Here's the entirety of the Friendship is Magic TV show, for free, legally, in HD: https://www.kidoodle.tv/1576/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic
Just an FYI: zombie channels don't survive off of ad-revenue. Largely, they're zombie channels because their viewership is too low to attract the advertisers necessary to fund new content. They survive off of subscription revenue. Even channels no one watches (like this one), can have millions of customers paying a few cents a month because it's included in a pay-TV package they subscribe to. I don't know Discovery Family's carriage numbers, nor the price Discovery charges pay-TV providers to carry it, so these are hypothetical figures. Say the channel is in 20 million homes and they get 5 cents a month off of each subscription. That's a million dollars a month, or $12 million a year. The costs to operate this channel are very low. It has no first-run content and no dedicated full-time staff.
Zombie channels die when their contracts with the pay-TV providers are up for renewal and the latter decide it isn't worth carrying anymore. Larger companies like WBD have the ability to bundle their "popular" channels, allowing their zombies to stick around longer.
Just an FYI: zombie channels don't survive off of ad-revenue. Largely, they're zombie channels because their viewership is too low to attract the advertisers necessary to fund new content. They survive off of subscription revenue. Even channels no one watches (like this one), can have millions of customers paying a few cents a month because it's included in a pay-TV package they subscribe to. I don't know Discovery Family's carriage numbers, nor the price Discovery charges pay-TV providers to carry it, so these are hypothetical figures. Say the channel is in 20 million homes and they get 5 cents a month off of each subscription. That's a million dollars a month, or $12 million a year. The costs to operate this channel are very low. It has no first-run content and no dedicated full-time staff.
Zombie channels die when their contracts with the pay-TV providers are up for renewal and the latter decide it isn't worth carrying anymore. Larger companies like WBD have the ability to bundle their "popular" channels, allowing their zombies to stick around longer.