CW to drop Kids WB!; acquire 4Kids fare

[Ccook50]

At the end of this current season, the CW network will drop the Kids WB! block of programming and run a five-hour block of shows from 4Kids Entertainment (who continue to run a block for Fox's Saturday morning line-up). They cite a softening of the marketplace, government clampdown on advertising food products and the competition from Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney as reasons for the switch.

Kids WB! had dropped to no. 2 on Saturdays, behind ABC's teenybopper line-up of Disney Channel fare, since the WB network folded last year and melded with UPN to form the CW. Warner Bros. Animation said they would continue to produce stuff for cable, direct-to-video, broadband and wireless.