Sprout and Autism

Image from 2018

Madeline Fretz - You know me, but one thing you don't know about me is that I'm an autistic girl, which may explain why I love little kids' shows. I'll admit, I've loved little kids' shows ever since I was a toddler, but having autism may be the reason why I'm a big fan even to this day. Autism is amazing, it means you see the world differently.

Having autism also means you behave differently. I'm good-mannered, but, like Caillou, I sometimes throw tantrums and cry like a little kid, which is probably why, over the years, I've used chewy necklaces and went to speech and occupational therapy classes (and had some at my own house) (as for the former, I bite my fingers a lot, so that could be why). In addition, we were not alone, as several children's shows, including those I like, have introduced characters with autism. With characters like these, kids like me were represented.

As I said, like other people I know, I'm autistic and I love kids' shows, which could be the reason why I stay inside and spend a lot of time on screens (I'm more of an indoors person, though I usually go outside), which may lead to lack of sunlight. Sprout is something I've loved ever since I was little ... or have I? As you probably know, I had "Sproutophobia" as a "Sproutlet" - I was afraid of whenever The Sunny Side Up Show had guest appearances from characters, but calmed down and overcame my fears as I got older.

I have four of the same picture on each wall in my room, and it's THIS ONE. No, seriously!

Sprout was hugely impactful on children with special needs, including those like me on the autism spectrum. The hosts made the children feel safe, comfortable in a troublesome world, and, like Mr. Rogers, were very gentle and understood their viewers, treating them like real people. Serenity.

In this post, you'll find out why Sprout was a place for kids with autism. Read on!

The Sunny Side Up Show was like any other children's show, except it was live, unscripted, and the hosts never talked down to kids. Unlike Play School, the hosts of The Sunny Side Up Show behaved like real people rather than actors. They were sweet, calm, and made kids feel welcome in their own little world. Sunny was also a place where kids could learn about a different educational topic each week and could get to send in fun stuff related to the week's theme. I'd have to say, very autism-like.

The Good Night Show was like The Sunny Side Up Show (I even made a piece about which one of the two was better), except it was slower, calmer, and, like most of Sprout's other programming, pre-recorded. It was probably better for me since I'm a calm girl most of the time. Like Sunny, it was also a place where children could learn about a different topic through various fun activities and segments of their favorite shows - both old and new. The scenarios between Nina and Star were a bit little kid-like. Star asks Nina to stay up late, the two engage in banter for the rest of the night, and Star finally goes to bed. When I was in preschool, I went to bed around the same time, slept through the whole night, and probably got up at different times.

Even though kids watched The Good Night Show, it did not put them to bed. A Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood study in early 2009 showed that the show kept kids awake. Sandy Wax, president of Sprout at the time, explained that The Good Night Show, which launched when Sprout did in 2005, fulfilled the social function of reminding "Grown-Up Sprouts" that it was time to put their Sproutlets to bed after a busy day, which is probably why they had that Nina/Star banter. That study may have led to two things - 1. The Good Night Show was better off watching at daytime. 2. The Sunny Side Up Show was probably better for kids.

Nina also understood the viewers and treated them like they were actually there. Again, hugely impactful on the autism spectrum.

The Sprout Sharing Show. The hosts on the block were all puppets, their mouths didn't move (ala Yo Gabba Gabba!), and their voices were kind of annoying. Despite all these, I kind of enjoyed the block, even if I may not have watched it as a Sproutlet. The Sharing Show was like a talent show in a way, as the characters showed off their talents and sang songs, and viewers were encouraged to send in videos of them showing off their talents like swimming or ballet dancing. Characters' family members often appeared to encourage Grown-Up Sprouts to join in the fun. Autistic kids like me love to draw, and one of the key parts of The Sprout Sharing Show was that Sproutlets were encouraged to send in their drawings and see them on TV as animated shorts. This I would've loved, as you know two things about me. 1. I love to draw. 2. I sent in content to Sprout via both SproutOnline.com and the Send to Sprout app, including videos. This was around the time The Sharing Show dissolved, so I never got to send videos or artwork in to Patty, Ricky, and Curtis, though I still sent in videos to Sprout, hoping to someday make a guest appearance on The Sunny Side Up Show. The closest I ever came was this.

Aside from show segments of course, The Let's Go Show had songs, crafts, recipes, planting seeds, and kid-friendly science experiments. Kids with autism love music, and The Let's Go Show was full of fun songs to sing, dance, and clap along to. As a foodie myself, boy were the recipes Miles and Banjo made, which were also available on SproutOnline.com, made for me! Aside from those, I don't think they had any other autism-friendly features.

