Stick The Hub with a fork, ’cause it’s done.
HUB NETWORK
2010-2014
For months now, there have been rumors circulating that the network was in trouble and its’ future murky, well, apparently those weren’t just rumors. Deadline reports:
“The long-rumored takeover and rebranding of the children’s network is about to take place, The Wall Street Journal reports. Discovery would acquire some of Hasbro’s share in the struggling joint venture — but still leave the toymaker with a sizable stake — and then likely rename it Discovery Family. It would target parents as well as kids, and still enable Hasbro to program the channel from 9 AM to 3 PM.
While the deal isn’t complete yet, it’s being reported that the channel likely will become part of Group President Henry Schleiff’s growing fiefdom — which includes Investigation Discovery, Destination America, and the American Heroes Channel. The joint venture has had little success taking share in a crowded market dominated by Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, while kids advertising has declined, HUB had already expanded into family-oriented programming, airing movies in primetime and adding older-skewing fare like popular 1990s teen comedy series Blossom.”
So that would seem to be it for The Hub. Shame too, because the channel had so much potential. It takes most cable networks at least a decade or so to hit their decline, The Hub did it in just 4 years. That’s gotta be a record. The channel had much more diversity when it first hit the scene 4 years ago than it has now. Back when the Hub first launched in 2010, audience’s reaction was this:
…Now in 2014, it’s this:
Hasbro had big dreams for this network: they wanted to run with the Big Dogs and turn the Trinity of Kids and Family Networks, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, into a quartet, but while the Big 3 kids networks typically attract millions of viewers in a given broadcasting day, The Hub was lucky to score 100,000 viewers.
The Hub used to offer a variety of programs. There was at one time a preschool block called Hub-Bub and an action cartoon block called HuBoom!, but those shows were mishandled and lacking in premiere shows, so they were soon gone. However, while we’re a tad nonplussed by this news, we can’t say we’re too disappointed, seeing as how the only shows that we’re currently watching on The Hub (Now that The Aquabats Super Show! was given the boot) are My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Littlest Pet Shop, and even then, that’s only when it’s a new episode. Really, this was to be expected. The channel was hemorrhaging money, and yes, the kids’ entertainment market is indeed crowded right now with the Big Three (Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network) but they still could’ve managed to cut a swath or at least carved a niche for themselves had they not chosen to rely solely on My Little Pony and 80’s nostalgia to carry them along.
Over the past few years, Hasbro had become complacent, thinking that the success of MLP and the moderate success of LPS alone was enough to carry the network, and they allowed The Hub to essentially become the Ponies, Pets and Nostalgia Network, not a wise move considering Hasbro’s plan was for the Hub to join the ranks of Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. We can’t sum it up better than this post from the MLP forums:
“I knew Hasbro’s expectations for the Hub’s performance were unrealistically high from the start. After launch, they said that their goal was to become “half as big as Cartoon Network” in 5 years.
This is obviously not the case, and this is because Hasbro has failed on multiple fronts. They failed to adequately promote the network on a large scale since its launch, and they failed to distribute it wide enough where it would be on a level ground with Nick, Disney, and CN. Additionally, they expected to be able to do this with a relatively weak lineup. Besides the success of MLP and the moderate success of LPS, they tried to help themselves with only a short slate of original programming, most of it based on established franchises, while pinning the rest of their hopes on a full slate of reruns and imports. In the mature industry of today as opposed to the past, with all the competition, reruns and imports won’t really do you the best.”
Basically, Hasbro wanted to conquer the Seven Seas without leaving the comfort of their own bathtub. The Hub’s failings can be summed up by 2 main bullet points:
- Over-Reliance on Nostalgia, and
- Over-Reliance on Ponies and Pets.
A prime example of The Hub’s relying far too much on nostalgia is embodied by this promo:
This spot immediately got under my craw from the very first time I saw it, but I couldn’t figure out why it bugged me so much. I don’t fault Rob Paulsen and Jess Harnell for doing it, those guys are awesome and they’ve still got it, but something about this just left a burr under my saddle. Then, in the wake of recent events, it hit me: The Hub shouldn’t have been kissing up to Animaniacs (and later Tiny Toons) like this, touting them as their latest and greatest stars and having the stars of their other shows shining the Warners’ collective asses, because A! is 1) old and 2) over. If A! was being revived on The Hub and these were new, never before seen episodes, then the network could rightfully make a spot like this, since then they’d have something legitimate to brag about, but these were same old repeats which have previously aired on numerous other cable networks and currently are on DVD. A! and TTA simply didn’t deserve this level of hype, especially not over their original programs. The spot just came off as a thinly veiled attempt by Hasbro to expand their Brony audience and attract more older viewers. There’s nothing wrong with lightly sprinkling some older nostalgic favorites around the schedule here and there, but too much nostalgia is just overkill, and it does very little to attract and gain viewers. A! and TTA went on to receive as much as 5 airings in a day, only for the nostalgia balloon to burst and for them to go back to just a single airing a day, which they should have been doing all along. To put it simply, nostalgia just doesn’t work when it’s overused. A network can’t, and shouldn’t rely solely on the classics to get by. Older acquisitions should be lightly peppered around non-peak viewing hours to fill those little gaps in the schedule; you don’t treat an older canceled acquisition like the Next Big Thing and the network’s savior. The notion that canceled reruns of A! would or could become The Hub’s next Brony phenomenon was quite frankly, stupid of The Hub. When Cartoon Network would occasionally bring back an older show, it will just air during the day for a little while and then disappear when something newer is available to air, and Nick doesn’t even bother digging up older shows for their main network since they have offshoot channels like TeeNick and Nicktoons for that. A show like A! is OK to show for a little while, but it should have only been treated as filler, not embraced by the network as the Holy Grail.
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This brings us to the second bullet point. They let the monster success of MLP and the moderate success of LPS become their crutches, and rather than developing other new and diverse shows based on their other toy properties as well as new originals and unique 3rd party acquisitions, they instead chose to simply repeat MLP 5 times a day and LPS another 4 days a day (to be fair, this is a common network practice: when a show proves successful, fill every available space with it; I’m looking at you, Simpsons, Family Guy and Spongebob), and in the process they tossed their other original series like Pound Puppies, Dan VS, The Aquabats Super Show, Kaijuto et all under the bus and eventually stopped developing new shows altogether outside of cheap-to-produce stuff like Kid President and Parents Just Don’t Understand. Come on, Hasbro. You’re the 3rd or 4th largest toy company in the world; you have dozens of toys and games at your disposal that you could have made shows out of, too many for you to only capitalize on MLP, LPS and Transformers. Where’s the new MASK cartoon? Where’s the new Jem show? (Though a Jem movie is said to be in the works.) Where’s the new C.O.P.S. show? Where’s the new Candy Land cartoon? Where’s the new Mr. Potato Head show? Where’s the new Play-Doh cartoon? Where’s the new Clue show or Monopoly show? I’m not saying shows based on those properties would all be masterpieces, but that would at least be a variety. Though personally I think a Monopoly show has the potential to be epic:
And Hub’s nighttime schedule was a joke: they just looped the same 10 B and C grade level movies again and again every night then cap off their evenings with a bunch of reruns of 1970’s and 1980’s sitcoms like some dime store Nick @ Nite. Running a bunch of old sitcoms during prime time was a PHENOMENALLY, HILARIOUSLY stupid idea, as that does little to nothing as far as attracting and keeping viewers for the simple fact that nostalgia is fleeting. No one is going to switch off the latest episode of True Blood or Arrow or The Walking Dead or Once Upon a Time for a 40-year-old rerun of Happy Days. Silly Hasbro, nobody wants another TV Land, not even TV Land wants to be TV Land anymore.
