I read a story about ABC this fall will replace it's corporate parent's Disney block on Saturday Mornings with a block of programming called ABC's Weekend Adventure which will be programmed by Litton Entertainment. Network children's programming I say died back in 2003. The Government passed the Children's Television Act in 1990 and was made worse in 1996. The Government mandated that brodacast networks air 3 hours of children's programming that was considered Educational and Informational and also cut back on how many commercials a commercial station can air.
The government was already in the Educational TV network process PBS , which they partially fund. After this law was in acted a decline started happening. FOX In 2002 sold it's children's unit to 4kids entertainment because they couldn't handle the revenue lost. In 2008 FOX stopped having network children's programming , making affiliates find their own. CBS sold their children's programming first to former sister network Nickelodeon then too in 2006 they sold to Cookie Jar TV those Saturday morning hours. NBC sold theirs in 2002 to Discovery and again to ion in 2006. The CW sold theirs to 4KIDS in 2008. The quality of programming for children on the networks has gone down and viewership has left to cable and online sources. So as a theory could it be that the government had a plan to make sure their PBS ,which doesn't have advertisements especially during children's programming, stronger. Just a thought maybe the government was bothered by the networks having successful , though maybe less learning programming.
Nickelodeon and Disney Channel , free from government intervention has had successful programming that the networks haven't had since the 90's.
This is not anti-PBS or a governement conspiracy opinion , it's thought that I had after a look at networks and children's programming.
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