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Creator / Fox Kids

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Fox Kids Rocks Kids!

Fox Kids was a Saturday morning and weekday afternoon (and weekday morning for a while) programming block that aired from 1990 to 2002 on Fox. Besides it's own in-house productions, it also aired shows produced by Saban Entertainment and/or Marvel Productions, as well as those made by DiC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Animation, Universal Cartoon Studios, and Gaumont Multimedia/Xilam. It often aired on Fox owned-and-operated stations, though it also aired on those owned or affiliated with UPN, The WB, and independent stations.

The origins of the block have two different root causes, depending on who you ask. One story claims a result of a dispute between Disney and Fox founder Barry Diller over carriage of The Disney Afternoon, which was set to air on Disney's newly-purchased station, KCAL-TV (channel 9) in Los Angeles (now owned by CBS), rather than Fox station KTTV (channel 11), which had aired DuckTales (1987) and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers by that point. Long story short, Diller rallied against Disney and the four-year-old network started their own kids' division. Another story, however, claims it was Harry Pappas, owner of several major Fox affiliates, that suggested the network get into the kidvid business, as stations like his were getting squeezed by syndicators (including Disney) demanding more of the advertising time in their kids programming, leaving the stations with not enough for themselves.

Much like its prime-time counterpart, Fox Kidsnote  had a different scheduling pattern than the Big 3; it aired three hours on Saturdays, and a half-hour on weekdays, something none of the Big 3 have done since 1982, when CBS booted Captain Kangaroo from weekdays in favor of national news. Eventually, as its ratings grew, it was expanded to four hours on Saturdays and three hours on weekdays; it also gained a fan club and magazine (which could be customized for each individual station). However, as the years wore on, possibly thanks to the Moral Guardians pouncing on Power Rangers, the censorship they'd subject their series to got increasingly ridiculous — Woody Woodpecker couldn't peck people on the head, and the stuff they imposed on the staff of Spider-Man: The Animated Series is legendary.

One of the things that set the block apart from its contemporaries, especially in the early years, were its advertising bumpers. While creative and fun commercial bumpers weren't anything new, Fox Kids' bumpers took it to a new level in creativity that you didn't see in broadcast TV at the time (Nickelodeon and Disney Channel had creative bumpers, but these were cable channels; Disney was premium like HBO at the time, and so had the extra budget, while Fox was still a low-budget underdog in the broadcast world), and could almost be considered cartoon shorts themselves. This is especially true in the 1993-97 seasons, when the block was arguably at its peak, when the bumpers would feature a myriad of different characters including:

  • A pair of couch potato aliens watching TV.
  • A pair of cartoon bulls in the army.
  • A Superman-esque superhero who always screwed up his rescues.
  • A cartoon fox (had to be at least one!) who would get into some kind of antics.
  • Wilby Baxter, a young boy whose name was a pun on "We'll be back".
  • A lazy dog named Loafy, and his long suffering owner, who would try and fail to get Loafy to do tricks.

The block also went the extra mile with its after-show advertising as well. Again, audio commercials played during a show's credits was nothing new, but while most networks had a generic announcer talking about some other show on the network, Fox Kids credits commercials were A) dedicated to other Fox Kids shows exclusively, instead of advertising sports or prime time programming, and B) were voiced by characters from the show themselves. This helped the actual kids get energized about upcoming programming, and was so successful that other networks, even cable exclusive ones like Disney Channel and Cartoon Network, would ape the practice before credits sidebars became the norm.

Another way the network would engage with kids was through the Fox Kids Club. At a national level, this was basically a newsletter/magazine that kids could subscribe to that would have news, games and trivia about current and upcoming Fox Kids shows. What was unique about it was every Fox affiliate had its own version of the Club, with their own unique host and special events. As an example, WBFF-TV (channel 45), the Fox station in Baltimore, had the Fox 45 Clubhouse, hosted by Kenny Curtis, who adopted a sort of surfer dude persona. Different affiliates would have different supplements to the Club newsletter. These could include birthday clubs, special Fox Kids-centered activities at local fairs and events, or library reading competitions.

Starting with the launch of Fox Kids on STAR TV in Asia-Pacific and Australia on Foxtel in 1995, Fox Kids started to expand internationally as their own cable channels. In 1995, Fox signed a deal with Saban Entertainment to create Fox Kids channels that were available in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Israel and the aforementioned Asia-Pacific, which aired content from the Saban and Marvel libraries not shown on the US block.

