History
On May 8, 2006, Ion Media Networks, NBCUniversal, Corus Entertainment's Nelvana, Scholastic Corporation, and the then-known Classic Media, which is now DreamWorks Classics, due to the 2012 DreamWorks Animation acquisition, announced plans to launch new children's entertainment endeavor spread across all media platforms, including video-on-demand on digital cable and an interactive webpage. Originally announced under the name "Smart Place for Kids", the official name "Qubo" was announced in August 2006. The name "Qubo" was chosen for the platform due to its "fun" sound and marketability in both English and Spanish. Each owner contributed shows to the network.
The primary goal for Qubo is to "provide quality, entertaining children's programming in a safe environment." The endeavor utilizes Ion's digital broadcast outlets, the educational, literary, and creative assets of Scholastic, the acquisition duties of Classic Media, and the combined content libraries and production facilities of Nelvana, and NBC Universal, which will also dedicate its weekend morning lineups to Qubo. Qubo's Saturday morning block debuted on NBC and Telemundo on Saturday, September 9, 2006 and replaced the Discovery Kids block on NBC and ended on Saturday, June 30, 2012. This was followed by the Qubo block repeating on Ion Television, which began on Friday, September 15, 2006. This was followed by the launch of a digital television network on January 8, 2007 on the digital subchannels of Ion Television affiliates.
Initially, religious content was edited out of the original VeggieTales broadcasts by request of NBC's standards and practices department. The removal drew criticism from the Christian conservative watch group Parents Television Council, which complained to NBC. NBC replied that the editing conformed to the television network's broadcast standards of "not to advocate any one religious point of view." VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer also expressed discontent with the edits, stating that he was not informed that religious content would be removed from the series, and he would have refused to sign a contract if he had known of this beforehand. Vischer said, "I would have declined partly because I knew a lot of fans would feel like it was a sellout or it was done for money." Still, Vischer added that he understood NBC's wish to remain religiously neutral, and said, "VeggieTales is religious, NBC is not. I want to focus people more on 'Isn't it cool that Bob and Larry are on television?'"
On March 28, 2012, it was announced that NBC will launch a new Saturday morning pre-school block, called NBC Kids, that will replace the Qubo on NBC block. That block will be programmed by the consortium which owns the PBS Kids Sprout cable channel, of which NBC holds a stake via their new parent company Comcast. Despite this, the Qubo on Ion block will not be affected.
Due to Ion's extension of regular programming, Ion airs the block in one hour sections, Wednesdays-Fridays at 11:00AM-12PM Eastern/10:00-11:00AM Central.
Read more about this topic: Qubo
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