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The statement that “in the mature industry of today as opposed to the past, with all the competition, reruns and imports won’t really do you the best” is quoted for truth, and to paraphrase Yoda, this is why Hub failed. They expected MLP, LPS and nostalgia to carry the entire network, which was a HUGE mistake, and they let their few first-run productions like Dan VS and Aquabats slip through their fingers in favor of the more “cost efficient” reruns and imports, another huge mistake. News flash, Hasbro: it’s not the 1980’s-1990’s anymore; a channel that consists mostly of repeats isn’t going to cut the mustard in today’s cutthroat industry. No one is going to rush home to watch a bunch of cancelled broadcast TV shows that they just as easily buy as entire series DVD sets at their local Wal-Mart or Best Buy for $20. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Hub needed a TGIF. It needed a SNICK. It needed a Cartoon-Cartoon Fridays. It needed a Miguzi. It needed a Funny For Your Face (and yeah, I know they had Animaniacs and Tiny Toons for a while, but acquisition rights don’t last forever and nostalgia is fleeting; what they needed were NEW shows done in the vein of those shows). Heck, it could have even stood a Secret Slumber Party/KEWLopolis. It needed some other new and original shows besides MLP that could appeal to multiple age groups across multiple platforms. While they did it as an effort to save money, dropping The Aquabats Super Show! was one of the single stupidest moves The Hub could make. It was a potential breakout hit which was watched equally by kids and parents alike. One major factor that did Aquabats and Dan VS in (aside from The Hub’s poor scheduling of the shows–seriously, who premieres new episodes to run on the middle of Saturday afternoons?) was that there weren’t any other shows like them on the network. For a while Hasbro tried to lump Dan in alongside of their action cartoons on the now-defunct HuBoom! block, but it really didn’t belong there; Dan stuck out just as badly alongside superhero cartoons as it did alongside MLP and the like. The only show Hub had that kind of clicked with Dan was Aquabats, since both shows were zany comedies which skewed slightly older than the rest of The Hub’s fare and were popular among adults, perhaps more so than with kids. Dan VS might have fared better premiering at night on a prime time block with similar skewing shows.If Hasbro had invested in some other older-skewing scripted comedies and put them all together on a premiere block, then both Dan VS and Aquabats might have found a sizable audience. As it was, those shows were all alone and badly scheduled and promoted.
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So now, Hasbro will be divesting in their share of the channel and Discovery will be taking over. The Ponies will still be around, at least for now, since there’s another 26-episode season coming in due time. Plus, MLP is currently The Hub’s biggest cash cow, so I doubt that Discovery would want to get rid of it. Of course, if Hasbro chooses to take the show to another network or make it an online exclusive like Mattel currently does with some of their current properties, that’s another story. I guess it’s a good thing that The Hub will still exist in some way, shape or form, but I have to say, I’m really not getting a savior vibe from Discovery. They’re the network that let Discovery Kids go to turd to begin with. Yes, Hasbro dropped the ball big time on this channel, but lets’ face it: Hasbro’s stepping in was the best thing to happen to Discovery Kids. Hasbro made a lot of wrong moves, but they did manage to get some decent shows and properties out of the channel that people like(d) to watch and talk(ed) about. When was the last time you heard anybody talk about Discovery Kids? While it’s true that The Hub as of late hasn’t been that great, I really have a hard time believing that Discovery can make the channel any better. If Discovery knew how to run a family oriented cable channel in the first place then Hasbro wouldn’t have had to bail them out in the second place. If Discovery’s idea of saving this channel is polluting the airwaves with more reality shows about junkyard pickers, Amish mafiosos and bacon enthusiasts, then this re-branded channel is dead before it’s even started. I cringe at the thought of this channel becoming another TLC; one TLC is more than enough. And if this channel is really going to undergo a rebrand, I really hope they can come up with a better name than Discovery Family. For one thing, DiscFam sounds too similar to Discovery Kids, and NO ONE is begging for the return of that channel. For another, “Discovery Family” is 7 syllables, the name takes too long to say. Channel names have to be short and memorable. For yet another, placing the word “family” in a channel’s name can often result in the channel being DOA, as many viewers equate “family friendly entertainment” with “transmitting bland garbage that’s so tame, watered down and homogenized that only Quakers and heart patients can enjoy it”. Of course it’s possible that Discovery has something amazing in store for The Hub and they’re just keeping it under wraps, but frankly, I’m not getting that feeling.
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Personally, we discussed what we would do with Hub Network. We would place the channel’s emphasis on comedy and fun and aim it towards kids and teens during the daylight hours and adults during the nighttime hours. Basically it would be Nickelodeon during the day and HA! at night. There’s be a block of original and 3rd party edutainment shows for younger kids and preschoolers in the mornings, blocks of acquired cartoon favorites and teen sitcoms in the afternoons, a block of girl-centric shows such as Ladybug and LoliRock, an block of action cartoons and superhero shows such as Max Steel and Super Sentai, music videos and shows about video games, extreme sports, comic books and manga/anime, at night we’d air reruns of Mystery Science Theater 3000 every night from 8 PM to 10 PM except on Friday and Saturday nights, which would be devoted to original premiere programming blocks and on Sunday nights we’d run an “art house” animated short show, a show spotlighting memorable cartoons, the making of them and giants of the animation industry (think Cartoon Network’s Toon Heads meets G4’s Icons), nights would consist of an original parody newscast, a riff show, a sketch comedy show, a hidden camera prank show, a mini-block of “edgier” adult cartoons both Western and anime (sort of an Adult Swim lite), a show featuring stand-up routines accompanied by visualizations and comedy clips from around the world (think Turkey Television meets Mash-Up), a block of British comedies, a classic sitcom block and a block of classic cartoons from the baby boomer era. We’d call this channel POP or KABOOM TV, but you don’t have to. Not saying this is the best way or the only way, but it is a way.
