BBC Kids is the international children's brand of
BBC Studios
BBC Studios is a British content company. It is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC that was formed in April 2018 through the merger of the BBC's commercial production arm and the BBC's commercial international distribution arm, BBC Worldwide ...
, and has been applied to a number of TV services. It draws from the
long history of children's programming on the
BBC, and is strongly related to the
CBBC
CBBC (initialised as Children's BBC and also known as the CBBC Channel) is a British free-to-air public broadcast children's television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is also the brand used for all BBC content for children aged 7–16 ...
channel in the United Kingdom.
History
2001-2018
2021-present
On 30 April 2020,
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
closed their Australian children's channels (
Disney Channel
Disney Channel, sometimes known as simply Disney, is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Comp ...
and
Disney Junior
Disney Junior is an American pay television network owned by the Walt Disney Television (part of Disney General Entertainment Content) unit of The Walt Disney Company through Disney Branded Television. Aimed mainly at children two to seven ...
), and
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (often abbreviated as CN) is an American cable television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is a part of The Cartoon Network, Inc., a division that also has the broadcasting and production activities of Boomerang, ...
and
Boomerang became bound to an exclusive agreement with
Foxtel in 2021. This left
Fetch TV with little children's content. In response it commissioned BBC Studios to create a domestic BBC Kids channel.
The channel launched on 24 April 2021. This complemented an existing
CBeebies channel available in Australia, catering to children aged 0 to 6. At launch, all the programming of BBC Kids was already airing in the Australian market on
ABC Me.
On January 11, 2022, BBC Studios added BBC Kids as an additional channel to the
Pluto TV platform in the United States, both in English (as "BBC Kids") and in Spanish (as "Niños por BBC").
Taiwan Mobile myVideo has become the first streaming platform in Asia to launch BBC Kids as a Video on Demand channel, which was launched on July 1, 2022. The channel has included titles that had been previously aired on Cbeebies Asia to bring along other titles that was tailored for Kids audiences, such as
Spy in the Wild
''Spy in the Wild'' is a British nature documentary television series, produced by BBC Natural History Unit, John Downer Productions and PBS. The series, which is directed and produced by John Downer, premiered in 2017 with a second series in ...
and
Deadly 60
''Deadly...'' is a strand of British wildlife documentary programming aimed principally at children and young people, which is broadcast on CBBC on BBC One and Two and on the CBBC Channel. It is presented by Steve Backshall, with Naomi Wilkinso ...
.
A BBC Kids subscription app service with 100 hours of content became available in South Africa in September 2022, through a partnership of Switch Media and
MTN Group
MTN Group Limited, formerly M-Cell, is a South African multinational mobile telecommunications company, operating in many African and Asian countries. Its head office is in Johannesburg. , MTN recorded 280 million subscribers, making it th ...
.
Distribution
Current distribution
Former distribution
References
External links
Australian website
{{BBC Television
International BBC television channels
Television channels and stations established in 2001
BBC Worldwide