Thursday, September 9, 2021

Universal Kids' Anniversary

 


Four years ago today, NBCUniversal launched a new children's channel called Universal Kids. The channel airs programming for kids aged 2 to 11. At first, preschool programming was shown from 3AM to 6PM under the Sprout name - lasting even longer than the regular Universal Kids programming, but Sprout was dropped in early 2018 and as of now, this is no longer the case. Footage from the channel's launch day is shown above.

Once the Sprout branding was removed from the channel, Sproutonline.com became the Preschool section of the Universal Kids website and the Sprout YouTube channel was renamed Universal Kids Preschool. Today, the channel is known as Peacock Jr. Sprout House, the final program to premiere on Sprout when it was a 24-hour channel, became Snug's House, leaving only two traces of Sprout left - the sprout-shaped window on the Snug's House set and a promo poster for Sarah & Duck having the show's two main characters in front of a Sunny Side Up Show backdrop. The promo poster for S&D was changed shortly before said show quit the Universal Kids network, and Snug's House quit the channel as well, leaving no sign of Sprout on Universal Kids nowadays. When Universal Kids launched, it aired many shows from the Sprout channel on its branded preschool block, but most of them left the channel as time went by. However, the channel did start to air shows from Sprout's first two generations (The Wiggles, Barney & Friends, Bob the Builder: Ready Steady Build, and The Chica Show) for some time before they started to air "best of" blocks.

Happy fourth anniversary Universal Kids! (I don't like posting my opinions on this blog, but "unhappy" by me. I don't like it because of you-know-what).

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