The Hub Rebranding to Discovery Family

After four years of attempting to go toe to toe with Nickelodeon, Disney, and Cartoon Network for the pre-teen demographic, Hasbro has thrown in the towel. The company is going to turn over controlling interest co-owner Discovery Communications who plans on rebranding the network as Discovery Family with a goal of going for a more all ages approach. The preliminary deal would allow Hasbro to retain control of programming a 9am to 3pm block to help with advertising their various toy lines but outside of that Discovery will be free to program the network under the new brand.

Considering both Nick, Disney and Cartoon Network has shown a renewed interest in focusing only on the 13 and younger crowd by cancelling or marginalizing their all ages programming (Legend of Korra, all DC cartoon, and bunch more that don't immediately come to mind), Discovery might be able to take advantage of a segment that simply isn't being serviced anymore - parents who want to watch TV and cartoons with their kids while pretending they are not hating every second of it.

Time will tell how this will all shake out but I hope at the minimum it will lead to the network being available to more viewers without having to pay the average extra $10 for the channel tier it tends to be tossed on by the cable providers. The negotiations have not been finalized so probably the "new" channel will not debut until early next year. Likely all the new shows already in production, such as Transformers: Robots in Disguise, will remain on the schedule probably for Hasbro to use in their block of programming. Until see their first attempt at a schedule hard to tell if a chain of networks that take their top 10 shows and repeat em over and over will can produce a family friendly schedule that isn't just taking their shows from their other networks (example: I would be shocked if Mythbusters doesn't get a multiple hours of airtime on the rebranded network). (via Seibertron)