WildBrainTV: From Canadian Disney XD to a Children's Streaming Brand in the UK
WildBrainTV is a name with two closely connected lives. As a linear television channel, it was a Canadian children's service owned by WildBrain, broadcasting animated and live-action programming for viewers aged roughly six to fifteen from headquarters in Toronto. It began in 2011 as the Canadian version of Disney XD, spent most of its life under the name Family CHRGD, and only adopted the WildBrainTV name in March 2022, a little over three years before it closed on 23 October 2025. In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, viewers are more likely to have met the WildBrain name through streaming: the company has become one of the most active operators of free, advertising-supported children's channels on platforms such as Samsung TV Plus and LG Channels, carrying brands including Teletubbies, Strawberry Shortcake, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario.
Understanding the channel therefore means following both threads. The first is a conventional Canadian pay-television story of launches, media takeovers and rebrands. The second is the strategy that replaced it, in which the same company's library of children's programmes is packaged into always-on streaming channels, including a growing line-up available to families in the United Kingdom. Both threads rest on the same asset: one of the largest collections of children's television brands controlled by any independent company.
Overview
WildBrainTV, in its final Canadian form, was an English-language discretionary specialty channel. It broadcast a mixture of animated series and live-action programmes aimed at children and younger teenagers, in high definition at 1080i, downscaled for standard-definition distribution. Its schedule drew heavily on series produced or distributed by its owner, WildBrain, the Canadian company formerly known as DHX Media, whose catalogue includes long-running franchises that have been sold to broadcasters and streamers around the world.
In the United Kingdom the WildBrain presence described in channel listings is a streaming one. Rather than a single conventional channel on a British electronic programme guide, WildBrain operates a portfolio of single-brand and themed free streaming channels, delivered through connected television platforms. UK families encounter the same underlying library, and many of the same series that filled the Canadian channel, reorganised into dedicated streams for individual characters and franchises.
History and Launch
The channel that became WildBrainTV first launched on 1 June 2011, under the ownership of Astral Media. It operated as a localised Canadian version of Disney XD, run under licence from Disney Channels Worldwide as a sister network to the Family Channel, which Astral also owned. Disney XD gave the group an action-oriented companion to its main children's services, and the channel was built around Disney's animated and live-action output for older children.
That arrangement was reshaped by consolidation in Canadian media. Astral Media was acquired by Bell Media, and in 2014 the Disney XD channel, together with its sister services, was divested to DHX Media. The decisive change came in 2015, when Corus Entertainment acquired the Canadian rights to Disney Channel programming and its sibling brands, and launched its own Canadian Disney XD. DHX could no longer use the Disney XD identity, so in October 2015 its channel was rebranded as Family CHRGD, positioned as a brand extension of Family Channel with a similar, slightly older-skewing personality, and often marketed simply as CHRGD.
Ownership and Operator
Ownership of the channel passed through three of the biggest names in Canadian broadcasting. Astral Media founded it, Bell Media held it briefly following its acquisition of Astral in 2013, and WildBrain, under its former DHX Media name, owned it from 2014 until its closure in 2025. The 2019 renaming of DHX Media as WildBrain, taking the name of its London-born WildBrain multi-channel and content business, eventually supplied the channel's final identity as well: on 1 March 2022, Family CHRGD was rebranded as WildBrainTV, aligning the channel's name directly with its parent company for the first time.
That final rebrand reflected a wider corporate logic. WildBrain describes its business in terms of content production, distribution and licensing across many platforms, rather than ownership of a small group of Canadian channels. A channel carrying the corporate name served as a shop window for the library, even as the company's growth was increasingly coming from streaming deals, its WildBrain Spark online video business and free advertising-supported television channels around the world.
Programming and Schedule
The final WildBrainTV schedule mixed Canadian productions with acquired international series. Canadian titles listed in its closing line-up included the revived Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Carmen Sandiego, Denis and Me, The Deep, Goosebumps, Inspector Gadget, Johnny Test, The Latest Buzz, Naturally, Sadie, Slugterra, Summer Memories, Supernoobs and Survivalists. Many of these were long-standing WildBrain or DHX library properties, and their presence illustrates how the channel functioned as an outlet for programming the group already controlled, reducing its dependence on licensed content after the Disney relationship ended.
Acquired programming in the final period included Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks, Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese, Cleopatra in Space, Dwight in Shining Armor, Grizzy and the Lemmings, The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, Harvey Girls Forever!, The Smurfs and Supergirl, among others. Most of the final schedule ran until 22 October 2025, the day before closure, which underlines that WildBrainTV remained a fully programmed service to the end rather than being wound down gradually with filler. Its target audience of six to fifteen year olds placed it between preschool services and general entertainment channels, in the part of the children's market built on animation, comedy and adventure.
