On March 28, 2012, NBC announced that the three-hour children's programming time period allocated by the network on Saturday mornings would be taken over by Sprout (which had become a sister television property to NBC following parent company NBC Universal's 2010 majority purchase by Comcast; NBC later took full ownership of the network, whose owners previously included Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment) and launch a new Saturday morning block called NBC Kids, which is aimed at preschoolers and grade school-aged children ages 2 to 9.