PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki

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PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki
PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki
PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki
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PBS KIDS Sprout

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"PBS KIDS Sprout is a safe and fun place for you and your preschooler, and the best thing is, it's there for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
―Female announcer, Sproutletsgrow.com promo

PBS KIDS Sprout (later simply Sprout) was an American pay television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group, a division of NBCUniversal, all owned by Comcast. The channel was launched on September 26, 2005, and closed down in 2017.

Mission

Being the 24-hour preschool channel "parents and kids share together" for shows, activities, and adventure, Sprout's mission was to educate and entertain by inspiring imagination, creativity, and spontaneity. Sprout created idents and branding featuring its logo. These usually were crafty and creative, and they were inspired by children's book illustrations. To quote senior producer Erica Ianonne:

"Sprout's brand is all about the handmade, homemade look and feel. Our look is crafty and full of felt, cardboard, construction paper, pipe cleaners, and pom poms!" (link)

Background

Sprout traces its origins to the PBS Kids network (referred to as PBS Kids Channel in press materials), which launched on September 6, 1999 coinciding with the rebranding of PTV, PBS’ children’s programming block, to PBS Kids that day. The PBS Kids feed was available on high-tier subscription providers, and was also offered to PBS member stations for use on a "cablecast" service (a subscription-based local channel provided by the member station) or for use on the member station's free-to-air analog channel to provide a portion of the daytime PBS Kids programming on the station. Participating stations were required to pay an annual fee of $1,000 to use the feed. At launch, 32 PBS member stations had signed up to use the service. The channel was created, in part, to compete against Nick Jr. and its sister network, Noggin, which now shares its name with the Nick Jr. block. 

Because the pay TV rights to the Children's Television Workshop’s program library were owned by Noggin (which CTW owned a 50% interest in at the time), the channel did not broadcast any CTW programming, including Sesame Street, a longtime staple of PBS' children's programming lineup. The CTW-produced Dragon Tales, which premiered on the same day as the launch of the PBS Kids Channel, was the only exception to this.

The channel was not successful and had only reached 9 million households as of 2002, compared to Noggin's 23.3 million households at the time. Once the channel shut down, many member stations which had been using the PBS Kids channel on their cablecast channels or free-to-air digital subchannels continued to operate their children's channels as local services scheduled independently of a satellite feed, while other member stations shut down their kids channels entirely and redirected viewers of those channels to the newly launched PBS KIDS Sprout. PBS later revived the PBS Kids Channel on January 16, 2017, this time with an online streaming option in addition to utilizing largely the same distribution methods that had been used for the original channel.

History

Origins (2004-2005)

In early 2004, an executive meeting was being held in New York City, where Joyce Slocum and another executive were discussing the difficulty for HiT Entertainment, and other producers, to find distribution platforms when Nickelodeon and Disney Channel do both and have incentives to air their own shows. They then came up with the idea to launch a dedicated preschool digital channel.[1] Additionally, PBS wanted a cable service because parents wanted more Sesame Street and producers wanted more outlets for their children's programs. The network would also generate funds for its PBS programs.[2] PBS, HiT, Comcast, and Sesame Workshop entered a partnership that June.[3] The trademark for the name "Sprout" was filed in November, and in April 2005, Comcast revealed the channel's name, with the logo being designed by Primal Screen. After a launch party at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, California, a Sprout VOD service was launched on the 4th that same month, offering 55 hours of preschool shows in both English and Spanish. Lesser-known shows were put in a category called "Children's Favorites" and eventually in their own categories. [4]

2005 - 2009

LaunchPartyInvitation

Invitation for Sprout launch party.

Sprout Bedtime Ident

After a successful on-demand launch and months of preparation, with plans being announced at the National Cable Television Show in San Francisco, California,[5] PBS KIDS Sprout was launched on TV on September 26, 2005. It showed series from PBS, HiT Entertainment, and Sesame Workshop's libraries, and was operated on the 24th floor of the Comcast Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after being in the 20th floor of 2000 Market Street across the street to better accommodate the small crew.[6] Its main target audience was originally preschoolers, and featured schedules based on the day.  Morning programming featured shows designed for kids to get ready for the day, late morning and afternoon programming featured educational shows for kids, and evening programming was designed to get kids ready to go to sleep.[7] Shortly after the channel launched, Andrew Beecham and Sandy Wax drove to a research facility in Baltimore, Maryland, where they watched a focus group of fifty moms talking about the new channel through a one-way mirror.[8]

There was a multi-platform approach to Sprout. The linear channel had variety with various shows from all over the world, the on-demand services had instant access to specific shows, and the programming blocks incorporated the use of the website. The look and feel of the channel during this era were designed to look like a children's picture book and is mostly done in a 2D style. This branding was done courtesy of Primal Screen, who also designed the logo and the idents for PBS KIDS Sprout On Demand when it launched. These idents would premiere on demand in January 2006.

