October 16th, 2005
Sprout Channel Ads Sow Controversy
By Joanna Weiss
Boston Globe
PBS Kids Sprout, the new 24-hour preschoolers’ channel on Comcast digital cable, offers some things that preschoolers’ parents are known to grudgingly tolerate: Barney, Elmo, those twirling Teletubbies.
And, from time to time, commercials.
Three weeks after its launch, Sprout has only one sponsor, Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies diapers. The ads are aimed at parents and don’t interrupt shows—though the shows last for only 15 minutes.
But the mere idea of a PBS-branded product with ads hit like a bombshell in the public television world. And so far, many stations have refused to affiliate with the new service. Out of 177 licensees, only 90 have joined with Sprout for content and marketing arrangements.
Boston’s WGBH, a powerful player in public TV, is among the holdouts. Station officials said they balked at the deal in part because they would have had to drop one of their kids’ cable channels, ‘GBH Kids and Boston Kids & Family TV.
Besides, there was the issue of the ads.
‘’Part of what we’ve always been is an environment that’s commercial-free," says Brigid Sullivan, WGBH’s vice president of children’s programming. ‘’It’s hard for me, as a mother and a grandmother, to think that I’d ever want my kids to watch commericals as preschoolers. I think it’s part of the heart of public television."
But PBS officials say ventures like Sprout will ensure that public television survives uncertain times.
As last summer’s congressional funding crisis made clear, public broadcasting’s future is tenuous, says John F. Wilson, PBS’s vice president for porgramming. The federal government currently provides only 15 percent of the operating budget for PBS.
‘’We have to look for other revenue streams," Wilson says. ‘’We have to be smart about how we enter into arrangements and maximize some return from them so that we can keep the public service media."
And Sprout, he says, was going to happen anyway. It arose as a joint venture among Comcast, ‘’Sesame Street" producer Sesame Workshop, and HIT Entertainment, which produces such shows as ‘’Barney" and ‘’Bob the Builder." It re-airs shows that have already appeared, both on-air and on-demand, offering a revolving library of 50 hours of on-demand programs, plus five hours of on-demand programs in Spanish.
Joining in, Wilson says, gave PBS input on the channel’s content and presentation—along with a way to make money.
And for Sprout, the PBS name provides an unparalleled marketing boost, says Diana Kerekes, the Comcast vice president who served as Sprout’s acting general manager during the launch.
‘’The minute you know it’s PBS KIDS," Kerekes says, ‘’you know it’s quality programming."