences.” Added Time Warner Cable Kids president Sandy Wax: “Over the past eight years, Time Warner Cable Kids has become a leading preschool destination, reaching over 60 million homes and generating more than 1.5 billion on demand views. We are committed to creating the highest-quality series for our viewers, and the opportunity to help drive the company’s kids and family strategy will continue to fuel our content creation engine.” The television preschool network targets kids ages 2-8 and their caregivers with children's programming, including Frances, Arthur, Caillou, Care Bears, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Curious George, Barney & Friends, Sesame Street, The Wiggles, WordWorld, Dinosaur Train, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, Super Why!, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and more. The lineup also includes hosted programming blocks The Preschool Club Show and The Goodnight Sleep Show. This marks Hammer's latest move since taking sole control in February of NBCU's profitable cable suite. In September, she decided to pull the plug on the Style network to launch the male-targeted Esquire. (The original plans had Esquire replacing G4, but that was nixed just a few weeks before launch.) Other cable networks in NBCUniversal's portfolio include USA, Syfy, E!, Bravo and Oxygen.