Discovery to Fill NBC’s Saturday Morning Lineup

Unable to profit from television programs geared toward children and teenagers, NBC said Thursday that it was handing over its Saturday morning lineup to Discovery Networks beginning next fall.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but sources said Discovery will pay the General Electric-owned network about $8 million a year for the three-hour block. Discovery will sell commercial time to advertisers and plow the revenue back into programming, said Johnathan Rodgers, president of Discovery Networks, U.S.

In the last several years, the major networks have watched thin profit margins in children’s programming vanish as Nickelodeon, the WB network and Walt Disney Co. successfully staked out that turf. News Corp.’s Fox network also is auctioning off its Saturday morning block, and last year Viacom-owned CBS volleyed its Saturday morning air time to sister network and industry leader Nickelodeon.

On Thursday, NBC executives conceded that they would have exited the children’s programming business altogether if not for Federal Communications Commission rules requiring broadcasters to provide educational programs for children.

“We probably would have programmed [Saturday mornings] with something else,” NBC West Coast President Scott Sassa said during a news conference announcing the three-year deal with Discovery Communications Inc.

Discovery will package commercial time for shows on NBC along with its programs on Discovery Kids Channel, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel. Discovery executives said they would “look at a broad swath of programming” that might include children-oriented science programs as well as some programs that already run on their other channels.

Most of the Discovery Kids shows on NBC will target children age 9 to 14, with some shows targeting children as young as 6, they said.

Sassa said NBC’s half-hour Saturday morning sports program “NBA: Inside Stuff” probably will continue next season if the network successfully negotiates a new contract with the National Basketball Assn. NBC will keep advertising revenue from that show.

NBC has been considering quitting the children’s programming market for about a year. Sassa said the network struggled to find a weekday vehicle to promote its children’s lineup and was disappointed when promising shows sputtered in the ratings.

“One of the reasons that we are getting out of this is because it was hard for us, on a Monday-Friday basis, to reach the target audience of teens,” Sassa said. The NBC show that draws the most teenage viewers is “Friends,” but Sassa said the network wasn’t about to forfeit its lucrative air time on “Friends” to promote its Saturday morning fare.

“We didn’t have the resources or the right way to promote these shows,” Sassa said.

The NBC-Discovery partnership follows a summer-long courtship of the Discovery Networks by NBC, which was interested in buying the entire network.

When that deal failed to be consummated, NBC turned its attention to Telemundo, agreeing to buy the Spanish-language television broadcaster in October for nearly $2 billion.

The executives said NBC and Discovery might continue to work together. However, Rodgers said, “this is not a precursor to a bigger deal.”

NBC made no demands on Discovery about the programming it will air on Saturday mornings.

“We really feel that these guys have such a good antenna for what people want to watch, and more importantly they do it in a very smart and quality way,” Sassa said.