TNBC was an American teen-oriented programming block that aired on NBC from September 12, 1992 to September 7, 2002. The Saturday morning block featured live-action series – primarily in the form of scripted teen sitcoms – geared toward teenagers and young adults, the majority of which were produced by the network's in-house production units NBC Studios and NBC Enterprises.
History
As early as 1988, NBC had been openly contemplating replacing its Saturday morning programming block of children’s cartoons with less expensive, in-house programming oriented towards teens due to increasing competition from weekday afternoon cartoons airing in first-run syndication. The idea for a teen-oriented block sprang from the popularity of the teen sitcomSaved by the Bell, which centered on a group of six students attending the fictional Bayside High School in Pacific Palisades, California. Debuting on the network's Saturday morning lineup in September 1989, Saved by the Bell was a re-imagining of the short-lived sitcom Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which originated on The Disney Channel in 1988. The success of the series – despite bad reviews from critics – ultimately persuaded NBC to restructure its Saturday morning lineup, cancelling all of the animated programs. The revamping of the network's Saturday morning lineup began in August 1992, when it launched an hour-long Saturday edition of Today. Subsequently, on September 12, the network removed the animated series from its Saturday morning schedule in favor of a new three-hour block of live action – mostly scripted – series aimed at teenagers, with Saved by the Bell as its centerpiece, making NBC the first network to drop conventional children's programming entirely. The following year in September 1993, this block adopted the "TNBC" brand. As a result of the retooling of the network's Saturday morning lineup, California Dreams, a sitcom originally centered on a family was retooled around a group of teenage friends, from season 2 onward, setting the template for future TNBC shows to follow very similar formats. Most of the scripted programs featured that aired as part of the TNBC lineup were sitcoms executive produced by Saved by the BellshowrunnerPeter Engel such as California Dreams, City Guys, Hang Time, One World and the Saved by the Bell spinoff, ', the latter of which took over the timeslot previously held until its conclusion by its parent series. From its start, the lineup was designed to meet the earliest form of the Federal Communications Commission's educational programming guidelines defined under the Children's Television Act, with many of these shows incorporating very special episodes dealing with relevant teenage social issues such as underage drinking, drug use and sexual harassment. Though Engel contributed heavily to the block, three comedy series he produced during its existence would not air on the TNBC block. ' debuted on NBC in September 1993, but aired instead as part of the network's primetime schedule; USA High, a comedy centering on a group of American students participating in an international school program, aired instead on USA Network from 1997 to 2000, and Malibu, CA, centering on a group of teenagers living in the titularSouthern California community, aired in first-run syndication from 1998 to 2000 under a distribution agreement with Tribune Entertainment. In addition to the scripted series, two reality-based series aired during the lineup's history: the game shows Brains & Brawn and Name Your Adventure. Another non-scripted NBC show, NBA Inside Stuff, aired directly after the programming block but was never part of the TNBC lineup. In 2000, Just Deal became the first TNBC scripted series not to be produced by Peter Engel since the short-lived 1993 series Running the Halls, and the first series to be shot in a single-camera format. The following year, Sk8 premiered on the block, lasting for one season before being canceled. Both Just Deal and Sk8 were productions of Thomas W. Lynch, who had previously produced several hit teen dramas for Nickelodeon. By 2001, the block was suffering from declining viewership, particularly among its intended audience of teens; much of its audience by this point was from older viewers who had left their TV on after Today ended, and by its last season, the average age of a TNBC viewer was 41 years old. On January 6, 2002, Discovery Communications entered into a time-lease agreement with NBC to produce a new Saturday morning block featuring original programs from the Discovery Kidscable channel. TNBC ended its run on September 7, 2002; the new Discovery-produced block, "Discovery Kids on NBC", on October 5.
Programming
Although the TNBC block regularly aired on Saturday mornings, due to accommodations for local programming scheduled by affiliates of the network or scheduling issues with regional or network sports broadcasts, some NBC affiliates deferred certain programs within the lineup to Sunday mornings, or during the block's early years, preempted them outright.
