Sprout to become Universal Kids Sept. 9

[mvcg66b3r]

After acquiring DreamWorks Animation last year, Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit is planning to take a giant step into the children’s television business with a cable network to be called Universal Kids.

NBCU already owns Sprout, a channel aimed at pre-schoolers but has limited distribution and low ratings compared to the industry’s giants—Viacom’s Nickelodeon, Time Warner’s Cartoon Network and Disney’s Disney Channels.

Sprout will be transformed into the newer network, aimed at a broader swath of children, starting Sept. 9. NBCU has been weeding its cable portfolio of its weaker networks at a time when cable subscribers are dropping and consumers are looking for lower priced, skinnier bundles of channels.

The new channel’s first series will be Top Chef Junior, a spinoff of Top Chef, which runs on NBCU’s Bravo cable network.

It will also air reruns of DreamWorks Animation shows like All Hail King Julien, which was based on the Madagascar movies.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/ne...hildren-s-channel-dreamworks-animation/165390

 

[ChocoMingo]

Unrelated to this story, but today, Viacom also did something with one of it's "Nickelodeon" channels (half of it, actually). They slightly changed the name of TeenNick's 90s late-night block, "The Splat" to "NickSplat" today as well.

 

[Megatron]

I think it is a good thing to make Sprout into a wider Kids network than just pre-school.

 

[CTListener]

Unrelated to this story, but today, Viacom also did something with one of it's "Nickelodeon" channels (half of it, actually). They slightly changed the name of TeenNick's 90s late-night block, "The Splat" to "NickSplat" today as well.

I gather that's merely a branding-driven name change -- like Nestle renaming Quik NesQuik -- rather than any sort of change of direction for the block of programming, right?

 

[umfan]

If they keep the programming focused to young kids, and not have it morph into almost exclusively tween and teen content, like happened with Nickelodeon, it will be fine, but that likely is the plan with the rebranding.

 

[Megatron]

Looks like Pre-school programs will still rule Universal Kids Sprout programs will still be played 15 hours a day from 3AM until 6PM don't get why they don't split it 12 hours each. I got that from Wiki Sprout page.

 

[crainbebo]

Universal Kids seems like the right move to me. Besides, 95% of their programming nowadays is in-house or produced by NBCUniversal. There's only two PBS Kids shows left on the network -The Berenstain Bears and Caillou. They used to run a majority of PBS Kids' 2000s programs, minus a couple of shows.

 

[Megatron]

Surprise that Universal Kids hasn't gotten a logo yet although I'm sure it will just be globe with Universal Kids or something.

 

[Megatron]

Seen promos for Universal Kids one Sprout is part of Universal Kids & Top Chef JR. on 9-9.