This is PBS

 

Madeline Fretz - With posts about HiT Entertainment and Sesame Workshop's Sprout histories, I knew I just had to write one about the history of PBS and Sprout. Okay, Sproutlets and Sprout fans, enjoy!

In the Sesame Workshop post, I wrote about how Sprout's history traces back to when the Workshop (then known as the Children's Television Workshop) and Nickelodeon launched NOGGIN in 1999. It's safe to say that, without NOGGIN, there would have never been Sprout. Oh, and on the first post on my old Sprout blog, I said: "This could be owned by Noggin"

In response to NOGGIN, PBS, which previously had children's television programming in PTV Park, launched a 24-hour channel consisting of its children's programming known as PBS Kids. PBS Kids launched on September 6th, 1999, but was unsuccessful.

In June 2004 (source), it was announced that PBS, HiT Entertainment, Sesame Workshop, and Comcast were making a new children's channel together. In early 2005, Comcast announced the new channel was to be called PBS Kids Sprout, and was to launch on Comcast on Demand in April. Perfect name, but may get people confused with regular PBS Kids. 

PBS Kids Sprout on Demand had 55 hours of preschool programming from PBS, HiT, and Sesame Workshop - you could rewind, fast-forward, and watch your favorite shows anytime! Children's Favorites was a category containing lesser-known, but still pretty popular, shows. To promote the brand's launch, a launch party was held in San Fransisco's Yerba Buena Gardens.

Image from YouTube

After months of preparation, PBS Kids Sprout launched as a 24-hour digital cable channel on September 26th, 2005. The new channel replaced the 24-hour PBS Kids channel, which was re-launched in early 2017, and some PBS stations even shut down their kids' programming and redirected to PBS Kids Sprout. The last show to air on PBS Kids was ZOOM (which I have a blog dedicated to), while the first show to air on Sprout was Boohbah at 6AM ET.

Most of PBS' preschool programming at the time also aired on Sprout - from older favorites like Thomas & Friends and Sesame Street to newer shows like George Shrinks and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat. For a full list of air programs, click here. Two short episodes of a series were combined into a full half-hour episode with an interstitial in between them, probably due to attention spans.

To promote Sprout, commercials and image spots for the channel aired in between shows on PBS stations, including the three above videos and the one at the top of this post. "Sprout supports your local PBS station." Similarily, Sprout and its website were constantly being promoted on PBS Kids'.

However, in the early 2010s, things started to change. As you probably know by now, Comcast acquired NBCUniversal, which would later acquire all things Comcast, Sesame Workshop sold its interest in Sprout to Comcast, HiT Entertainment was acquired by Apax Funds, and PBS lost the rights to Sprout. 

In November 2013, the PBS Kids branding was taken out of the Sprout channel's name, leaving the brand to simply be called "Sprout." Despite this, several PBS programs would remain on Sprout until the channel turned ten on September 26th, 2015, with the exceptions of Caillou and The Berenstain Bears. Sesame Street aired for the first few months of the third generation, but stopped airing in November due to Sesame Workshop's then-new deal with HBO. 

However, Space Racers, which originated on select PBS stations, premiered on Sprout in 2016, and probably no longer airs on Universal Kids, The Berenstain Bears stopped airing on TV once Universal Kids launched, and Caillou stopped airing on Universal Kids on March 31st, 2019, ten years after Jakers! stopped airing on Sprout and two years after The Good Night Show dissolved.

PBS may no longer own the Sprout brand, but it left behind a lasting impact.

Click here to relaunch in early 2017 on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum!