ABC Kids (TV programming block)

ABC Kids (originally known as Disney's One Saturday Morning until 2002) was an American Saturday morning children's programming block that aired on ABC from September 13, 1997 to August 27, 2011. It featured a mixture of animated and live-action series from Walt Disney Television Animation and Disney Channel, aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 14. This was the second block that showed cable children's channel content on over-the-air television in the United States, the first being Nickelodeon on CBS.

The block regularly aired on Saturday mornings, though certain programs within the lineup aired on Sundays in some parts nationwide due to station preferences for non-educational programming or scheduling issues with regional or network sports broadcasts.

After five years of mainly reruns of programs introduced onto the block prior to the 2007–08 season, ABC decided it would discontinue providing children's programming during the Saturday morning timeslot, and entered into an agreement with Litton Entertainment to program that period; the block closed on August 27, 2011, and Litton's Weekend Adventure, which is structured as a syndication package distributed with virtual exclusivity to ABC's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates, replaced ABC Kids on September 3, 2011.

The Walt Disney Company purchased ABC corporate parent Capital Cities/ABC Inc. in 1995. The merger was completed the following year, and in the fall of 1996, ABC's Saturday Morning lineup aired the fifth season of Doug (which had been acquired from Nickelodeon that year) the third season of Gargoyles (which had previously aired on The Disney Afternoon), Mighty Ducks, and Jungle Cubs. The following spring, it premiered the original animated series Nightmare Ned and began airing reruns of Ducktales. It was one of two networks at the time that prominently carried Disney programming on Saturday mornings, as CBS also carried Disney cartoons (which were mostly television spin-offs of Disney Renaissance films).

In February 1997, Peter Hastings left Warner Bros. Animation and joined Disney, where he was tasked with overhauling ABC's Saturday morning lineup. Disney CEO Michael Eisner sought to create a Saturday morning block that was different from those carried by its competitors Fox Kids and Kids' WB. Hastings pitched an idea around the concept that Saturday is different from every other day of the week, and the representation of weekdays as buildings. Hastings also proposed the use of virtual set technology; although he knew a bit about it at the time and the technology used was just starting to be developed, Disney and ABC liked the idea. He hired Prudence Fenton as consultant manager and co-executive producer. Together, they sampled virtual set technology at the 1997 NAB Show and chose technology developed by Accom and ELSET. Rutherford Bench Productions, which had previously worked with Disney on other projects, hired Pacific Ocean Post (now POP Sound) to produce the virtual set. The building was initially a drawing of Grand Central Terminal with a roller coaster added but evolved into a towering mechanical structure. Even the interior has similarities such as a central high raised room, with two wings on the left and right sides and another on the south side.

On September 13, 1997, Disney's One Saturday Morning premiered as a two-hour sub-block within the ABC Saturday Morning lineup. It was originally scheduled to premiere the Saturday prior on September 6, but coverage by all U.S. networks of the funeral of Princess Diana postponed the premiere by one week to September 13. Disney's One Saturday Morning featured two parts: three hours of regularly scheduled cartoons and a two-hour flagship show that included feature segments, comedy skits, and the virtual world which Hastings had proposed, along with new episodes of three animated series: Doug, Recess and Pepper Ann.

Doug, Recess and Pepper Ann were each nominally given 40-minute timeslots. The extended 10 minutes during each show's slot were for One Saturday Morning's interstitial segments and educational features. The live-action wraparound segments were originally hosted by Charlie (portrayed by Jessica Prunell) for the block's first season in 1997, and later by MeMe (Valarie Rae Miller) starting in September 1998 until 2000; the segments also featured an elephant named Jelly Roll (voiced by stand-up comedian and actor Brad Garrett), who served as a sidekick to the human host, while the eccentric Manny the Uncanny (Paul Rugg), host of his own standalone segment where he visited and observed different jobs, made occasional appearances outside that segment.

Schoolhouse Rock!, a longtime essential of ABC's Saturday morning block since 1973, also aired as an interstitial segment during The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (along shorts airing on Nickelodeon until 1999), likewise a carryover from the pre-Disney era, it would continue until ABC's contract with then-AOL Time Warner expired in 2000.