One Saturday Morning and ABC Kids (Creator)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1SatMornLogo_4471.jpg

Five hours of summer, once a week!

Monday morn, wake up time,
Get to work and stand in line
What would make you feel real fine?
One Saturday Morning!

—One Saturday Morning theme song

The other cartoon block of the 1990s to be created by Disney, running on ABC under the name Disney's One Saturday Morning from September 13, 1997 to September 7, 2002, then ABC Kids from September 14, 2002 to August 27, 2011.

In 1997, The Disney Afternoon was running its last leg and dropped the branding, and Disney had bought out ABC two years prior and revised their Saturday morning line-up (notably dropping Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Reboot in the process). Peter Hastings, a former writer of Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, had just fled to them from Warner Bros. out of his frustration with the Executive Meddling happening to the latter cartoon, so he was put in charge of coming up with a new Saturday morning block for ABC. The idea he came up with (as seen in the block's intro sequence) was that the weekdays are represented as buildings, and the building for Saturday is a special one, where it is like "five hours of summer once a week", according to the theme song.^note It was called Disney's One Saturday Morning (the "one" being the building's address number). This also marked the first time children's programming that ABC had an overall theme since the 1970s (with the "Funshine Saturday" brand).^note

One Saturday Morning was the name of not only the block, but also a two-hour live-action hosting show whose hosts, and format, were tweaked from season to season; the name came from the address the giant factory building where the hosting segments originated, a giant mechanical "1" with vague Steampunk elements. Early on, virtual sets were used to portray the interior of the building; soon, most of the action was moved onto the Televator, wherein female human host Charlie (Jessica Prunell) and later Meme (Valarie Rae Miller) alongside Jelly Roll the Elephant (voiced by Brad Garrett) could ascend or descend to different levels depending on the segment or program. This was where episodes of three of the block's most prominently featured shows (newcomers Recess and Pepper Ann, and Disney's Retooled version of Doug) were presented. It was also home to many interstitial segments shown between the programs, listed below. The hosts and interstitials disappeared from the block in late 2000.

Despite being filled with more E/I content than any of the other Saturday morning blocks (and pointing it out by having some guy say "Illuminating Television" over each show's intro sequence), One Saturday Morning was a very popular block, managing to stay on ABC for five years; this was thanks to the clever writing and strong characterization of the series it aired. In its third season, a companion block was added in the form of Disney's One Too, which ran on UPN as a replacement for their own "Kids" block (even though UPN was a corporate sibling to a competitor, though the time may have been given to Disney due to UPN's President at the time, Dean Valentine, having formerly been a Disney executive) on both weekday afternoons and Sunday mornings. The weekday block was originally going to be called Whomptastic, but they probably changed it to the more fitting name probably because it would not make sense to name a block after the Recess-made Unusual Euphemism for "suck"; Disney themselves claimed it was for "better brand identity", which also makes sense. Like The Disney Afternoon before it, One Saturday Morning also garnered its own soundtrack album of musical highlights from the shows.

Three of its shows became feature films: Doug's 1st Movie (originally intended for a Direct to Video release), which, while doing well in the box office, bombed with critics; Recess: School's Out, which was by far the most successful movie of the three; and Teacher's Pet (the only show from 2000-2003 to get a movie), which bombed at the box office, but did well with critics. Of the main three from this block, only Pepper Ann didn't get a theatrical movie.

One Saturday Morning aired its last broadcast under that name on September 7, 2002, after which it was rebranded as ABC Kids. ABC Kids started off pretty strong; it even saw the premiere the otherwise Disney Channel Original Series Lilo & Stitch: The Series, which was a big hit for its time as it rode high on the popularity of the film it followed up on, and continued to air new episodes between both the block (including a Recess crossover) and the pay TV channel throughout its run. However, the block quickly degenerated into nothing but Disney Channel sitcom reruns which aired with a very odd "film" effect over them (and were laughable in actual E/I content) and Power Rangers (which itself degraded to butchered versions of the nearly-twenty-year-old Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers); which were many times pre-empted by some station groups with actual educational shows.

The block eventually got the axe in Fall 2011 when Disney decided to move its kids' shows exclusively to its then-numerous cable networks, and was replaced with a block of E/I programs called Litton's Weekend Adventure, run by Litton Entertainment instead of Disney. Most of the Litton shows are of the animal show variety, or have a No Budget feel, though thankfully the infamous "Litton look" of their earlier cheaper efforts is gone; Litton also began to control CBS's Saturday morning block at the start of the 2013-14 season, and in the Fall 2014 season, they took over The CW's block (ironically under the name One Magnificent Morning). One Too, meanwhile, lasted until the end of the 2002-03 season, but due to the name change for the Saturday block, the One Too brand was dropped and the block was unbranded (though Disney's website called it Disney's Animation Weekdays). Meanwhile, most of the shows featured on the block went into syndicated reruns on the Disney Channel and Toon Disney, until the latter channel having since been replaced with Disney XD. Sabrina: The Animated Series was also rerun on DiC/Cookie Jar's CBS Saturday morning blocks from 2007 until early 2011. 101 Dalmatians: The Series was reran on Disney Channel, but at 4:00 AM (as part of Disney Junior (a highly strange decision, as it's not a preschool show at all) for a short time in early 2011). Recess was rerun on Disney XD for a short time in October 2011. Many of the One Saturday Morning series sadly haven't received full DVD releases yet, but thankfully several of the shows are on Disney+.

Shows that ran on One Saturday Morning and ABC Kids:

One Saturday Morning (and One Too) only

101 Dalmatians: The Series (13 episodes would premiere on ABC, while the rest would be syndicated)
Disney's Doug (which had already been running for a season before that)
Pepper Ann
Jungle Cubs
The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (Like Nickelodeon, because their contract didn't expire yet, though it was already on its last legs at the time. The Looney Tunes cartoons were getting more exposure on Kids' WB! and especially on Cartoon Network, where 90% of the cartoons shown were uncut and uncensored. Once the contract ended in 2000, those cartoons would be restricted to Cartoon Network.)
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh reruns (only to fill up their "edutainment" requirement; the only other show to last the length of OSM)
Schoolhouse Rock! (again, to fill out their "edutainment" requirement, though, after awhile, those got phased out)
Science Court (not owned by Disney), retooled the following season as Squigglevision
Hercules: The Animated Series
Mickey Mouse Works
- House of Mouse
Sabrina: The Animated Series (created by DiC, then owned by Disney)
The Weekenders
Teacher's Pet
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
Lloyd in Space
The Legend of Tarzan (One Too mainly, with reruns during the last two months of OSM)
Mary Kate and Ashley in Action! (created by DiC)
Digimon Frontier (One Too only; reruns of Digimon Tamers alternated with new episodes of Frontier)