When Sprout launched, it was relatively a small channel, so the marketing team had to develop ways to reach people unfamiliar with the brand, including cable and satellite TV operators, to communicate its unique content and format.[9] The channel's scheduling also eschewed the practice of combining multiple episodes of short-form children's series, with the exceptions of Sesame Street, Barney & Friends, Teletubbies, Caillou, and Boohbah,[10] into a single half-hour episode with interstitial segments for U.S. broadcast, electing to air such programs individually in their original format, probably due to attention spans. For example, Thomas & Friends' older episodes last 4 and a half minutes. They aired exactly like that without being elongated. For this reason, the channel received mixed reviews from parents and children when it launched, especially when compared to Nickelodeon's NOGGIN, which aired programs for half an hour.[11] This practice was borrowed from the United Kingdom.[12]

The shows on Sprout did not have commercials, but the channel had about the same dose of sponsorship spots as others from PBS. PBS and Sesame Workshop co-wrote Sprout’s sponsorship policy, which was compliant with the Children’s Advertising Review Unit guidelines,[13] and Sprout would be advertising-supported, but ads would only air between programs in small quantities and would be aimed towards parents and caregivers. During commercial breaks, many advertisements were aired for identity theft, paying taxes, and car insurance, although there were commercials aimed for kids as well, mostly mail-order toy commercials from As Seen On TV such as Pillow Pets. These ads, reviewed alongside strict guidelines established by the channel's founders,[14] aired in between shows and were only aimed at parents and caregivers. As a result, many PBS stations refused to affiliate with Sprout,[15] leaving 90 to join with Sprout for content and marketing arrangements, including PBS promos.

When Sprout launched, its website and Sprout On Demand featured several programs that were deemed too inappropriate for a preschool audience, so they were all taken off the air, on-demand, and online sometime in 2006.

7E7A3151-642C-4D1B-B7E7-528DE98CA4C9

Some of Sprout's shows and blocks.

Shortly after Sprout launched, Andrew Beecham was crowned senior vice president of programming and Sandy Wax as president. Unlike most American children's channels at the time, Sprout had links in between shows hosted by gentle adults. Beecham came from Britain, where they always had hosted continuity links. Hosts Kevin Yamada and Melanie Martinez were intended not simply to act as navigators but to add value with live-action interstitials involving singing, game playing and storytelling. Yamada read birthday cards as part of The Birthday Show, and Melanie the Babysitter (Martinez) did crafts, sang songs, taught stretches and sign language, introduced Spanish words, and told stories as part of The Good Night Show. She was unfairly fired the next year for appearing in two PSAs on the now-defunct website technicalvirgin.com, and was subsequently replaced by Leo (Noel MacNeal), and then Nina (Michele Lepe), who would become the most iconic host of the block, along with Star. Sprout's earlier original shows were often short-form series or started out as short-form before becoming half-hour shows. These included The Many Adventures of Mr. Mailman, Sprout Diner, and Pajanimals.

By 2007, Sprout started airing other blocks during different times of the day. The Let's Go Show, which aired on afternoons[16] and later weekends, launched on June 25th, Musical Mornings and The Sunny Side Up Show, which aired on weekday mornings, both launched on Sprout's 2nd anniversary, [17] and The Sprout Sharing Show, which aired on afternoons, launched on May 5, 2008 with new show PICME, an Irish cartoon in which viewers could see their heads on an animated body on TV.[18] Sprout also launched the Sprout for Parents and Sprout Please websites, as well as the Sprout Smart and Great Sprout Tuck-In promotions.

In spring 2009, it was announced The Wiggles were moving to Sprout from Playhouse Disney with their own block, which launched in August that year.[19] This was due to competition with the Imagination Movers, a children's music group from New Orleans, Louisiana who received their own TV show. After that, they appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show with Kelly and puppet co-host Chica the Chicken.[20][21] British stop-motion series Rubbadubbers premiered that same day and during The Good Night Show on September 21st.

