Madeline Fretz -Fireman Sam was a Welsh show about a firefighter who lived in a town called Pontypandy, and would teach its young residents safety lessons. Since the show was produced and distributed by HiT Entertainment, a company which also served as one of Sprout's founders, it aired on the channel for some time.
"Fireman Sam and the Pontypandy Fire Brigade never seem to have a quiet day -- their services are always needed. Whether stuck on a high cliff-face or caught in a cave, the children of Pontypandy know help is close at hand -- thanks to the brave and resourceful Fireman Sam."
One of HiT Entertainment's finest, the show premiered on PBS Kids Sprout on Demand when it launched on Comcast on Demand in April 2005 (proof?), and was one of the shows advertised on the Sproutletsgrow.com TV schedule page. However, the show didn't premiere on the actual linear channel until a year later.
When Sprout was celebrating its first anniversary in 2006, it was announced that the channel would air stop-motion episodes of Fireman Sam and, to promote, release fire safety shorts starring real-life firefighter Dayna Hilton and her dalmatian Sparkles the Fire Safety Dog. Fireman Sam's Safety Special aired in October.
The show got its own Sprout Diner snack, Fireman Sam's Sloppy Fire Truck.
The CGI episodes premiered in September 2009, shortly after the second generation rebrand. It was Fire Prevention Week, and Firefighter Dayna made an appearance on The Sunny Side Up Show.
The show stopped airing on Sprout on May 11th, 2014, the same day The Sprout Sharing Show dissolved (new segments haven't aired in years) and a day before Lily's Driftwood Bay made its Sprout debut.
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 otherMuppets 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.
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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Madeline Fretz - I felt like this ident was "overlooked," so I decided to write about it.
Anyways, as you probably know, the company Primal Screen made Sprout's launch day idents, and modeled them after classic children's book illustrations (i.e. Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein). A few idents were released onto the company's website after they stopped airing on the Sprout channel.
This one features various types of clocks, such as watches, and both a red cuckoo bird and the Sprout logo pop out of cuckoo clocks. This was probably the genesis for Musical Mornings with Coo.
Primal Screen described the ident as:
"Families enjoy their time together in this ID for Sprout."
Madeline Fretz - Mr. Mailman was a character created by Sprout who debuted on The Birthday Show in 2005. Mr. Mailman originally delivered birthday cards to host Kevin, a trait he later did on The Sunny Side Up Show, which launched in 2007.
In a December 2005 article, it was announced that Sprout executives were developing four interstitial series about geography, healthy eating, music, and creative storytelling (source). The geography series would later become The Many Adventures of Mr. Mailman.
Many Adventures would follow Mr. Mailman as he would deliver letters, packages etc to his Sproutlet friends' relatives and other people like their teachers. The show premiered in July 2006, making it Sprout's first original series. The channel wouldn't make a full-length one until 2010.
The show also had an online presence on Sproutletsgrow.com (later SproutOnline.com). Here, you could download a personalized passport and cutout of Mr. Mailman, join Mr. Mailman's Travel Club, and play games such as dressing Mr. Mailman for the weather.
The show also got a Sprout Diner recipe, Mr. Mailman's Pita Pocket.
Madeline Fretz - As we all know, PBS Kids Sprout launched as a video-on-demand service on Comcast in April 2005, and as a digital cable channel on September 26, 2005. Every year since then, Sprout has done something to celebrate, and here's a list:
As mentioned in a previous post, Sprout has done a series of things to celebrate its first birthday in 2006, but most of them were prior to September 26.
The next year, in 2007, Sprout had launched two new blocks, two new shows, and the fourth season of The Good Night Show on the 26th. Musical Mornings with Coo premiered at 6AM ET with Bounce, a direct-to-video series aimed at the autism spectrum, and The Sunny Side Up Show, a LIVE successor to The Birthday Show, premiered at 9AM ET with Play with Me Sesame, which was carried over from NOGGIN.
When the clock struck 6PM ET, it was time for Season 4 (or two, if we're not counting Melanie and Leo's tenures) of The Good Night Show. This new season introduced Lucy Light the Way, a game starring Lucy the Firefly, and real kids took part in stretches and interviews.
On September 26th, 2008, Chica celebrated her birthday, which I'll get to later today. On the same day, Sprout debuted HiT Entertainment's Roary the Racing Car.
In 2009, Sprout didn't do anything on the 26th, but rather then 21st. It rebranded with new graphics and bumpers and Season 5 of The Good Night Show premiered. This new season, which Nina appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show to promote, introduced Rubbadubbers.
In 2010, Sprout celebrated its fifth anniversary on the 25th. It introduced weekend editions of The Sunny Side Up Show, which took place in a refurbished Sunshine Barn set, and its first long-form original series, Noodle and Doodle, which aired on weekends.
In 2015, Sprout hit the big 1-0. And what did it do to celebrate? As celebrity Alyssa Milano became the channel's new "mom-bassador," the channel once again rebranded with new graphics and bumpers, dropping a few of its launch day shows. In addition, Nina's World premiered and The Sunny Side Up Show became Sunny Side Up, "moving" to an apartment in the big city.
Madeline Fretz -Wiggly Waffle was a programming block that aired on Sprout on weekday mornings before The Sunny Side Up Show from 2009 to 2013. In this block, which aired from 6AM to 9AM ET, The Wiggles, accompanied by their friends Captain Feathersword, JB the Juicebox, and Dorothy the Dinosaur, sang about the day of the week, waking up Jeff, the fifth Wiggle game, Juicebox Picks with JB, telling jokes with Have a Laugh, Saying the Pirate of the Day with Captain Feathersword, Dorothy's Daily Digest, and put Waffle toppings. It also aired on Australia's ABC2 for a short period of time.
It was created because Musical Mornings with Coo, the block that aired two years prior, failed to bring in ratings Sprout executives wanted (although segments continued to air on the Waffle), and also because Playhouse Disney ratings proved the Imagination Movers, a children's band from New Orleans, were more popular with its viewers than The Wiggles, so senior vice president Andrew Beecham and president Sandy Wax from Sprout scooped up the US broadcasting rights to the band's show for Sprout, and announced the band would be hosting their own early morning block and filming it in Australia, the country where they were actually from. (G'day mate!)
At first, the block was going to be called The Wiggly Waffle Show, complete with a behind the scenes video and a music video called "Sprout Around the Clock," a song about Sprout's programming.
In 2012, the band introduced three new members and a new season (series) with them was added to Sprout in the US. Unfortunately, this switch confused preschool viewers, so the block dissolved. The Super Sproutlet Show, which originally aired from 2PM to 3PM ET, moved to the timeslot that the Waffle (and Musical Mornings) originally aired on.
Madeline Fretz -Musical Mornings with Coo was a programming block that started broadcasting on Sprout on September 26, 2007 (same day as The Sunny Side Up Show) and stopped airing in 2009, when Sprout's Wiggly Waffle premiered. Coo was a puppet by Henson Digital Studios, and was voiced by Julianne Buescher.
Elizabeth Balzano was the live action host who would accompany Coo and sing songs that teach kids valuable life lessons. She previously hosted Bounce, a third-party Sprout program which aired on the channel from 2007 to 2009.
