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TNBC (or Teen NBC) was an American teen-oriented television programming block that aired on NBC from September 12, 1992 to September 28, 2002, due to its replacement with the children's-oriented Discovery Kids on NBC educational lineup. The Saturday morning block featured comical live-action series – primarily in the form of scripted sitcoms and variety series such as Saved by the Bell, California Dreams, Hang Time, One World, City Guys and others – geared toward teenagers and sometimes young adults, the majority of which were produced by such key people as Peter Engel and the network's in-house production units NBC Studios and NBC Enterprises.
In 2000, Just Deal became the first TNBC scripted series not to be produced by Peter Engel since the 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 Weekend Today ended, and by its last season, the average age of a TNBC viewer was 41 years old.
NBC shut down the program block in 2002, leasing out its children's programming to Discovery Family in a brokered programming arrangement. NBC blamed TNBC's failure on the network's poor performance among younger viewers in its regular prime time program lineup, leaving no opportunity to promote children's programming there; the network would have abandoned children's programming altogether if not for federal E/I mandates requiring them.
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