Disney XD (Africa)
| Disney XD | |
|---|---|
| Launched | 1 April 1999 (as Fox Kids Europe) 1 January 2005 (as Jetix Europe, Middle East and North Africa) 3 October 2009 (as Disney XD Europe, Middle East and Africa) |
| Owned by | The Walt Disney Company |
| Picture format | 16:9 576i (SDTV) |
| Slogan | "The future is now!" |
| Country |
United Kingdom Romania (formerly) Russia (formerly) |
| Broadcast area |
Turkey Balkans Middle East North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Sister channel(s) |
Disney Junior Disney Channel |
| Website |
Disney XD South Africa Disney XD Turkey |
|
Availability
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|
| Satellite | |
| OSN | Channel 352 |
| Digiturk | Channel 166 |
| DStv | Channel 304 |
Disney XD is a European-managed digital cable and satellite TV channel owned by Disney Channels Worldwide that was launched on 3 October 2009. Most of its programming consists on Disney XD original series and acquired programming from third parties. The channel was originally launched in 1 April 1999 as Fox Kids and rebranded on 1 January 2005 as Jetix.
Under the name of Fox Kids, the channel was first launched in Central and Eastern Europe on 1 April 1999 as an 'Initial Public Offering' channel available at first in English, Romanian and Russian. Its operation offices were located in Bucharest and in Moscow at that time. The channel was expanded to include Turkey with a Turkish audio track in May 2000 and it was first available on digital satellite TV service Digiturk on that same month, and then on cable TV provider Turkish Telecom on July of the same year. On November 2000, Fox Kids Europe expanded its coverage area to the Middle East by launching an English-language dedicated subfeed from the channel for its Arab audience on satellite TV platform Orbit (later Orbit Showtime Network, currently OSN) in countries like Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, among others. Israel was excluded from receiving this feed, due to plans of launching a fully localised channel in Hebrew that eventually were concreted in February 2001.
In March 2004, the Pan-European Fox Kids feed was split in two: one centred in Bucharest, airing in English, Romanian and Russian and broadcasting for the Balkan countries, Russia and CIS, and another one headquartered in Istanbul, airing in Turkish and English for the Republic of Turkey, the Middle East region and North Africa.
The Eastern feed of Jetix Central and Eastern Europe, by 2009, was already airing English, Romanian, Russian and Bulgarian audio tracks simultaneously and had Serbo-Croatian subtitles for its Adria audience. However, this feed, headquartered in Bucharest and Moscow, splits up, thus creating two different Jetix channels, each one with their own operation centres. This was a result of the Russian media authorities not giving authorisation to The Walt Disney Company for launching a country-shared Disney Channel on Russian territory. Due to this situation, the split resulted in a newly, short-lived Russian-localised Jetix channel only covering Russia and CIS countries, while the remaining Jetix feed, centred in Bucharest, stopped carrying its Russian audio track and also stopped airing in the Balkan countries, ditching its Serbo-Croatian subtitles track. Because of that, Jetix Turkey and the Middle East takes its place on the ex-Yugoslav countries and starts offering badly-encoded Serbo-Croatian sub tracks. The result of the replacement of the now-splitted Eastern feed of Jetix to the Turkish-Middle Eastern one was because Disney's decision to rebrand the Jetix European networks to Disney Channel in territories where the channel hasn't been introduced, and so included the Bucharest- and Moscow- headquartered feeds. As the ex-Yugoslav countries were already covered by the Middle Eastern variant of the Disney Channel airing in English with Serbo-Croatian subtitles, the move was made and on 3 October 2009, the Istanbul-based Jetix feed was finally rebranded as Disney XD, while the rest of the feeds were rebranded to Disney Channel.
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