PBS Kids (2023-present)
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.svg.png){kind=logo} The old saying is true: you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become another trashy children's block.
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"Youtube Kids nowadays are like if you take two pints of rainbow sherbet ice cream, and combine that with Skittles, Froot Loops, and whatever colorful candy exists. Eat that up, and regurgitate it into your four year old’s mouth! Times that by eight! Now take that same thing for PBS Kids, except remove all the flavor. You are left with a main order of a nothing burger with tap water for its side, with another side of f*** all."
— Crinja
PBS Kids is the brand for most of the children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The target audience is children between the ages of 2 and 8. PBS Kids brand programming is aired daily on most local PBS stations during a daytime block, typically scheduled in the morning hours, in addition to a separate 24/7 channel (sometimes called PBS Kids Channel or PBS Kids 24/7). Both the block and 24/7 service are broadcast over the air, via cable and satellite providers and on streaming platforms. Select programming is also available internationally. It was great until 2018 and was decent until early 2023.
Doinked Qualities
- One of the main bad qualities is the logo change and rebrand, which received backlash from many fans of PBS Kids.
- On top of that, while it's not all that bad, it looks sorta bland and average at best, despite being made by Lippincott of all companies. It's still a circle with the words "PBS KIDS" on it, but they removed Dash and the thinking bubbles in the logo, and the circle's now blue. But hey, at least they used the font of the original logo from 1999.
- Compared to the previous brandings, the 2022 rebrand feels very lazy, uninteresting, and just plain simple at best. Not to mention, the branding is similar to the 2013-2022 branding, but with the new logo slapped on it.
- Another reason is that a lot of their best shows like Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, Between the Lions, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, WordGirl, Martha Speaks, Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman, Ready Jet Go!, Maya & Miguel, Dragon Tales, The Electric Company (the 2009 reboot), Clifford the Big Red Dog (the original one from 2000), Clifford's Puppy Days, WordWorld, Liberty's Kids, Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies and many others have been either screwed over or unnecessarily cancelled and replaced with these boring, cringeworthy, and lifeless (despite some being good) cartoons that feel absolutely nothing like actual PBS Kids shows. Most of their new shows nowadays focus only on protecting the environment, learning about cultures, or learning to be a good person, which while not bad necessarily, can get bland, repetitive and tedious. YouTuber Crinja made a FOUR HOUR VIDEO detailing this.
- Even shows that originally focused on one topic, like Cyberchase with math, are focused now on protecting the environment, and on Season 10, eating healthy.
- They've started to milk some of their shows, such as Arthur, Sesame Street, and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, and the 24/7 deadline clearly shows.
- Arthur, despite being cancelled in 2022, is still currently rerunning on the channel, which is basically proof that PBS Kids will stop at nothing to milk the Arthur franchise.
- With the instant lack of variety, logo oversimplification, downgrade of quality, and removal of some classic shows after 2022, it caused many older viewers to feel that PBS Kids had lost its touch.
- Shows like Let's Go Luna!, Splash and Bubbles and Ready Jet Go! have either gotten bad finales or have ended on cliffhangers, which are not very good ways to end a show. Even Nature Cat, which ended its run on a high note, didn't really have a good finale.
- They don't bother to promote new content (new episodes and movies/specials, etc.) of their less well known shows often resulting in their unfair cancelations and/or removals.
- The "Family Night" block (introduced in April 2017) isn't really as memorable as it was.
- For 2023 for Father's Day, the block did a marathon of Father's Day episodes of four shows: Alma's Way, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Dinosaur Train and WordGirl. This year they're doing just a boring four-episode marathon of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. Which is not only ACTUAL PROOF that PBS Kids Family Night has fell off, but proof that PBS Kids still milks their golden child, also known as Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.
- Just like modern Nickelodeon, the channel nowadays tries so hard to be hip, modern, cool and relevant with the kids and mostly comes off as cringe-worthy, especially after 2023, which is very odd. For example, some bumpers and videos would involve the characters rapping and using teen slang , despite being aimed at preschoolers and not Teens.
- In addition, they also aired a lot of bad/mediocre (or at least annoying) shows both before and after 2023, such as the HiT era of Barney & Friends, Caillou, season 9 onwards of Cyberchase, Sid the Science Kid, Pinkalicious & Peterrific, Clifford the Big Red Dog (2019), Teletubbies, Boohbah, Panwapa, Splash and Bubbles, Super Why's Comic Book Adventures, Donkey Hodie, Lyla in the Loop, and the third season of Odd Squad (although the show's returning for a fourth season set in the UK), etc.
- The PBS Kids block feeds got cut short as they are no longer available on the afternoons and after school hours all because of their focus to streaming and the 24-hour network, marking a closer end of an era. The change might've also been made to compete with the Nick Jr. and Disney Junior (now Disney Jr.) blocks.
- For some reason, they keep on decreasing the episode count for every passing season. This also happened before 2023.
- PBS Kids used AI-assisted conversations in both Elinor Wonders Why and Lyla in the Loop which shouldn't be a topic for preschoolers since the topic about AI is complex for toddlers.
Good Qualities
- PBS Kids is still more committed to making new original cartoons than most major for-profit American entertainment companies these days.
- There still air a handful of good/decent shows such as Sesame Street, Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, Molly of Denali, Elinor Wonders Why, Rosie's Rules, Peg + Cat, Hero Elementary, Curious George, Wild Kratts, Let's Go Luna!, the first two and fourth seasons of Odd Squad, Nature Cat, Arthur, the first eight seasons of Cyberchase and Carl the Collector.
- Sure, they may be picky when it comes to shows they own, but at least the PBS corporation doesn't purge their shows, or unfairly remove shows from streaming services, after cancellation and removal from networks, unlike what the infamous Paramount Global did back in early 2024 with some Nickelodeon programming, such as Big Nate and Blue's Clues & You.
- They have some good short-form programming such as You, Me & Community, Plum Landing, The Ruff Ruffman Show, City Island and Jelly, Ben & Pogo.
- The channel was way better before 2018 and decent until early 2023.
- The new logo, while very mediocre, isn't really that bad compared to other oversimplified logos at the time.
- While the bumpers and the idents aren't as good either, they're at least adorable and appealing.
- They aired some great movies like the four Nature Cat specials (Ocean Commotion, The Return of Bad Dog Bart, A Nature Carol, Nature Cat's Nature Movie Special Extraordinaire), Dinosaur Train: Adventure Island, Ready Jet Go!: Space Camp, Rocket Saves the Day and Brambletown.
- Thankfully, they've permanently removed Caillou in early 2021 and is currently no longer airing any reruns, mostly due to the rights expiring and heavy controversy.
- However, it's still available on Prime Video with a PBS Kids subscription for some weird reason...
- A few ended shows such as Super Why!, SciGirls, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, The Berenstain Bears, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, Dinosaur Train, WordGirl, Let's Go Luna! and Peg + Cat are still airing locally on several stations such as WXEL, WFYI, WEIU, KLCS (and the kids subchannel), or on weekends or occasionally on the PBS Kids Channel. They can also be viewed on Prime Video anytime with a PBS Kids subscription, proving that PBS still owns the rights to these shows, both on TV and digitally.
Reception
The channel has currently received mixed reception and has been on a massive decline in viewership due to the rise of streaming.
Trivia
- While most shows on the block are distributed to stations by PBS themselves, at times shows from American Public Television (which distributes shows to public TV stations outside of the PBS system) have been on the block; in some cases, local stations have broadcast APT-sourced shows under the PBS Kids branding (or a localized variant thereof), even if they were never a part of the national PBS schedule.
- The block started under the name PTV, which was used as a way to gather all children's programming on PBS under one centralized branding (known as "Ready to Learn"). Interstitials aimed at younger children featured the P-Pals, or anthropomorphized PBS logos as the mascots (voiced by such names as Oscar J. Castillo, Levar Burton, Fran Drescher, and Jerry Nelson, among others), in the fictional setting of "PTV Park". There were also live-action and music video interstitials aimed at older children, which did not feature the P-Pals and typically aired in the afternoon. However, in order to create a further distinction between programming for the younger and older demographics, another block was created in 1996 aimed at the latter group, known as The Game. It featured interstitials with a stop-motion animated board game set, and included such programming as Bill Nye the Science Guy and Arthur.
- Beginning in 1999, PTV and The Game were both retired and the block was rebranded into the PBS Kids that we all know today. The P-Pals were replaced with two new mascots, a boy named Dash and his little sister Dot, with a completely different theme. In what seems like a case of history repeating itself, another block called PBS Kids Go! was created in 2004 to separate the shows aimed at older demographics again. In 2006, the block's early hours shifted to aim at preschool children with the addition of the Ms. Lori and Hooper segments. Both the Ms. Lori & Hooper segments and the PBS Kids Go! brand were dropped in 2013 when the PBS Kids block underwent a rebrand, though still keeping much of the same interstitial themes that started in 1999.
- Up until November 2013, it also ran PBS Kids Sprout (later branded as Sprout from 2009 to 2017), a cable channel aimed at preschoolers, alongside Sesame Workshop, NBCUniversal (previously Comcast, but became a part of NBCU as result of the former's purchase of it), and Apax Partners (former owners of HiT Entertainment); it had replaced the little-known 24/7 PBS Kids Channel (which ran from 1999 to 2005, mostly seen on DirecTV). A number of the listed programs no longer airing regularly on most PBS stations (and even shows that never aired on PBS anywhere in the first place) could be seen on Sprout. About two years after NBCU bought its stake, the company bought the network outright. Until September 2016, Sprout itself ran a Saturday morning block on semi-sister station NBC called NBC Kids, with another block on NBCU's Spanish network Telemundo called MiTelemundo. In September 2017, Sprout was rebranded as Universal Kids, and had dropped most of the PBS shows that were still on the channel at that point in favor of original programming and other acquired shows.
- In January 2017, PBS launched a new 24/7 PBS Kids channel, which, in addition to being available as a subchannel through most PBS stations, can also be streamed live for free through their website and video app, but only if you live in the United States.
Videos
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