The programming. While both Sesame Street and Caillou had autistic characters, only two Sprout shows were aimed at autistic kids or had characters on the autism spectrum. Bounce, which aired on Sprout as part of Musical Mornings with Coo, was aimed at children on the autism spectrum, and thus was also known as Spectrum Connections. Pablo, which came from the UK's CBeebies and aired on the Sprout block on Universal Kids, had a titular character with autism who would draw his own adventures, and the cast was entirely autistic. Pablo was the final show to air under the Sprout name.

Not only that, but I, for one, believe Chica has autism. She only speaks through squeaks, and I believe her way of communicating is echolalia, an unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person. Chica may have selective mutism and echolalia, she plays autism-like games, and interacts with soft-spoken people, so she could have autism, thus making her a character I can really relate to.

It may not be autism acceptance month, but I just wanted to let you know I have autism. Sprout was full of amazing, autism-approved programming. I, as well as other kids, was represented. Isn't that the most amazing thing?

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Growth Spurt for Two-Year-Old Sprout

Madeline Fretz - One thing I do from time to time here at Parents and Kids Share Together is write about old articles about Sprout. Since my blog is turning two at the end of this month, I thought now would be a perfect time to write about when Sprout turned two in 2007. And I know just the perfect article to write about!

Written by Multichannel News' Kent Gibbons, this article was published on September 9th, 2007, and is about Sprout's plans to celebrate its second anniversary. I mean, they had a hit when they turned one last year. 

When Sprout turned two, according to then-president Sandy Wax, it signed a distribution agreement with Time Warner Cable, which at the time was the second-biggest U.S. cable distributor with 14.7 million subscribers. Time Warner Cable has added Sprout on Demand in nine million homes. Sprout at the time was available in 34 million(!!!) households, and key affiliates included not only co-owner Comcast, but also the likes of DirecTV and Cox Communications. Wax said in a telephone interview that it was really the "next step" for Sprout. Once Time Warner Cable signed its agreement with Sprout, it didn't carry anything with the name anywhere except for on video-on-demand, as corporate communications director Maureen Huff said they had no launch plans for the 24-hour channel yet.

Sprout was available in over 55 million homes as of 2012. Image from YouTube

The article mentions that, at launch, Sprout was available in about 13 million homes, but as of the article's publication, it was available in at least 22 million. As I said several times on this blog, Sprout was a pretty small channel during the first generation, but grew by and by as time went by. Man, compare their budget back then to the budget they had in, say 2015! Over 20 million homes at the time have committed to add the channel.

The article also mentions something more important than how many homes Sprout was in (at least in my opinion), as it was from the same month The Sunny Side Up Show launched. My original song "2007," is about things important to me that happened in that year, including Sunny's aforementioned launch. Listen to it and weep!

The original set

Now, I know this is something else I've said many times here, but let me say it again for good measure. The set of The Sunny Side Up Show at the time looked like a decorated office - it was cramped and cheap, which was fair because Sprout at the time was, unheard of the first time, a channel with a low budget. I have talked about this set, located in a Haddon Heights studio, several times on this blog. Sprout supposedly moved to the 24th floor of Philadelphia's Comcast Center in early 2008.

Above is a first look at The Sunny Side Up Show that was prior to the block's live premiere on the 26th. The article states that cast and crew rehearsed and recorded background material on set that day.

Now, it wasn't just The Sunny Side Up Show that came to Sprout when the brand turned two, but executives pulled out another programming block, two new shows, and a new season of The Good Night Show. Lemme tell ya about these then-new offerings.

Sprout introduced Musical Mornings with Coo, which ran from 6AM to 9AM ET. Musical Mornings was hosted by a cuckoo bird digital puppet named Coo, who would spring out of her cuckoo clock and sing songs that would teach simple lessons. Bounce host Elizabeth Balzano would sing songs about things like playing in the park. In addition, music videos of songs from Sprout shows would play in between shows. Musical Mornings would continue to air well into 2009, when segments would start airing on Sprout's new morning block, Sprout's Wiggly Waffle.

Bounce, aimed at the autism spectrum, aired during Musical Mornings. When she founded PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki in 2019, FANDOM's NeptuneID13 refused to believe it did, but according to sources (even Wayback Machine archives of SproutOnline.com and a promo found at the end of a Sesame Street episode), it did. Balzano also appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show several times.