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So for now, that would seem to a wrap for The Hub. No date has been announced for the rebrand yet, (EDIT: Hub Network officially switches to Discovery Family on October 13, 2014.) but for all intents and purposes, The Hub is just running on fumes now, waiting to be snapped up and recycled into something else. Hasbro had a potentially pretty decent thing going for a while, pity that shortsightedness and a lack of imagination killed it. So we at Twinsanity say…..
Twin Images 
It's a shame the Hub had to end up this way. They really had the potential to be something special. Instead, they wound up copying Nickelodeon's strategy and throwing that potential out the window.
If they'd picked up more nostalgic shows or built up more of their IPs, maybe it would've lasted longer. More Silver Age WB shows would've been a welcome addition to the lineup (remember when they were picking those up?) or other off-network shows that we haven't seen in years. Denver the Last Dinosaur, maybe? MST3K? Street Sharks? I don't know…SOMETHING.
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Good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks that MST3K would've been a good fit for The Hub's PM schedule.
It could have worked. All The Hub really needed was to have a wider spectrum of programming, especially at night, where the lineup was the weakest. Don't get me wrong; I don't think that the nostalgic sitcoms needed to go away, but they shouldn't have taken up the bulk of the channel's schedule.
It's a shame. When The Hub was launched in 2010, I really believed that the channel had the potential to stick around and become something significant, but then, I thought the same thing about Fox Family, so what do I know?
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In the end, the Hub made the same mistakes that Nick and CN have made, filling every empty space with “hot” series (i.e. Friendship is Magic) when there's room for diversity to be had. CN & Nick are established, though flawed, brands, but have loyal audiences of gullible kids who can't figure out they're seeing the same cartoon episode 5 times in one week.
Meanwhile, I thought Hasbro was THE biggest toymaker on the planet, considering it bought out Milton Bradley, Tonka, Kenner, and Parker Brothers in the last 20-odd years or so. Geez.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yedQkqrT16M
With all due seriousness, the ONLY thing I can be sad about at this point… Is when, NOT IF – WHEN Littlest Pet Shop gets the likely boot for its lack of popularity and ratings compared to that damn pony show (which I know will go on likely for longer than it needs to, IMHO…).
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So now the upcoming rebrand is stuff that was on Discovery Kids and even Discovery Channel to begin with. Now I like the occasional nature documentary, but not enough for a whole channel. But hey, if it's popular and people like it, who am I to judge?
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I wasn’t sure where to put this, so ill put it here. It’s been speculated for some time, but now it’s official. MLP will end after season 9.
https://www.equestriadaily.com/2019/02/season-9-confirmed-to-be-final-season.html?m=1
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Nine seasons is an achievement. Most American animated series end after only 3 or 4 seasons. It’s rare for a animated series in the U.S. to get more than 4 seasons. Shows like MLP:FiM and SpongeBob Squarepants are the exception, not the norm.
As Bev Bighead once said, “Oh, well. There will always be reruns.”
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No big surprise there; TBH, the show was beginning to get a little long in the tooth (I haven’t been watching the last couple of seasons); I expect the main reason Hasbro kept it going as long as they did was toy sales.
Fans need not worry too much; Hasbro’s already got the next MLP series queued up. Apparently some character sketches from the next Pony show were leaked online a while back, they got taken down obviously, but there is going to be another MLP show. I also recently saw a trailer for an Equestria Girls series on YouTube. I personally don’t follow Equestria Girls, so I don’t know if the EQ show will be airing on Discovery Family or not.
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Equestria Girls is just a series of movies, specials, graphic novels, comics, and shorts, but no tv show.
