Founded by Ted Turner (who appointed Betty Cohen as the first president of the network), [1] the channel was launched on October 1, 1992, and primarily broadcasts animated television series, mostly children's programming, ranging from action to animated comedy. On October 1, 1992, the network officially launched as the first 24-hour single-genre cable channel with animation as its main theme. In 2004, ABC was the last of the broadcast networks to add a Saturday-morning edition of its morning news program (in its case, Good Morning America Weekend) in the first hour of its lineup, mainly due to internal affiliate criticism of the lack of network coverage of the February 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, which occurred on a Saturday morning, forcing them to take coverage from other video news agencies (the networks were also feeling pressure from competition with cable news outlets that ran a "24/7" cycle). ABC was the first network to outsource its E/I liabilities and Saturday-morning program block to Litton; Litton's ABC block is known as the Litton's Weekend Adventure, which is currently known as Weekend Adventure and the block is now operated by Hearst Media Production Group. NBC switched to teen-oriented documentary programming in the time slot in 2016 because the programming was less likely to cause Weekend Today viewers to tune out.

The network continues to offer Saturday-morning programming as of 2015, though, as with most PBS programming, local member stations retain the right to refuse it outright for other programming such as instructional/DIY/cooking shows for adults, carrying it on Sundays instead, or placing it on a subchannel. During the 1960s and 1970s, it was not uncommon to have animated shorts produced with both film and television in mind ( DePatie-Freleng, established by two former WB employees, was particularly associated with this business model), so that by selling the shorts to theaters, the studios could afford a higher budget than would otherwise be available from television alone, which at the time was still a free medium for the end-user, except for a minority of households that had cable television, then strictly a medium for delivering signals from distant TV stations. Kids' WB debuted on The WB on September 9, 1995, as a block on weekday mornings, weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Soft and comfortable: The carpet provides a soft and cushioned surface for walking, making it comfortable for the feet.As a result, Adult Swim is treated by Nielsen as a separate channel in its ratings reports (similar to Nickelodeon's Nick at Nite block) and marketed as such because of its differing target demographics.

The remainder of the networks' Saturday-morning schedules were filled by reruns of black-and-white live-action series made in the 1950s, usually with a western background ( The Lone Ranger, The Roy Rogers Show, Sky King, Fury, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, My Friend Flicka, etc. The networks were encouraged to create educational spots that endeavored to use animation and/or live-action for enriching content, probably as a compromise between the advocacy groups on the one hand and the networks and producers on the other. There was media attention in June 2001 over a network decision concerning further omissions from broadcast. On September 19, 2009, KEWLopolis was re-branded as Cookie Jar TV, with its target audience shifted toward preschoolers. I am very pleased about this hotel and services and i can say we had a great stay here and the staff is very king, helpful, very well trained for every situation.

The block broadcasts both animated and live-action shows (including original programming, reruns of animated sitcoms, and other action and anime series) generally with minimal or no editing for content. CBS followed NBC's lead in 1997 by producing CBS News Saturday Morning for the first two hours of its lineup and an all-live-action block of children's programming. NBC replaced that block with Qubo, a three-hour " educational entertainment" block that debuted on September 9, 2006 (with accompanying blocks on co-owned Spanish network Telemundo on weekend mornings and on Ion Television once weekly), as part of a programming partnership between parent company NBCUniversal, Ion Media, Scholastic Corporation, Nelvana and DreamWorks Classics, that resulted in the creation of a companion digital multicast network on Ion Television's stations; the Qubo blocks on NBC and Telemundo ended on June 30, 2012, leaving only the Ion block and standalone Qubo Channel until their full closure on February 28, 2021.