Madeline Fretz -Sesame Workshop was founded in the 60s as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW). You see, at a dinner party held in the New York apartment of television executive Joan Ganz Cooney, guest Lloyd Morrisett admitted to Cooney that his daughter watched test patterns and jingles while waiting for her favorite shows to come on. Cooney suggested they use those jingles to educate kids, so they spent several years founding the Workshop and working on an educational show called Sesame Street, and the rest is history. The Children's Television Workshop became Sesame Workshop in 2000 to show they offered more than just children's shows.
Aside from "the Street," the Workshop has made other children's shows, mostly for PBS. These include The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, Square One TV, Ghostwriter, Cro, Dragon Tales, Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, Tiny Planets, Pinky Dinky Doo, Esme and Roy, and Helpsters. None of them lasted as long as Sesame Street. In the 90s, CTW announced plans to launch a children's channel called "New Kid City." New Kid City was to offer their shows other than Sesame Street. Little did they know, executives at Nickelodeon were creating their own channel called "Big Orange," which consisted of the network's educational programming. Eventually, CTW and Nickelodeon decided to join forces, combine their concepts, and form what would become NOGGIN.
I feel like this blog is slowly becoming a NOGGIN fan blog!
NOGGIN, which launched on February 2nd, 1999, was originally a 24-hour educational network aimed at kids of all ages, with preschool shows in the morning and a retro block for adults at nighttime. As time went by, NOGGIN started producing its own original programming, which included Oobi, Sponk!, and The Phred on Your Head Show. Eventually, the Jim Henson Company sold its interest in the Sesame Street Muppets to the newly reformed Sesame Workshop, which lost the rights to NOGGIN not long after. NOGGIN became Nick Jr. when Nickelodeon rebranded on September 28th, 2009, with the NOGGIN branding being removed on March 1st, 2012, but the name returned in mobile app form in 2015.
When NOGGIN launched, many people saw it as a threat to PBS with its educational programming. Speaking of PBS, in order to compete with NOGGIN, PBS introduced a 24-hour channel known as PBS Kids, which launched on September 6th, 1999 with the new show Dragon Tales. Previously, in 1993, PBS introduced PTV Park and the P-Pals. With the new PBS Kids channel, new mascots were introduced in Dash and Dot. PBS Kids had almost all of PBS' children's programming at the time, except Sesame Street, which aired on NOGGIN in two forms - 123 Sesame Street for 90s episodes and Sesame Street Unpaved for classic episodes. 123 stayed on the network when NOGGIN rebranded, but Unpaved stopped airing since it didn't suit the demographics of either NOGGIN or The N.
The PBS Kids channel was unsuccessful, though it was revived in early 2017. In response, PBS, along with the Workshop, HiT Entertainment (which made and distributed some of its programming), and Comcast, started working on a 24-hour preschool channel. The channel was first announced in October 2004.
In 2005, Comcast announced the channel's name to be PBS Kids Sprout, with Primal Screen designing the familiar logo. PBS Kids Sprout launched on Comcast on Demand in April 2005. If you're a Sprout fan, you know this. If you’re not or a newcomer, I just wanted to let you know.
PBS Kids Sprout on Demand consisted of 55 hours of beloved shows from not only Sesame Workshop, but also PBS and HiT Entertainment, plus a few hours in Spanish. Lesser-known shows were part of a category known as "Children's Favorites," and eventually got their own categories.
After months of preparation, PBS Kids Sprout launched as a channel on September 26th, 2005. Again, something every Sprout fan knows. The new cable channel replaced the 24-hour PBS Kids channel, and some PBS stations even shut down their kids' programming and redirected to Sprout.
Sure, Sesame Workshop was one of Sprout's four founders, but only three of its programs aired on the new channel when it launched, and all three aired on PBS. The company's flagship show, Sesame Street, aired on the channel for its first ten years, and, as one of Sprout's most popular shows, received tons of promotions and countless airtimes, Dragon Tales, which launched when the original PBS Kids channel did, aired on Sprout from 2005 to 2010 on The Let's Go Show and The Good Night Show, and also received tons of promotions in the early years, and the lesser known Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, based on a 90s novel by author Amy Tan, aired on Sprout from 2005 to 2009 during The Good Night Show. All three series also received their own Sprout Diner snacks, Birthday Show activities, and Good Night Show stretches.
But that’s not all! Sprout also aired other Sesame Workshop programs over the years. And they all had to do with the Sesame Street characters!
