Photo courtesy of the Nine Network
Kids can soon enjoy an educational channel dedicated to PBS Kids programming.
Launching January 16, Nine PBS KIDS will be a 24/7 sophisticated, multi-platform educational service that will feature favorite PBS Kids shows, family movies, online streaming, and more.
Lesli Rotenberg, senior vice president and general manager of Children's Media and Education at PBS (and a St. Louis native), says PBS contacted Jack Galmiche, president and CEO of the Nine Network in St. Louis, when it recognized a need for the channel.
"I wanted to learn from him: what's working, what's not working, how we could get PBS national to build a service that would be helpful to you and other stations across the country," says Rotenberg. "[Galmiche] really challenged me to make the service more educational."
Rotenberg says most PBS stations across the country didn't have a kid's channel and that the Nine Network was ahead of its time in that regard. This new channel will launch nationally and take the place of Nine Kids.
In the evening, the new channel will air favorite shows, such as Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Wild Kratts, and Odd Squad. Rotenberg says the evening, from about 6-9 p.m., is one of the highest viewing periods for children.
"[Nine PBS KIDS] will provide service to those kids who need it most during the hours they need it most," she says. "This includes a lot of kids who get a lot of their programming over the air—who are in low-income communities, who don't have access to cable, who don't have access to satellite. They make up a big percentage of our viewing across the country."
The channel can also be streamed on mobile devices through the PBS Kids app and online—and it will still be locally branded. Soon after the channel launches in January, kids will be able to switch from TV viewing to game play. For example, after viewing a program, they can play a game that will put the skills they just learned to the test.
Overall, Rotenberg says, the goal of Nine PBS KIDS is to make popular and effective children's programming easily accessible to those who need it most, including patients at children's hospitals. "They told us, 'We're the ones who are going to benefit the most from this service," Rotenberg says. "Some kids [who are at children's hospitals] are up at all hours, and we can now turn our TVs to the PBS kids channel and know they're really benefiting from the most educational programming."
