Disney's One Saturday Morning

Disney's One Saturday Morning was a Saturday morning cartoon block produced by Disney for ABC that ran from September 13, 1997, through September 7, 2002, with its most popular and well-known shows being Doug, Recess, and Pepper Ann.

History
In February 1997, Peter Hastings left Warner Bros. Animation in a heated dispute over the direction of two strongest Warner Bros. cartoons he had written for, Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, and joined Disney. Hastings was tasked with overhauling ABC's Saturday morning lineup. He pitched the idea that Saturday is different from every other day and to represent weekdays as buildings. He also proposed the use of virtual set technology; although he knew little about it at the time and the technology used was just starting development, Disney and ABC liked the idea. He hired Prudence Fenton as consultant manager and co-executive producer. Together, they sampled virtual set technology at the 1997 NAB Show and chose technology developed by Accom and ELSET. Rutherford Bench Productions, which had previously worked with Disney, hired Pacific Ocean Post (now POP Sound) to produce the virtual set. The building was initially a drawing of Grand Central Terminal with a roller coaster added, but evolved into a towering mechanical 1. Even the interior has similarities such as a central high raised room with two wings on left and right sides and another on the south side.

On September 13, 1997, Disney's One Saturday Morning was first broadcast as a two-hour block as part of the ABC Saturday Morning lineup. It was originally scheduled for a September 6th debut, but due to ABC and all the other networks airing Princess Diana's funeral instead of children's programming that day, it was pushed back a week later. One Saturday Morning featured two parts: three hours of regularly scheduled cartoons and a two-hour hosted flagship show that included features, comedy, and the virtual world Hastings had proposed, along with full episodes of Doug (which had been acquired from Nickelodeon), Recess and Pepper Ann, all of which were interspersed through the show. In Canada, the Baton Broadcast System (BBS), and later CTV (which absorbed BBS into itself in 1998, after Baton Broadcasting succeed in their goal of taking over CTV), aired One Saturday Morning.

On September 6, 1999, a spin-off, Disney's One Too, premiered on UPN affiliates (or, in some cases, syndication) every weekday in the morning or afternoon (the station could choose when to air the weekday component) and Sunday mornings, replacing The Disney Afternoon.

One Saturday Morning aired its final broadcast on September 7, 2002 (by this time, the host segments and interstitials had been dropped in 2000 due to declining ratings). One Saturday Morning was replaced with ABC Kids on September 14, 2002.