The History of HiT Entertainment and Sprout

 

Sprouting a Seed: The four companies that founded Sprout.

Madeline Fretz - For several decades, PBS was the home of several shows produced or distributed by HiT Entertainment (Henson International Television) - including Barney & Friends (originally from The Lyons Group and then Lyrick Studios, based on the Barney and the Backyard Gang video series), Thomas & Friends (based on Wilbert Awdry's Railway Series, came to the US as part of a series called Shining Time Station), Bob the Builder, and Angelina Ballerina (based on a series of children's books). These shows aired as part of PBS' PBS Kids block and 24-hour channel. The channel launched on September 6th, 1999, but didn't find success.

In October 2004, PBS and HiT, along with Sesame Workshop, whose shows PBS aired for decades, and Comcast Corporation, entered a partnership and announced the launch of a 24-hour preschool channel featuring shows from their archive libraries. Similarily, Sesame Workshop, formerly the Children's Television Workshop, helped Nickelodeon launch its educational cable channel NOGGIN in 1999. NOGGIN became Nick Jr. in 2009, but returned in streaming app form in 2015. Comcast announced the channel's name would be PBS Kids Sprout in 2005.

When PBS Kids Sprout launched on Comcast on Demand and as a cable channel in April and September 2005, respectively, it aired shows from PBS, Sesame, and HiT's archive libraries. Several shows from the HiT Entertainment included Barney & Friends, Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, Angelina Ballerina, Kipper, Big Sister, Little Brother, Pingu, James the Cat, Fireman Sam, The Hoobs, Fifi and the Flowertots, PICMe, Frances, Roary the Racing Car, Rubbadubbers, and Monkey See Monkey Do. Some of these shows were exclusive to Sprout. The video you see above is full of HiT shows and shows you how many Sprout aired back in the day - Sesame Street and Make Way for Noddy being the exceptions.

HiT Entertainment also released a series of videos titled "HiT Favorites," which contained of themed episodes of the company's owned shows. In 2009, the Sprout Press Room announced that HiT and Sprout were partnering for a series of two videos titled "Let's Grow," after Sprout's original slogan. Lend a Helping Hand, which I wrote about on this blog, was released in 2010, while Safety First was released a year later in 2011.

As time went by, HiT Entertainment was acquired by the UK's Apax Funds, and sold its interest of Sprout to Comcast, shortly before the channel was fully acquired by NBCUniversal, which Comcast acquired itself in 2011. HiT was acquired by Mattel in America. Despite this, several of HiT's shows would continue to air on Sprout until 2015's 10th anniversary rebrand. However, HiT's seasons of Barney & Friends and Bob the Builder: Ready, Steady, Build would air on Universal Kids for a period of time.