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.

[1] The idea for a block specifically oriented towards a teenage demographic sprang from the popularity of the teen sitcom Saved by the Bell, which centered on a group of six students attending the fictional Bayside High School in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles.

Debuting on the network's Saturday morning lineup in September 1989, Saved by the Bell was a re-imagining of the sitcom Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which originated on The Disney Channel, a pay-TV channel in 1988 (the predecessor series served as a starring vehicle for Hayley Mills, who unlike fellow series regulars Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dennis Haskins, Lark Voorhies and Dustin Diamond, did not return for the retooled series).

Both Just Deal and Sk8 were productions of Thomas W. Lynch, who had previously produced several hit teen dramas for Nickelodeon.

[4] On June 29, 2023, NBCUniversal announced it would revive the TNBC brand for a free ad-supported streaming television channel to launch on Amazon Freevee and Xumo Play later that summer.