Disney's One Too

Children's TV program spin off

Disney's One Too (later known as Disney's Animation Weekdays) was an American two hour Sunday to Friday children's programming block that aired on UPN (and sometimes in syndication) from September 6, 1999 to August 29, 2003. A spin off of the Disney's One Saturday Morning block on ABC (which is owned by The Walt Disney Company), it featured animated series from Disney Television Animation aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 11.

In January 1998, UPN began discussions with The Walt Disney Company (owner of rival network ABC) to have the company program a daily two hour children's block for the network, airing on weekdays (during the morning or afternoon hours) and Sunday mornings. Attempts to reach a time lease agreement deal with Disney were called off one week after negotiations started due to a dispute between Disney and UPN over how the block would be branded and the amount of E/I programming that Disney would provide for the block; UPN then entered into discussions with then corporate sister Nickelodeon (both networks were owned by Viacom) to produce a new block. That February, UPN entered into an agreement with Saban Entertainment (then a subsidiary of Fox Family Worldwide, which Disney later acquired in 2001) – which distributed two series recently aired on the UPN Kids block around that time, Sweet Valley High and Breaker High – to program the Sunday to Friday block. In March 1998, UPN resumed discussions with Disney and the following month, The Walt Disney Company and UPN came to an agreement to provide Disney produced programs on the network on weekdays (from 7:00am 9:00am or 3:00pm – 5:00pm) and Sunday (from 9:00am – 11:00am). The block was originally announced under the working title "Whomptastic", though the name was changed before the launch of the block for greater brand identity (incidentally, "whomp" was used as a pejorative term in the Disney produced animated series Recess, one of the series that would end up part of the new block, as a substitute for "sucks"). The new lineup was later renamed Disney's One Too in July 1999, formatted to serve as a competitor block to ABC's existing children's block Disney's One Saturday Morning. The block premiered on September 6, 1999, replacing UPN Kids, which ended its run the day before (on September 5) after four years.

UPN was not the first "big six" network to pull children's programming: NBC became the first to remove children's series entirely in August 1992, when the network launched a live action block for teenagers called TNBC; children's programming returned to NBC in 2002, through a time lease agreement with Discovery Kids. In the years since the block was discontinued, all other major broadcast networks, including UPN successor The CW (sister of Big Three Network CBS), would gradually abandon children's programming by selling their respective children's blocks to Litton Entertainment, who produces primarily unscripted E/I content targeted nominally at teenagers (but having an older demographic overall by ratings), or in the case of Fox, removing children's programming entirely. Fox's sister network, MyNetworkTV, has never supplied children's programming as part of its lineup; both networks leave the responsibility of acquiring E/I programming to the affiliates, primarily through the syndicated block Xploration Station in the case of the former.