On a tangentially related note, the rumored 2021 theatrical movie turned out to be true, but it’s apparently rumored to be the start of Generation 5, and be CGI.
https://www.equestriadaily.com/2019/02/upcoming-my-little-pony-movie-is-not.html?m=1
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https://www.equestriadaily.com/2019/09/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic.html?m=1
The My Little Pony series finale will air at 8pm on Saturday October 12, just 2 days after the series’ 9th anniversary .
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Eh, I legit don’t care about Friendship is Magic anymore. I stopped following that series a while ago. It’s a noteworthy achievement however; 8 years is a good long run for an animated show; most cartoon series don’t go beyond 3 or 4 seasons. Disney typically ends their shows after about 2 or at a stretch 3 seasons. On the whole networks are primarily interested in a cartoon show lasting about 65 episodes or 52 weeks, so after their initial runs they can air reruns consecutively for a year without repeating themselves.
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Hasbro is considering selling its remaining stake in DiscFam.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hasbro-mulls-possible-sale-of-discovery-family-channel-stake-1235088026
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We all saw this coming. Discovery’s merger with Warner Brothers could be finalized around May 1st, and I’m sure that the folks at Hasbro can see that there’s no reason for the company to continue hitching it’s wagon to Discovery Family. Hasbro will likely just split from Disc Fam once their contract with the channel expires and Discovery will either shut Disc Fam down or leave it as another of their “trash” channels (such as Destination America, Cooking Channel and the ironically named Discovery Life) that they don’t care about, ratings or otherwise because they’re on the same package with popular channels that people actually watch. Discovery could always just run more 3rd party kid vid shows in place of the Hasbro shows.
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Looks like DiscFam is getting axed altogether. The channel isn’t listed among Warner Bros. Discovery’s brands.
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Are we surprised? No.
I knew that Discovery Family was on the way out when I saw that there was no window for the channel on Discovery Plus. At this point, Disc Fam only has the Hasbro shows and Hasbro only owns a stake in the channel. Discovery would likely have to renegotiate some sort of deal with Hasbro, and they probably don’t think that it’s worth it at this point. Hasbro has since partnered with Entertainment One and will send its properties to the highest bidder. Someone on the Anime Superhero Forum suggested that Hasbro could relaunch The Hub as a streaming service, but Hasbro has already stated that they have no plans to do so.
Boomerang and Cartoonito at least have a presence outside of the U.S., which Disc Fam doesn’t. Disc Fam doesn’t even have a West Coast feed.
Others have suggested that the defunct Discovery Kids shows could now be run on HBO Max. That’s a nice thought, but I don’t see it happening. At this stage, Discovery has officially bowed out of children’s programming, and they probably don’t feel that they need to anymore. I’m sure that Discovery is perfectly fine with letting Warner Bros. handle the kid vid stuff, and Discovery doesn’t need nor want to launch another kid’s channel since WB already has 2. Discovery could be airing Kenny the Shark, Tutenstien, Growing Up Creepie and Time Warp Trio on Disc Fam or stream them on Discovery+ right now if they wanted to, and its kind of a moot point, since the only DK show that Hasbro actually owns is Kenny the Shark. If Discovery still wanted Discovery Kids around, it would still be around. Period.
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Destination America and Discovery Life aren’t on there either.
Surprisingly, Boomerang is. I guess Warner Bros. Discovery (which is a bit of a mouthful, I’ve got to say) does have some plans for the channel, though as of this writing we don’t know what those plans are. Boomerang is at least an established brand with both national and international name recognition, which is/was not the case for Discovery Family; DiscFam has been rebranded twice now (it was The Hub before it was Discovery Family and it was Discovery Kids before that), it has zero original programming beyond the Hasbro shows, which they don’t own and will be losing, and it doesn’t even have a feed on both coasts.
Let’s face it, the writing was on the wall for Discovery Family. I’m honestly surprised the channel lasted as long as it did.
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The DiscFam app is shutting down May 2, but the brand has been strangely re-added to WBD’s portfolio page. What’s going on?
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Discovery Life and Destination America have also been added.
Perhaps WBD plans to keep those channels around for ad revenue, who knows? Apart from yesterday’s announcement that WBD will be halting TBS and TNT’s scripted shows for now, the recent news coming from WBD have been strange to say the least.
Maybe all of this will be cleared up during the Upfront May 18.
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