2009 - 2015

Rain Ident

A new season of The Good Night Show also premiered on September 21st, 2009 and Nina guested on The Sunny Side Up Show to promote the new season (main article: Nina on The Sunny Side Up Show). Sprout received a major facelift that same day, and each block and most shows opened with Sproutlets and/or their parents opening a cardboard shoebox with the Sprout logo. Idents and branding were designed by the company Trace Pictures, under the eye of founder Justin Stephenson.[22]

Sprout launched in HD in September 2010, and Nielsen started rating the channel two months later in November.[23] Also in 2010, Sprout started investing in long-form original programming with the premiere of Noodle and Doodle, its first long-form series, which launched alongside a weekend edition of The Sunny Side Up Show,[24] which replaced The Let's Go Show. Other new shows were created specifically for the channel, including a 26-episode, long-form version of Pajanimals and The Chica Show, a live-action/animated spin-off of The Sunny Side Up Show. Many of these shows aired on the main NBC channel as part of a healthy lifestyle-themed block called NBC Kids. In 2012, Sprout characters started appearing in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In 2011, Sprout launched Kindness Counts, a campaign containing PSAs and a website, in response to children getting bullied, with The Great Sprout Tuck-In expanding. In 2013 and 2014, the Kindest Kid Contest was held, in which one of four, later five, kind children would be selected to become the channel's "chief kind officer" for a day. A special was held both years in which all five finalists would be interviewed and the winner being announced at the end, with kind-themed songs in between.

In 2012, Sprout achieved its highest rated quarter ever with a household coverage area 0.22 rating/120k homes. This marked the fifth consecutive quarter of audience gains for the network and an increase in household delivery from the same quarter last year of 56% (120k vs. 77k). Sprout had double-digit percentage gains in second quarter year-to-year among its key demographics of kids 2-5 (+68%), kids 2-11 (+72%) and women 18-49 (+22%), while its quarterly household, total persons (+55%) and kids 2-11 audience percentage gains vs. a year ago were higher than any other kids’ networks measured.[25]

Comcast acquired a majority stake in NBCUniversal in 2011, and assumed full ownership of the company in 2013. As a result, Comcast's interest in Sprout was turned over to the company, which owned 40% of Sprout as of 2012. With Apax Funds (UK) and Mattel (US) acquiring HiT Entertainment, the company decided to quit funding the network, albeit programs such as Barney & Friends and Thomas & Friends still running. In December 2012, Sesame Workshop sold its interest of Sprout to Comcast. As a result, the "PBS," which had been concerned once the NBC Kids block launched, name on the network's screenbugs was dropped from the network's name during the first week of December, 2013, and operations moved to New York from Philadelphia in Pennsylvania less than a year later in September, 2014. That same month, Time Warner Cable expanded the distribution of Sprout to customers' lineups in select cities, making the channel reach 60 million homes. In October 2014, operations moved to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York from the Comcast Center, with The Sunny Side Up Show filming there.

At the start of 2014, Sprout saw a 5% audience increase among preschoolers and a 3 percent gain in households compared to the fourth quarter of the previous year. The channel extended television's longest growth streak of total day delivery amongst 18 to 49 year old women with its record two full years of year-over-year gains.

2015 - 2018

Sprout55

Sprout had new graphics introduced on September 26, 2015, to celebrate the channel turning ten. A few PBS shows were dropped as well, such as Sesame Street, Barney, Thomas, Bob the Builder, and Super WHY!. The former show aired until November as a result of a deal Sesame Workshop made with HBO, although spin-off Play With Me Sesame, which premiered on the channel in 2007, continued to run until sometime the next year. As a result, The Sunny Side Up Show moved from the Sunshine Barn to a city loft with touch screens, starting with a "road trip" arc, and removed "The" and "Show" from its name, and Sprout introduced two new shows, Nina's World and Sydney Sailboat. This was at the time Sprout received a new slogan, "Free to Grow." Alyssa Milano became Sprout's "Mom-bassador," announcing her new role on The Sunny Side Up Show shortly before the move and "road trip" arc. The graphics were made to be sleek, minimalist, and modern, as opposed to the crafty and creative childhood feel of the first two eras.

