Discovery Force

Discovery Force Channel (formerly Discovery Force Network) is an American pay television channel co-owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in USA & InfinityOne Comics Entertainment, a division subsidiary of CJ ENM (a part of the CJ Group) in South Korea. The channel is geared towards children aged 7 to 11, and broadcasts reruns of original animated series from sister network Discovery Family (known as Discovery Force) along with some other animated shows and feature films.

As Discovery Toons (1996–2008)
Discovery Communications launched Discovery Kids Channel on October 7, 1996, as part of a suite of four new digital cable channels that included Discovery Travel & Living Network, Discovery Civilization Network, and Discovery Science Network. Upon its launch, the channel primarily offered adventure, nature, and science-themed programs aimed towards a children's audience between ages 6 and 11. Marjorie Kaplan, the network's senior vice president, explained that the creation of Discovery Kids Channel was influenced primarily by kids, who were watching its parent network's programming together with their parents.

From 1996 to 2000, Discovery Kids Channel was carried by only a select few cable television providers. In 2001, the channel was shortened to Discovery Kids and late in that year, it was carried in at least 15 million homes. In September 2001, a Canadian version of Discovery Kids was launched in partnership with Corus Entertainment.

In October 2001, It has to rename its then current operations under a television channel brand, called Discovery Toons. The channel is geared towards children aged 7 to 11, and broadcasts reruns of original animated series and feature film

In December 2001, Discovery Toons announced a partnership with Fox, in which it would produce a new Saturday morning block for the network known as Discovery Toons on Fox, beginning in September 2002. The block, which replaced a teen-oriented block consisting only of sitcoms, featured programming that met the educational programming guidelines from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), including new original series (such as the reality television series Endurance), existing Discovery Toons programming, along with children's spin-offs of programs from sister networks, such as Animal Planet, Discovery Kids, and Discovery Channel.

With the launch of the new block, Discovery Toons also branched out into animated programming with the premieres of Kenny the Shark and Tutenstein. In March 2006, Discovery declined to renew its contract with FOX for its Saturday morning block, citing a desire to focus exclusively on the Discovery Toons channel. Since the launch of the FOX block, Discovery Toons had grown its cable carriage to over 43 million homes. FOX would replace the Discovery Toons block with 4KidsTV in September 2006 (along with FoxBox replaced previous held name).

Programming and development
On April 30, 2007, comic book published entertainment and multimedia company InfinityOne Comics Entertainment, a former division subsidiary of CJ Media (a part of the CJ Group) on South Korea announced that it would be international forming a joint venture with Discovery Communications on U.S. to re-launch Discovery Toons as a new family-oriented television channel, paying $300 million for 50% ownership of the channel. Under the arrangement, Discovery would be in charge of handling advertising sales and distribution for the new service, while InfinityOne (CJ Media) would be involved in acquiring and producing programming. While educational, animated series & feature films (including those carried over from Discovery Toons) were slated to be maintained on the schedule, plans called for new original programs based on InfinityOne-owned superheroes franchises such as PenguinZero, X.O. Manowar, The Shield, Retribution Force, Jeon Woo Chi, Cold War, STORM, Infinity Vanguard League, The Beachbuds, Panda-Force, S.A.S. Red Notice, and others brand. Discovery Communications was looking for a business partner to draw the improved types of advertisers on the channel.

In July 2007, the joint venture appointed veteran television executive Margaret Loesch as its chief executive officer; prior to this, Loesch had led Fox Kids, and served as president and CEO of Marvel Comics, assisting in the production of several InfinityOne superheroes series such as PenguinZero, X.O. Manowar, The Shield, Retribution Force, Jeon Woo Chi, Cold War, STORM, Infinity Vanguard League, The Beachbuds, Panda-Force, S.A.S. Red Notice and other.

In January 2008, Discovery and InfinityOne (CJ Media) announced that the channel would be known as Vortexx; this was soon followed two months later with the announcement that Vortexx would launch on August 10, 2008. The channel's original imaging was developed by Troika Design Group and built around an emblem nicknamed the "vortexx" – which was designed to embody a "catalyst of action and imagination". The final logo design was the result of a number of drafts by Troika designers, some of which had incorporated typography similar to InfinityOne & CJ Media logo.

Goals
The relaunched channel, which would compete against established children's services such as Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Paramount's Nickelodeon & Nicktoons, planned to continue targeting Discovery Toons' main demographic of children aged 2–12 (a market which staff felt was being abandoned by its competitors in favor of tweens) but also planned to feature a prime-time block with family-oriented programming; it was originally targeted at preteens and teenagers aged 9–14. Launch programming included the game show Family Game Night (Hasbro), animated television series The Beachbuds: New Generation a new animated entry in the The Beachbuds franchise developed co-production Indonesia-U.S.-South Korean by i-ZERO Entertainment and Media Global & Saban Brands), and Deltora Quest alongside reruns of the Singapore-Canada animated series The New Adventures of Nanoboy and the action-oriented programs Rescue Heroes. The channel promised to keep the proportion of programs supplied from Hasbro to "less than 20%" of the total of its programming.