Availability and Platforms
In Canada, WildBrainTV was distributed nationwide as a discretionary specialty channel through cable and satellite providers, and was also available through streaming television services, including RiverTV and as an add-on through Amazon Prime Channels, according to its published availability information. Its broadcast area was Canada-wide and its headquarters were in Toronto, Ontario.
For United Kingdom viewers, the accessible WildBrain offer is the company's free streaming channel portfolio. WildBrain channels have been carried on Samsung TV Plus in the United Kingdom since the early years of that platform, and the company has steadily added services on LG Channels and other connected television platforms. In its 2025 European expansion, LG Channels in the United Kingdom rolled out WildBrain offerings for Strawberry Shortcake, Sonic, Super Mario, Slugterra, Rev and Roll and Rainbow Ruby. These services require no subscription: they are delivered over the internet to smart televisions and supported devices, funded by advertising, and presented as ordinary channels in the platform's guide.
Audience and Market
WildBrain's streaming strategy is a response to how children now watch television. The company has repeatedly presented free advertising-supported streaming as a way to put deep libraries of familiar programmes in front of families who have moved away from traditional channel bundles, in an environment it describes as kid-safe and compliant with children's privacy rules. The scale it reports is substantial: viewing of its free streaming channels grew to 7.5 billion minutes watched in 2023, from 502 million minutes in 2019, and the company later reported approximately 15 billion minutes watched in 2024 across around 150 free streaming channels launched worldwide.
Lara Ilie, WildBrain's vice president for AVOD and FAST, has been the executive most often quoted on this expansion, arguing that always-on, curated channels suit brands with deep episode libraries because they let fans drop in at any time. The same logic explains the contrast between the Canadian channel's fate and the streaming portfolio's growth: a general children's channel competing for space in a shrinking pay-television bundle was closed, while single-brand streams built from the same catalogue multiplied across Europe and beyond.
Sister Services
In Canada, WildBrainTV's sister channels were Family Channel, the group's flagship children's service, Family Jr. for younger children, and the French-language Télémagino. Those relationships dated back to the channel's launch as a Disney XD companion to Family, and they survived both the loss of the Disney licence and the later rebrands.
In streaming, the sister services are the many brand channels WildBrain operates for its own and partners' properties, including dedicated channels for Teletubbies, Strawberry Shortcake, Caillou, Inspector Gadget, Degrassi, Sonic and Super Mario, and a single-brand Pokémon channel launched with Pluto TV in October 2024, for which WildBrain became the exclusive distributor and advertising seller. That Pokémon launch, offering episodes from across twenty-two seasons of the original animated series, showed how far the model had travelled from the old general channel: the library is now sliced by franchise, platform and territory rather than gathered under one roof.
Notable Programmes and People
Several programmes gave WildBrainTV a recognisable identity across its different names. Inspector Gadget and Slugterra connected the schedule to WildBrain's own production heritage. Johnny Test and The Deep were long-running fixtures in its final years, while revivals and library favourites such as Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? gave the channel an appeal to older children and nostalgic parents alike. Carmen Sandiego represented the newer, globally distributed animation that the company could place on its own channel after premiering it elsewhere.
On the corporate side, the channel's story is tied to the transformation of DHX Media into WildBrain and to executives such as Lara Ilie, who fronted the company's free streaming expansion in Europe. The contrast is instructive: the people now most associated with the WildBrainTV name work not in running a single Canadian channel, but in licensing and launching dozens of streaming channels internationally, including the services available in the United Kingdom.
Recent Developments and Closure
The final years of the Canadian channel coincided with rapid growth elsewhere in the group. WildBrain tripled the number of its free streaming channels in Europe over the year to early 2025, taking its European total to more than seventy, and reported operating around 150 such channels worldwide. New United Kingdom launches on LG Channels and planned additions on Samsung TV Plus, including Strawberry Shortcake and Sonic channels for British viewers, formed part of that expansion.
Against that background, WildBrainTV the linear channel closed on 23 October 2025, ending a fourteen-year history that had begun with Disney XD in 2011. Its closure did not remove WildBrain programming from screens: in the United Kingdom and internationally, the company's series continue to reach audiences through its free streaming channels, which have become the main way the WildBrain name is encountered by viewers. The channel's history is therefore best read as a bridge between two eras of children's television, from licensed pay channels to library-driven streaming.