In September 2017, the Sprout channel became a part of Universal Kids, a channel run by NBCUniversal which airs shows aimed at both preschoolers and bigger kids. This was due to NBCUniversal cable networks dealing with declining TV ratings across the sector because of the popularity of the streaming, Sprout being one of NBCU's lowest-rated cable channels with a revenue of $102 million in 2016.[26] During this time, new acquired shows were introduced including Olivia, Charlie and Lola, Ollie! The Boy Who Became What He Ate, and Pablo. The Sprout name was used for the channel's 15-hour preschool block until early 2018. As a result, Sunny Side Up was replaced by a pre-recorded interstitial series called Sprout House (later Snug's House). Sprout House was hosted by veteran Sunny host Carly Ciarrocchi and an orange dog puppet named Snug, with occasional appearances from a human character named TJ, in a set reminiscent of the "tiny house" movement, and was seldom live. When Universal Kids launched, a Sprout block aired from 3AM to 6PM ET, but the Sprout name and website were both removed in early 2018, leaving the only traces of Sprout left being Sunny Side Up Show backdrop in a Sarah & Duck promo picture and the flower-shaped window on the Sprout House set. Since 2017, the network has been bringing back older shows that used to air on its channel when it was originally known as Sprout. Ready Steady Wiggle on June 5, 2017, Barney & Friends on December 17, 2018, Bob the Builder: Ready Steady Build! on April 22, 2019, and The Chica Show on May 20, 2019. In later years, this was no longer the case, as Universal Kids aired show marathons every day until its shutdown on March 6, 2025, which was due to NBCUniversal shifting its focus towards streaming services.

Presentation

Hosts and Continuity Characters

Branches

  • NBC Kids - A block of Sprout shows that aired Saturday mornings on NBC.
  • SproutOnline.com -  A website for the brand. It was launched in 2005 as an online portal for Sprout’s viewers. It featured games, videos, and many exclusive activities featuring unique characters and worlds.
  • Sprout On Demand - A video-on-demand service featuring 55 hours of old and new Sprout programs.
  • Apps - Apps made by Sprout for the iPhone.
  • Sprout Channel Cubby - A tablet featuring Sprout content.

Series

Sprout aired a wide variety of different shows, which fit into six categories:

Notes

  • The Sprout channel was supposed to launch in October 2005, and Muppet Central claims that it was to launch on September 1st.

External links

Sources

  1. ↑ All Things Joyce Slocum
  2. ↑ Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 16, 2005, page D3
  3. ↑ Muppet Central Thread
  4. ↑ PBS Kids Sprout on Demand Launches on Comcast
  5. ↑ The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 4, 2005, page D01
  6. ↑ Sprouting Ideas for Children's TV (February 25, 2008), Retrieved August 31, 2024
  7. ↑ Saluting Sprout’s Launch: PBS Sprouts a Kids Triumph (December 5, 2005), Retrieved August 31, 2024
  8. ↑ Phillymag admin, Mister Beecham's Neighborhood (August 27, 2009), Retrieved August 31, 2024
  9. ↑ Marketing:Real People, Real Choices by Michael R. Solomon, page 203
  10. ↑ Fact sheet (April 19, 2009), Retrieved August 31, 2024
  11. ↑ PBS Sprout grows mixed reviews (October 12, 2005), Retrieved August 31, 2024
  12. ↑ Selma Times Journal, July 16, 2006
  13. ↑ Sprout VOD service springs up on State-side airwaves May 1, 2005 Retrieved August 31, 2024
  14. ↑ Sprouting Up
  15. ↑ Intelligencer Journal, October 18, 2005, page 31
  16. ↑ MCN Staff, PBS KIDS Sprout to Preschoolers: Let's Go (May 7, 2007), Retrieved February 3, 2025
  17. ↑ Gibbons, Kent, Growth spurt for two-year-old Sprout (September 9, 2007) Retrieved February 3, 2025
  18. ↑ Moody, Annemarie, Sprout makes viewers the stars of its new afternoon block (April 9, 2008), Retrieved February 3, 2025
  19. ↑ SPROUT® WELCOMES THE WIGGLES TO NEW U.S. PRESCHOOL TELEVISION HOME (May 21, 2009), Retrieved February 3, 2025
  20. ↑ Gibbons, Kent Wiggles' Busy Day at Comcast Tower (September 5, 2009), Retrieved February 3, 2025
  21. ↑ Hiltner, Matt, New Early-Morning Hosts on Sprout (August 21, 2009), Retrieved February 3, 2025
  22. ↑ Sprout Rebrand Retrieved February 3, 2025
  23. ↑ Jensen, Elizabeth, PBS KIDS Sprout expands its reach (November 19, 2012), Retrieved February 3, 2025
  24. ↑ Hiltner, Matt, Weekend SSU and Noodle and Doodle (September 28, 2010), Retrieved February 3, 2025
  25. ↑ TTCNews Sprout Announces Fall TV Schedule, Including Three New Shows (August 2, 2012), Retrieved August 31, 2024
  26. ↑ The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 13, 2017, page A07
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