NOGGIN rebranded as a preschool channel with a nighttime adult block called The N (now TeenNick) on April 1st, 2002. The new NOGGIN, which ran from 6AM to 6PM ET, introducing new preschool-like interstitial segments, a new animated host/mascot in Feetface (later Moose and Zee), and a new Sesame Street spin-off known as Play with Me Sesame. Play with Me stopped airing on NOGGIN in September 2007, shortly before the channel was to split with The N on December 30th, and moved to Sprout. The show aired during The Sunny Side Up Show and later Sprout's Wiggly Waffle. The Play with Me Art Show segments were replaced by new framing segments consisting of the Sunny Side Up Show hosts showing Sproutlets' artwork. I discussed the show's run on Sprout in a previous post on this blog.
Panwapa was a Sesame Workshop miniseries that featured new puppet characters under the names of Azibo Monster, Tungar the Tiger, Baabra Sheep, Koko the Penguin, Athena the Owl, and Bill the Bug, and they were all played by Sesame Street Muppet performers. I remember seeing the characters at the end of a Sesame Street coloring book I had as a toddler. The show debuted on Sprout in 2008, aired on The Let's Go Show, and was one of the shows on the Summer Fun Fridays block. Despite the show's removal in 2009, its page remained up on SproutOnline.com.
The Furchester Hotel was a British co-production of Sesame Street, premiering on CBeebies in 2014. The series is about Elmo and Cookie Monster working in an English hotel run by the former's aunt, uncle, and cousin. The show premiered on Sprout on September 26th, 2016 (its eleventh anniversary) as part of Back to New, the same day several second generation shows stopped airing. To promote its arrival, Elmo and Cookie Monster made an appearance on Sunny Side Up. The show continued to air on Universal Kids until 2019. Wow, what an impressive run!
And those were all the shows that aired on the linear channel.
Several Workshop shows were also on Sprout on Demand. Sesame English, a co-production of Sesame Street aimed at ESL, was a part of Time Warner Cable exclusive ¡Hola Sproutitos!, and the Spanish Sesame Street co-production Plaza Sésamo, which premiered in the 70s, was part of the Spanish programming on Sprout on Demand.
Second generation
Third generation
It was around the 2010s that Sprout began to lose its memory and change. In 2011, Comcast acquired NBCUniversal, which itself acquired all things Comcast as time went by, including Sprout, causing operations of the channel to move to New York's 30 Rockefeller Center from Philadelphia's Comcast Center in 2014, the UK's Apax Funds and America's Mattel (owners of Barbie and Hot Wheels) acquired HiT Entertainment, Sesame Workshop sold its interest in Sprout to Comcast, and PBS lost the rights to Sprout, causing the "PBS Kids" branding to be removed from the channel's name in November 2013.
Despite Sesame Workshop losing the rights to Sprout as it did with NOGGIN, both Sesame Street and Play with Me Sesame continued to air on Sprout. The former aired during the third generation when it launched, but stopped airing in November 2015, as HBO signed a deal with Sesame Workshop to air the next five seasons of Sesame Street earlier that year. However, Play with Me Sesame continued to air until at least 2016.
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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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Grover (Eric Jacobson) and his superhero alter ego Super Grover from Sesame Street and Play With Me Sesame appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show for a "Super New Year's Party" with hosts Kelly Vrooman and Chica during Time Week. They sang about New Year's Resolutions to the tune of "Turkey in the Straw," in which Grover's resolutions included taking pictures, discovering a new breed of blue apple, tying his shoes, hugging a penguin, and drinking hot chocolate with a dove. Man, Sesame Street Muppets can be funny at times! When he was given the "Super Good Egg Award," Grover gave a speech and thanked all his family members.
In 2009, original host Kevin Yamada left The Sunny Side Up Show to move to Florida. Auditions for a new host were held in September and an actress named Dennisha Pratt won the role. Pratt made her Sunny debut on New Year's Eve 2009, and there she would stay until 2014.
In addition, The Sunny Side Up Show held Countdowns to Noon every New Year's Eve from 2009 to 2014, back when it was called The Snowy Side Up Show during the Winter seasons as of 2010. The video you see above is the one from 2014, and includes mention of Boj, which premiered earlier that year.
The end of 2010 saw the premiere of What's Your News?, which aired on The Sunny Side Up Show usually before and after Sproutlet News Report segments. The series aired until 2013.
In the early 2010s, Nina and Star hosted "Cheer in the New Year," a Good Night Show New Year's special which featured guest appearances from Chica and the Sunny Side Up Show hosts, Sean and Noodle, the Wiggles, the Pajanimals, and the Sprout House Band.
In 2013, it was established that Kelly Vrooman was leaving The Sunny Side Up Show. Auditions were held for new hosts in a contest called Host Hunt, and kindie singer Tim Kubart and actress Kaitlin Becker won the roles. Kubart first hosted Sunny on December 30th.
Here’s to 2021 and 2022, and we hope your new year is full of sweet dreams!
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