Pingu

I found this in the old Sprout jingle ad:

Image from Vimeo

Pingu was one of the shows on the Children's Favorites section of the Sprout on-demand service before it launched.

Here's an up next bumper for the show:

And here's a full airing of the show from 2005 or 2006.

Super WHY!

Super WHY! was a CGI interactive cartoon starring fairy tale characters becoming superheroes and solving problems in books to find "Super letters" whenever they have a problem themselves and need a moral to solve it. The show aired on Sprout from 2011 to September 26, 2015.

The show was extremely popular amongst children, and aired on The Super Sproutlet Show, The Sunny Side Up Show, and The Sprout Sharing Show.

Since the show was an hour long, the SSU hosts danced to the theme song.

Because Sprout invested in acquired shows in 2010 (Chloe's Closet) and this show was from PBS (one of the channel's 4 founders), the show didn't hold up too well on the channel, and was one of the shows to be dropped during the rebrand.

Stupid Bird

Thomas & Friends' presence on Sprout hasn't changed over 10 years, but there was one episode with a curse word Sprout decided to remove.

Remember the episode Haunted Henry? In one point of the episode, Henry says "Stupid Bird" to an owl. Apparently, it's been established that Sprout hates curse words, so they removed the "Stupid" out of the sentence.

The same went to an episode of Caillou where he played baseball.

Old Later On/Next Bumpers (First Generation)

During the first generation, bumpers were used featuring a small television with animated buttons playing the split-screen credits of a show that was ending, and a circle showing what shows were coming up next and later on. These kind of bumpers used an unknown male announcer. I don't know if this was a VoiceOver or text-to-speech.

Below is an example of these types of bumpers, that MUST be anywhere from 2005 or 2006.

The transcript reads:

Announcer:

Later on, he's 4 and he loves to explore!

Guess who? It's Caillou!

Get ready to laugh and learn with Caillou and his friends.

It's Caillou, later on PBS KIDS Sprout.

But first, let's waddle through ice and snow with the silliest penguin that would know

Pingu! He sure knows how to have a good time!

Let's join him now. Pingu is coming up next, here on PBS KIDS Sprout.

Here is yet another:

Anyways, do you remember these? I don't because I was 1 and a half by the time Sprout rebranded.

Sproutoramas

Do you know what Sproutoramas were? They were dioramas created by Sproutlets that would often be shown before and after commercial breaks during the second generation.

Now here is an early Sunny Side Up Show Sproutorama bumper from 2009 and 2010:

Image from YouTube

Anyway, did you have a Sproutorama that was shown on Sprout or do you remember any? Let me know in the comments!

Brown Girl Gumbo post

I found an interesting post from the Brown Girl Gumbo blog.

There’s nothing more precious than witnessing your child experience a priceless moment.

I had that special pleasure a few weeks ago when I surprised my children with a visit to Sprout, the premier 24-hour cable network for preschoolers. Nestled on the 6th floor of Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan, the NBC-owned channel is home to popular children programs like “Caillou” and “The Berenstain Bears,” as well as several original animated series such as “Dot.,” “Terrific Trucks,” and “Floogals.”

The private tour started with a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the control room. Having never visited a television studio before, seeing the multiple screens, monitors and unfamiliar knobs and buttons were fascinating for both of my kids. Watching their little faces light up in amazement was a true joy. But that excitement couldn’t compare to the jubilation of meeting Emily and Chica.

As we turned the hallway and walked into the studio where all of the action happens, the moment I’d been waiting for had finally arrived: they met Chica! Ava was excited, but certainly not as enthused as my 3-year-old son. His excitement was palpable and confirmed by his constant squeals and shrieks.

But, Chica wasn’t the only notable in the room. Emily is bonafide celebrity in our home so they were both pretty thrilled to meet her in person too. Her warm, peppy personality was just as vibrant off-camera as it appears onscreen.

After chatting with Chica and Emily, checking out the set, green room and makeup room, we were on our way with memories (and mementos) that will last a lifetime!

Anyways, these are wonderful pictures and I feel so lucky for these kids.

NYTimes article

Here is a great NYTimes article (mostly) about Sprout, but mentioning other shows like Sid the Science Kid (which aired on Sprout a few years later) and Yo Gabba Gabba!, written by Ginia Bellafante.

A NEW mother, who is also a television critic, is inevitably asked whether she will permit her child to share her public pleasure. Friends and strangers have posed this question to me repeatedly since my son was born a year ago, and I have yet to formulate a position. I understand how addictive the medium is, but refusing it (as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends for children under age 2) feels too sanctimonious and unrealistic. A baby getting increasingly mobile does not sit still during a changing of clothes unless, according to studies conducted in my living room, he’s put in front of a TV for a minute or two whether it’s “iCarly” or Harry Reid on “Morning Joe.” And fathers who love sports tend to feel that ESPN does not count as actual television. There may be toddlers who, though they have never watched a single second of “Dora the Explorer,” could hand you a nacho and talk third-down conversions. 