They also aired an educational mini-block called The Fox Cubhouse (which was produced by FCP and WQED Pittsburgh), which was aimed at preschoolers, from 1994 to 1996.

The death of Fox Kids has its roots in two separate moves in 1994 and 1996.

First, Fox's deal with New World Communications (founded by Roger Corman in the 1970s, it owned Marvel and Genesis Entertainment and got purchased by Ronald Perelman) to affiliate with several VHF stations in major football cities led to Fox Kids being separated from its parent network in many markets, as most of the new Fox affiliates didn't want anything to do with the block. This relegated Fox Kids to one of two options in the affected markets: be carried by a station taking up a rival network affiliation, or move to a low-rated independent. note 

The second move came in 1996 when Fox announced they would seperate Fox Kids Network as a seperate division operated under a 50-50 partnership with Saban Entertainmentnote  as a joint-venture called "Fox Kids Worldwide" (to account for the international FK networks, which the two companies team up for the previous year). The next year, they purchased International Family Entertainment, who owned a network called The Family Channelnote  alongside various other assets including the libraries of TVS and MTM Enterprises. In 1998, they renamed The Family Channel as the Fox Family Channel, with the company itself being renamed "Fox Family Worldwide", becoming a hub for Fox Kids/Saban programming, as well as programming from Teletoon and YTV. Unfortunately, the network struggled in the ratings, thanks to infighting between Fox and Saban over who ran the channel, no clear strategy, mediocre reaction to their new programming. It didn't help that an ill-fated attempt to create Male and Female-dedicated channels called simply the "BoyzChannel" and "GirlzChannel" didn't pick up with digital cable providers, and both were shuttered after a year on the airwaves.

The issues really came to a head in 1999 when rival Kids' WB! picked up the broadcasting rights to Pokémon whose surging popularity reached epitomic levels once the show made the move and helped Kids' WB! overtake Fox Kids that year. Fox Kids attempted to counter the show's popularity by picking up Digimon, starting with Digimon Adventure. While that show got its fans, it was nowhere near close to being competitive with Pokémon; FK's attempts to double-team it with Monster Rancher, and then spamming both in the schedule, to the detriment of everything else they were showing, just made things worse. That same year, Fox Kids Europe was floated on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

By 2001, Fox Kids had only 9% of the age 2-11 TV demographic, a massive drop from its peak of 21% in 1997 (before Disney revamped ABC's Saturday morning block and before Kids' WB! started to rise). With the combined double whammy of the increasing audience share of cable networks Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, and Fox Family ratings continuing to crater, Saban attempted to sell their stake in Fox Family Worldwide to News Corporation, but neither party could agree on a deal, and to avoid further money drainage; leading forward with Rupert Murdoch being further motivated to sell by needing funds to purchase part of DirecTV, the two companies decided to sell the venture to a third party.

In July 2001, it was announced that Disney would acquire Fox Family Worldwide, with the deal eventually closing in October, effectively giving them the last laugh after the aforementioned dispute 11 years ago. The deal included Saban Entertainment, their subsidiaries, their production houses, a 76% stake in the publically-operating Fox Kids Europe, the Fox Kids network in Latin America, the in-house Fox Kids library (which included most of the Marvel Productions and DePatie-Freleng catalog, not including co-productions with Warner Bros., Sunbow Entertainment/Hasbro, and MGM) and most importantly to Disney, Fox Family, which was renamed to ABC Family. The Australian channel was not included in the sale, as it was operated separately under subsidiary Foxtel, and the US block on Fox wasn't included either, being moved to Fox's in-house studios in LA.

With Fox losing the programming rights from their major supplier, Saban Entertainment, they had no nerve to continue operating a children's block on their own, and in late-2001 Fox put the time space up for bidding. A bidding war ensued between DIC Entertainment and 4Kids Entertainment, and in January 2002 Fox announced that 4Kids Entertainment had won the rights to supply a new Saturday Morning Cartoon block, which would begin in the Fall of 2002. At that date, Fox Kids aired for the final time, and 4Kids' new block - FoxBox, later renamed to 4Kids TV, premiered.

