Category:The Hub



""Where everything comes together.""

On April 30, 2009, it was announced that Hasbro had acquired a 50% stake in Discovery Kids from Discovery Communications, which was in the middle of overhauling its various spinoff channels. At that point Discovery Kids was basically running on auto-pilot, running Edutainment Shows from the early 2000's that hadn't been refreshed in years, mixed in with acquired programming such as Goosebumps and other kid-friendly content from sister channels such as Animal Planet that could fit the network's mission.

The resulting joint venture changed the channel's name to The Hub on October 10, 2010 (following a marathon of Kenny the Shark, which was carried over upon the revamp). Discovery oversees ad sales and distribution, while Hasbro is responsible for programming. The network continues to use the Discovery Kids strategy of tagging its educational programming as meeting FCC educational and informational programming guidelines. An on-screen logo lists it as E/I on electronic program guide listings despite the E/I policy being targeted wholly to broadcast stations, with cable networks completely excluded from E/I regulations.

As to be expected with a network half-owned by a toy company, Merchandise-Driven programming is a significant part of the channel's schedule. Along with Hasbro product (including franchises with significant story-telling histories), American Greetings is also a presence on the channel. In addition, they air reruns of childrens'/family shows from the 80's and 90's and shows that the big three childrens' networks have no room for anymore, family movies, original game shows based on popular board games such as Pictionary, The Game Of Life and Scrabble, and even older shows during the evenings such as Happy Days and The Wonder Years. Their first Reality Show, Majors & Minors, premiered on September 23rd, 2011.

Due to the prevalence of Hasbro's 80's franchises on the channel, like Transformers, it has a substantial Periphery Demographic of 20-35 year olds. The surprise hit of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (carrying its own wide demographic spread) also helped to bolster the rebooted channel's newfound success. Likewise the channel is hosting one of the most well-recieved Transformers reboots to date, Transformers Prime.

Infamous for making the videos hosted on its website a nasty case of No Export for You. They have pinned the blame on the international licensing deals with other networks, most notoriously Time Warner (who is pretty much out to screw programming based on Hasbro's franchises over, and because of Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears owning the rights to many of the Hasbro tie-in shows it made for Hasbro in the 80's, holds those shows in a limbo), making many people wish that they'd just scrap their existing licensing deals and launch internationally already.

Not to be confused with a Hub Level.