But is it fair to force a child to live on Crimson Tide football alone? With this in mind, I approached an informal critical survey of Sprout. Begun five years ago by PBS, Sesame Workshop and several private media companies, Sprout is aimed at 2- to 5-year-olds and competes with channels like Nick Jr. It borrows programming previously shown on the air the still odious “Barney & Friends,” the still unsurpassable “Sesame Street,” and so on for some part of the day and devotes the mornings, a portion of the afternoon and the evening to original blocks of shows that are meant to correspond with the rhythms of the hour. The channel has a cheerful, earnest Yankee sense of industry about it, in line with the current fashion in parenting for scheduling. 

Sprout bills itself as the first “24-hour preschool destination available on TV.” Assuming that 24/7, quasi-educational television for small children was a plan to create a nation of super creatures who could best their Beijing peers, I asked a Sprout representative whom the intended 2 a.m. viewer might be. Apparently it is a child with a runny nose or a fever or anxieties about making potholders who cannot return to sleep. Sprout must be commended for ensuring that no American mother will be forced to confront her child’s insomnia with viewings of Cindy Crawford’s Skin Care Secrets infomercial ever again. 

“The Sunny Side Up Show,”which runs each morning, for instance, is meant to be a kind of “Today” show for toddlers. Just like “Today,” it is live and has its own versions of Willard Scott, positioned on sets seemingly forged from Play-Doh who say things like, “Milo is 4 and Milo is from Peru, Ind., and it is windy there.” Why this is better than subjecting a child to an actual NBC weather map is unclear. Later in the day, “The Sprout Sharing Show,” a kind of show-and-tell that features videos submitted by viewers, feels less like mini-adult television. But “The Good Night Show,” intended to help children decompress, returned this viewer to a state of confusion. The emphasis on activity and knowledge acquisition didn’t necessarily seem compatible with the effects of a glass of zinfandel on an exhausted mother. In one bit a mama bear instructed her child in the virtue of exercise. There were lessons in foreign words and echolocation (that’s animal sonar, for you adults). 

By far the most interesting of the series is Sprout’s new live-action program, “Noodle and Doodle,” on weekend mornings. It too has an idle-hands-and-minds-are-the-devil’s-workshop feel about it. The emphasis is on making things bird feeders out of yogurt containers and ketchup-bottle lids, bricks from milk cartons. The food revolution has extended its tentacles here, too, resulting in a recipe for spiky, rice-infused meatballs. All right, you won’t find this on “The Barefoot Contessa.” 

But no matter how well meaning the intent of any given “educational” series, you have to wonder whether learning (and quite possibly quickly forgetting) the concept of echolocation right before bedtime is any more valuable than letting a child finger-paint on an iPad instead. “Sid the Science Kid” on PBS devotes entire episodes to lethargically unpacking concepts like elasticity and friction when a few punchy minutes on rubber bands or hair scrunchies would seem to do. 

Programs like these, and the popular series “Yo Gabba Gabba!” on Nick Jr., make you appreciate the extent to which the Pixar and “Sesame Street” empires work on two levels, speaking intelligently to children and parents. What distinguishes “Yo Gabba Gabba!” from the mindless “Teletubbies” of a decade ago, I’m not so sure. Both seemed forged in a hazy, psychedelic reverie. The host of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” is a character called DJ Lance Rock, who talks to children as though he has never met one, which is possible given that he seems to be living inside a Dee-Lite video. 

“Sesame Street” began its 41st season last week, with simple ideas like comfort explained by guests like Jason Bateman. A lot of television for small children is so earnestly listless it seems almost intended to keep parents away. That leads to the unintended effect of making television that most evil of all possible things, a de facto baby sitter. For better or worse, moms on the second shift require a little more. Or at least this one does. We may just hold out until the kid can watch “Dexter.” 

 This article also provides us with some Sprouteriffic information. First, it came out in 2010, and mentions PBS and Sesame Workshop, The channel was also founded by two other companies -- HiT Entertainment (now owned by Mattel) and Comcast (the owner of NBCUniversal, which acquired Sprout in 2013).

Bellafante also said Sprout "competes with channels like Nick Jr.," but has gained the most viewers out of its competitors in mid-2012.

Also, a picture confirms that Barney did appear on The Sunny Side Up Show with Kelly and Chica that year, supposedly for Dinosaurs Week.