Limited Ads Help Sprout to Grow

(PBS was one of the four companies that launched Sprout in 2005. Sprout, which aired some of PBS' children's programming, replaced the unsuccessful 24-hour PBS Kids channel on September 26th)

Madeline Fretz - One thing I like to do on this blog is write about old news articles about Sprout. One interesting little article is one published on April 6th, 2008, coming from TVWeek, the same website that brought us the "Saluting Sprout's Launch" article from 2005.

"Limited Ads Help Sprout to Grow," as I said, is quite interesting. One thing noticeable about the article is that the writer says "Not to be confused with PBS." People get Sprout confused with PBS or PBS Kids, so I'm glad she(he?) both wrote it and gave a brief overview of Sprout in general, to introduce newcomers to the Sprout brand. Now, for those of you who get Sprout confused with PBS, just remember that the channel was a joint venture between PBS, HiT Entertainment, Sesame Workshop, and Comcast (most of those companies no longer own the brand), and aired PBS shows until it turned ten in 2015.

The article also introduces readers to Sprout's blocks - The Sunny Side Up Show, The Good Night Show, and The Let's Go Show, and mentioned that SeaWorld was to sponsor a sea animal-themed block. I wrote about the potential block alongside other unfinished Sprout material on a previous post, and suggested that the block would become The Sprout Sharing Show. We're not sure, but hey, those are suggestions.

The article also mentions that some of Sprout's sponsors included the likes of Kimberly Clark (Huggies sponsored Sprout since the very beginning), Geico, Sony Home Video and Honda (which collaborated with Sprout to make holiday bumpers during the first generation). Also in the article, Sprout's then-president Sandy Wax said she refused for Sprout to air commercials for sugary cereal and other junk. After all, ads and sponsors are what this article is all about.

This 2014 sizzle reel mentions that Sprout had over 1.6 billion VOD views.

Around the time this article was published, Sprout was available in 37 million homes via Comcast Digital Cable/Xfinity (Channel 128) and DirecTV (Channel 295), and Sprout on Demand, which launched five months ahead of the 24-hour channel in April 2005, has had about 380 million orders. Wow, impressive! Sprout was a pretty small channel back in the 2000s but was still pretty big when it came to viewers and customers.

"All preschool all the time" was featured on the SproutOnline.com homepage, along with a list of Sprout's blocks and their airtimes.

While both Disney and Nickelodeon offered their own preschool blocks, Sprout was the first network that aired preschool programming all day. That's why they referred to themselves as "All Preschool, all the time," a slogan they've had since launch in 2005. "Preschool TV around the clock" was just a one-time thing to promote the channel when it launched. In the article, Wax pointed out that Sprout got positive feedback from adult viewers (referred to as "Big Sprouts" or "Grown-up Sprouts") even after two years of business.

The article also mentioned both of Sprout's blocks that launched during the channel's second anniversary - The Sunny Side Up Show and Musical Mornings with Coo, and mentioned that Musical Mornings utilized music videos from Sprout shows and live-action segments of kids getting ready for the day, while Chica on Sunny cracked open surprise eggs that were used to link into segments. Nowadays, there are strange kiddie videos on YouTube that use surprise eggs alongside other things, such as unboxing, toys of kids' show characters, and real kids (*cough* Diana *cough* Ryan *cough* *cough*).

The article ends with a pretty neat statement: "And if and when children wake up in the middle of the night, Sprout is there for them, and their parents." And I choose to end this post with that saying too.

Click here to watch TV in the middle of the night on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum!