History
In January 1998, CBS entered into an agreement with the Canadian animation studio Nelvana to program and produce its Saturday-morning block, replacing the Think CBS Kids which aired that season. The CBS Kidshow was planned to relaunch on September 19 of that year,[1] but CBS delayed the block's relaunch to October 3.[2]
The new block featured several first-run series co-produced by Nelvana, CBS and Scottish Television; the first half of the block was targeted towards younger audiences with series such as Franklin, Anatole, and Dumb Bunnies, while the second half of Flying Rhino Junior High, Mythic Warriors, and Birdz targeted an older audience. Nelvana also oversaw the block's branding, which featured a stage show theme with children performing for an audience of kids and computer-animated aliens; CBS VP of children's programming Brian O'Neal stated that the branding was intended to be "quirky and weird", and "give kids a sense of ownership". The launch was also backed by promotional campaigns with Baskin-Robbins, the USPS, and retail chain Target.[3][4]
The premiere of Mythic Warriors was further delayed due to its complicated animation techniques; reruns of Tales from the Cryptkeeper (with a revival airing a year later) aired in Mythic Warriors' timeslot until it premiered on November 7.
In June 2000, a few months after Viacom (which CBS founded in 1952 as television syndication distributor CBS Films, Inc., and later spun off in 1971 after the then-recently implemented Financial Interest and Syndication Rules barred networks from holding financial interest in syndicated programming content) completed its $37 billion merger with CBS Corporation (which was the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation that purchased CBS in 1995), CBS reached an agreement with new corporate cousin Nickelodeon to air programming from the cable channel's preschool-oriented block Nick Jr. beginning that September.[5] Prior to the deal, former Nick Jr. series Rupert moved to the CBS Kidshow block in January 1999, as part of an agreement in which both it and another animated series, Franklin, swapped networks (with Franklin moving from CBS to the Nick Jr. block on Nickelodeon).[6]
The CBS Kidshow block ended its run on September 9, 2000, and was replaced the following week on September 16 by Nick Jr. on CBS,[5] which featured two Nelvana series - the aforementioned Franklin and Little Bear; several other Nelvana series from Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. continued to air on CBS until September 9, 2006, after which, the Nickelodeon block was replaced with KOL Secret Slumber Party as a result of Viacom and CBS demerging earlier that year.