While this was a blow to children who grew up with the block, Fox Kids and Saban Entertainment had the last laugh and seemed to want to go out with a swan song, because before all was said and done, they seemingly threw the standards-and-practices rulebook out the window and indeed went out with a bang, allowing shows depicting material that would probably be considered too suggestive, disturbing, or frightening for its demographic. Digimon Tamers was one show that is fondly remembered by Fox Kids viewers, for allowing material that dealt with death, PTSD, loss of identity, philosophy, violence, metaphysics, and mature radar-skirting concepts of love, openness, and connection. Power Rangers Time Force also pushed the envelope on what could be shown on children's programming, and was the final Power Rangers series solely produced by Saban Entertainment before the transfer to Disney. The 4KidsTV block, however, came to an end at the end of 2008 due to issues with Fox (they'd already gotten their hands on Kids' WB!'s time space on The CW by that time), and now the latter half of the space airs infomercials, while the earlier half was given back to the affiliates, allowing them to run the required E/I programs; Fox later partnered with Steve Rotfeld Productions to show the Xploration Station block on several Fox-owned stations, including several that refused to show any other blocks, such as former New World stations owned by Fox and Tribune.

Meanwhile, Fox Kids Europe continued to thrive, and although plans were announced to rebrand them under the Disney umberella, nothing came into fruition, and Twentieth Century Fox allowed Fox Kids Europe to continue using the brand and logos under a non-fixed term trademark licence without any material charge. Fox Kids Latin America were also able to continue using the brand as well. However, Disney wanted a way to expand their programming to the United States, but were barred from using the Fox Kids brand in North America.

So, in January 2004, ABC Family Worldwide, Fox Kids Europe and the management of Fox Kids Latin America announced they would rebrand their operations as "Jetix", which would be used as the name for various programming blocks and channels all across the world, which all three parties would own. The newly named Jetix Europe would hold rights in Europe/MENA and Israel, Disney would handle all other regions. The Jetix brand replaced Fox Kids from a transtional period that began with the French network rebranding in July 2004, and ending with the German network's rebranding in June 2005. In December 2008, Disney announced they would fully purchase Jetix Europe, and by 2009 all Jetix networks were rebranded as Disney XD, though a few Eastern European countries got their own version of Disney Channel instead.

Meanwhile in the United States, Disney moved the "Kids" moniker over to ABC, replacing their previous One Saturday Morning block, and shared new Power Rangers episodes until the creation of the Jetix block on ABC Family and Toon Disney, at which point Jetix took over premieres until Power Rangers RPM, which aired exclusively on ABC Kids, as did a re-versioning of the first season until Saban Brands bought back the rights.

Fox Kids is widely held in high regard by people raised in The '90s. A side effect of this includes substantial misblame directed towards both Disney and 4Kids for supposedly destroying the block, even though the reality (as explained above) was more complex than that.

Since Disney's purge of the Fox Kids name off its channels, Fox itself started an In Name Only Fox Kids block in Finland. That block was shut down in January 2019, several months before Disney ended up buying Fox's entertainment and international assets and effectively, in a way, bringing Fox Kids back under its former corporate roof (though the Fox network, US non-regional sports properties and news properties stayed with Rupert Murdoch, while Power Rangers has since been sold by Saban to Hasbro). Only the Marvel shows aired on Fox Kids are available on the Disney+ streaming service since 2019, though The Tick resurfaced on Hulu in 2021.

See also Kids' WB! and One Saturday Morning, two more 1990s kid-centered blocks. For more info on what led to the creation of Fox Kids and analysis of the shows aired, join the Fox Kids Club (a new video series akin to Nick Knacks).

Shows featured on Fox Kids (and Fox Family), in alphabetical order:

1990:

1991:

1992:

1993:

1994:

1995:

  • Goosebumps (1995) (later renamed to Ultimate Goosebumps)
  • Magic Adventures of Mumfie (ran as part of the Fox Cubhouse, and by itself during the last week of 1996. The show's Christmas special also ran as a stand-alone program. It was also later reran on Fox Family)
  • Masked Rider

1996:

1997:

1998:

1999:

2000:

2001:

2002:

 
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Fox Kids vs. Kids' WB!

Saberspark would bring up how Fox Kids and Kids' WB would often air shows at the same time with similar premises, almost blow for blow, listing some examples.

Example of:
Dueling Works

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Fox Kids vs. Kids' WB!

Saberspark would bring up how Fox Kids and Kids' WB would often air shows at the same time with similar premises, almost blow for blow, listing some examples.

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4.79 (14 votes)

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Main / DuelingWorks

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