PBS Kids - History

History

On September 5, 1999, at 8:59 a.m. ET, the P-Pals were seen for the very last time before fading from the airwaves forever. Then, the 1999 PBS Kids bumpers, idents, and promos (designed by Richard McGuire and animated at Primal Screen) appeared for the first time at 7:00 a.m. ET on September 6, 1999. Along with the block of programming on PBS, PBS Kids was a separate television network, founded on Labor Day 1999 and was targeted to children four to seven years old. The PBS Kids Channel ran for six years and was largely funded by DirecTV, an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California.. The channel ceased broadcast on September 26, 2005, in favor of a new commercial joint venture, PBS Kids Sprout, which is a partnership now owned by NBCUniversal About half of PBS TV stations still program a children's channel themselves over their multicasting service,. On PBS Kids, two blocks of programming are currently included in PBS: PBS Kids Go! and the PBS Kids Preschool Block. The former block, PBS Kids Bookworm Bunch, was launched in 2000 and ended in 2004. On May 8, 2013, PBS Kids was added to the Roku streaming player.