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Creator / Qubo

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/150px-Qubo_logo_5180.png

Qubo is the coolest place to laugh and play
Qubo with your new friends on Saturday
Qubo in the morning is so much fun
Qubo is a party! Qubo's for everyone!
The channel's theme song from 2006-2009

Qubo was a media venture which aimed to "provide quality, entertaining children's programming in a safe environment". It originally encompassed a Saturday morning lineup aired by NBC, Ion, and Telemundo (in English and Spanish respectively), along with a 24-hour free-to-air children's network, alternatively known as “Qubo Channel”, being broadcast on Ion's subchannels and their accompanying online platforms. It launched in 2006 as a joint venture between Ion Media Networks and NBCUniversal, along with Corus Entertainment, Scholastic, and the now NBCU-owned DreamWorks Classics, formerly known as Classic Media (for content production and access to their respective libraries).

The Qubo block, a Saturday morning block of educational and informational programs (broadcasted by NBC and Telemundo) debuted on both NBC and Telemundo on September 9, 2006, with Friday afternoon reruns debuting on Ion on September 15 of that year. The Qubo block on NBC replaced NBC’s previous “Discovery Kids on NBC” block, while the Qubo block on Telemundo replaced “Telemundo Kids”, a block of Viacom's Nickelodeon and Corus' Nelvana Spanish dubs (with Nelvana-produced show Jacob Two-Two actually having been previously aired on “Telemundo Kids” and being carried over to “Qubo on Telemundo”). On January 8, 2007, the 24-hour free-to-air standalone Qubo Channel launched on the subchannels of Ion's stations. The network originally ran a looping 4-hour block of programs; this block expanded into a 6-hour cycle with more outside programming later in the year, and in 2010, the channel introduced the late-night block Qubo's Night Owl, which initially consisted of classic animated series from the Filmation library. One thing unique to the standalone Qubo Channel was that it provided Spanish-language Closed Captioning for mainly its older programming via the CC3 channel as well as a Spanish-language Audio Description for both its older and newer programming via the SAP channel.

Qubo began to nab hits in March 2012 with the announcement that NBC and Telemundo would drop their respective Qubo blocks in favor of new preschool blocks programmed by Sprout (which NBC's new parent company, Comcast, owned a stake in), known as NBC Kids and MiTelemundo respectively, due to NBCUniversal exiting the joint venture. This left only the “Qubo on Ion” block and the 24-hour standalone Qubo Channel, putting a huge limit on its availability. With the NBC Kids block, Qubo lost the rights to all NBCU-owned kids programming, and would eventually lose the rights to some DreamWorks Classics programming with the sale of that company to NBCUniversal.

In 2013, Ion Media Networks acquired the stakes of Qubo held by Corus Entertainment, Scholastic, and DreamWorks Classics in 2013. The contracts with Scholastic, NBCUniversal, and Classic Media (which is now part of NBCUniversal through DreamWorks Animation) would eventually expire in 2012, 2014 and 2015 respectively, thus resulting in the network losing the rights to air shows from those catalogs. Despite this, up until its' closure, Qubo continued to obtain the rights to air Corus Entertainment’s catalog, though it had also gotten programs from other companies such as 9 Story Media Group (which bought out the distribution rights to a vast majority of Scholastic's media catalog in 2019), Splash Entertainment, and WildBrain.

The scheduling of "Qubo on Ion" has changed several times throughout its run on Ion (which in turn, restored children's programming to the network for the first time since it dropped the Pax Kids block in 2000), switching from a three-hour Friday afternoon slot to one hour each Wednesday through Fridays, and later switching again to a three-hour Friday morning slot. On January 4, 2015, Ion repurposed the block as the “Qubo Kids Corner”, a three-hour programming block airing back-to-back series of Qubo's educational programming every Sunday morning, later airing Wednesday through Friday mornings one hour each day. In January 2018, the block started airing every Friday for three hours. On January 3, 2020, the block was reduced to just two hours, though remained on Fridays.

On January 7, 2019, the channel ceased airing programming 24/7, having replaced the Night Owl block with five hours of Infomercials as Ion Media wanted decided to reduce the amount of paid and religious programming on Ion and Ion Plus by shifting those hours to Qubo's overnight schedule between 1:00 to 6:00 a.m. Eastern. Aditionally, while the "Qubo Kids Corner" block on Ion remained as well, on September 8th, 2020, the block also began airing on fellow sister channel Ion Plus every Monday through Wednesday mornings because of E/I commitments since they had eight stations (KILM, WFPX, WDPX, WCLJ, WDLI, WSFJ, WLWC, and WIFS) that were their own stations and not on Ion's digital subchannels.

On January 14, 2021, it was announced that the Qubo over-the-air network (alongside fellow sister channel Ion Plus) would shut down on February 28, 2021 to allow Scripps, Ion's new parent company, to migrate its over-the-air networks to its Ion owned-and-operated stations. The required Edutainment Show block on Ion is now completely devoid of anything regarding Qubo's existence. The network quietly ended at the end of the 28th, though some affiliates ditched it on the 26th before the shutdown, abruptly throwing Franklin viewers into an in-progress Western on Grit or a murder show on Court TV (now Ion) Mystery without any notice.

Final programming

Animation

Live-Action

  • Ask Me! - interstitials only
  • Funniest Pets and People - part of "Night Owl"
  • Giver
  • Look Kool
  • Science Max
  • You and Me

Qubo has also aired the following series:

Animation

Live-Action and Puppets

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