In 1999, Sesame Workshop (then called the Children's Television Workshop (CTW)) and Nickelodeon launched NOGGIN (now Nick Jr.), a 24-hour educational channel. Originally, Nickelodeon was going to launch a channel containing of its educational programming called Big Orange, and CTW was to launch a channel containing of its shows other than Sesame Street called New Kid City. Eventually, the two decided to merge their ideas and launch NOGGIN. In 2002, it was announced NOGGIN was to became a preschool channel with a nighttime teen and adult block called The N (later TeenNick), and rebranded on April 1st that year. On that day, NOGGIN revealed a new show from Sesame Workshop (which at the time lost interest in the brand) called Play with Me Sesame, hosted by Sesame Street Muppets Ernie, Bert, Grover, and Prairie Dawn, who would showcase viewers' drawings and play games, often with other Muppets joining in. One thing that made the show special was that it contained Muppet sketches from Sesame Street's "classic" days, which were rarely featured on the main show at the time. 

NOGGIN also aired episodes of the regular Sesame Street in two package series - Sesame Street Unpaved, which contained of memorable episodes from the show's first twenty years, and 123 Sesame Street, which consisted of "newer" episodes from 1993 to 2000. Unpaved was dropped when NOGGIN became a preschool channel, but 123 continued to air as late as 2005. Despite all this, Play with Me continued to air on NOGGIN until September 2007, when the show moved to Sprout. This was several months prior to NOGGIN and The N becoming their own separate channels on Decembe 30th. Play with Me Sesame aired on Sprout during The Sunny Side Up Show and Sprout's Wiggly Waffle, but Prairie Dawn's "Play with Me Art Show" segments were dropped in favor of new framing scenes in which the Sunny Side Up Show hosts would show viewers' drawings. The regular Sesame Street show stopped airing on Sprout shortly after the launch of the third generation due to Sesame Workshop's five-year deal with HBO, but, like NOGGIN, Play with Me Sesame continued to air on the channel until early 2016.

And finally, Season 4 (or 2, if not for Melanie and Leo's tenures) of The Good Night Show premiered that night. This season saw many new changes to its show - Nina's Sproutlet friends were inducted into the Sprout Stretch and sign language segments and a new segment titled "Lucy Light the Way" was introduced, in which Nina and Star would have to guess where Lucy the Firefly was based on silhouettes she has hidden.

The article mentions that Season 4 was the first time real kids were featured on set, but the first season to do so was actually Season 2. You see, once Leo was introduced, Lucy would light the way to segments in which Sproutlets would talk about the night's adventure. How do we know? Well, recently, a tape of a Good Night Show broadcast featuring Leo was uploaded to YouTube, and it contained a real kids segment.

Back to The Sunny Side Up Show. The article mentions that the then-new block was aimed at two to five year olds to get them ready for the day, and also mentions the hosts being Kevin, Kelly, and of course, Chica, the hosts seen in the preview video and in promotional pictures. Sean joined in early 2008, presumably during Colors Week (the week of February 17th), as the description to the above video mentions him being new to the Sunshine Barn.

Image from the Wayback Machine

The article notes that, contrary to popular belief, The Sunny Side Up Show was not Sprout's first experience with live broadcasting. Sprout's first live broadcast was the Hooray for Mother's Day stunt that year. More than seven thousand messages sent in via the internet were shown on air. Wax said that Sprout executives were quite happy with the response - they were small but successful.

As you probably know, Kevin was the host of Sprout's The Birthday Show prior to hosting The Sunny Side Up Show, and was quite excited about reading Sproutlets' birthday cards again, except he was doing it live on air instead of there being a two-month delay for mailed-in cards.

The article states that, at the time, Sprout on Demand has received more than 250 orders, the fact that the service offered fifty hours of programming as well as fifteen of programming in Spanish, and that Sprout received 15.8 million on-demand views in July.

The article mentioned that Sprout had advertising for Grown-Up Sprouts. Sure, they came on on a little kids' channel, but those commercials were not for them. One of Sprout's advertisers at the time was Huggies and Pull-Ups creator Kimberly Clark, which sponsored the channel since it launched. The article also mentions that other sponsors included SeaWorld and Honda Odyssey.

Anyways, this is a neat little article about how big a small channel like Sprout was getting time after time, and a great way to introduce newcomers to The Sunny Side Up Show and other new Sprout content, with their little details.

And I guess I should end this post with the end of this article: "As for distribution, the Time Warner Cable deal gives Wax and other Sprout backers reason to feel sunny about more than just a new morning show."

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