

Morning programming featured shows designed for kids to get ready for the day, late morning and afternoon programming featured educational shows for kids, and evening programming was designed to get kids ready to go to sleep. Its main target audience was originally preschoolers, and featured schedules based on the day.
#Sprout tv shows series#
It showed series from PBS, HiT Entertainment, and Sesame Workshop's libraries, and was operated on the 24th floor of the Comcast Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 2005 - 2009Īfter a successful on-demand launch and months of preparation, PBS Kids Sprout was launched on TV on September 26, 2005. Lesser-known shows were put in a category called "Children's Favorites" and eventually in their own categories. A Sprout VOD service was launched in April 2005, offering 55 hours of preschool shows in both English and Spanish. The ideas that formed Sprout started in June 2004, when PBS, HiT Entertainment, Sesame Workshop, and Comcast entered a partnership. PBS later revived the PBS Kids Channel on January 16, 2017, this time with an online streaming option in addition to utilizing largely the same distribution methods that had been used for the original channel. The channel was not successful and had only reached 9 million households as of 2002, compared to Noggin's 23.3 million households at the time. Once the channel shut down, many member stations which had been using the PBS Kids channel on their cablecast channels or free-to-air digital subchannels continued to operate their children's channels as local services scheduled independently of a satellite feed, while other member stations shut down their kids channels entirely and redirected viewers of those channels to the newly launched PBS Kids Sprout. The CTW-produced Dragon Tales, which premiered on the same day as the launch of the PBS Kids Channel, was the only exception to this. block).īecause the pay TV rights to the Children's Television Workshop’s program library were owned by Noggin (which CTW owned a 50% interest in at the time), the channel did not broadcast any CTW programming, including Sesame Street, a longtime staple of PBS' children's programming lineup. The channel was created, in part, to compete against Nick Jr. and its sister network Noggin (which now shares its name with the Nick Jr. At launch, 32 PBS member stations had signed up to use the service. Participating stations were required to pay an annual fee of $1,000 to use the feed.

The PBS Kids feed was available on high-tier subscription providers, and was also offered to PBS member stations for use on a "cablecast" service (a subscription-based local channel provided by the member station) or for use on the member station's free-to-air analog channel to provide a portion of the daytime PBS Kids programming on the station. Sprout traces its origins to the PBS Kids network (referred to as PBS Kids Channel in press materials), which launched on Septemcoinciding with the rebranding of PTV, PBS’ children’s programming block, to PBS Kids that day. These usually were crafty and creative, and they were inspired by children's book illustrations. Sprout created idents and branding featuring its logo. Being the 24-hour preschool channel "parents and kids share together" for shows, activities, and adventure, Sprout's mission was to educate and entertain by inspiring imagination, creativity, and spontaneity.
