Good Nights on Sprout

Today PBS KIDS joined with the Pajama Program to launch the Great Sprout Tuck-In. Here’s a three-minute video, the second half featuring Nina (Michele Lepe) from The Good Night Show, to explain.

The prosocial nature of the program dovetails nicely into The Good Night Show’s mandate, which as I see it is to provide a stable routine for children to end their day. This is especially important for those children whose parents do not provide such stability or routine, and the donation of pajamas is an obvious extension of the program into children’s actual physical environment. I think it safe to say that while more kids will be watching The Good Night Show than receiving pajama donations, the latter group will be much more benefited than they would by merely watching TV. And with the current economy being the current economy, need for things like pajamas and books will only rise in coming months.

There is obviously information available on the Sprout website as well as that of the Pajama Program, which is a (year-round) 501(c)3 located here in New York City. Kudos to all those involved from both organizations, and best of luck!

Thinking about The Good Night Show also made me think about the Jim Henson Company. Although I recently wrote about Sid the Science Kid, there’s still more to discuss, as the gang in Los Angeles has been excessively busy of late. Their newest show, even newer than Sid, is an interstitial coproduced with 4Kids Entertainment here in New York called The Pajanimals that airs, appropriately, as part of The Good Night Show block. This isn’t quite Bananas in Pyjamas, though, as it’s a bit more calming, akin to The Good Night Show’s purpose I was just discussing (i.e. the curriculum is “Go to bed.”) (and I don’t mean that too flippantly: there are pediatric sleep therapists working on the show). Still, there is other active learning going on beyond just how to brush one’s teeth. More than that, for me as a lifelong Muppets fan it’s nice to see the Creature Workshop working with actual puppets of any description. I’m amazed at the innovations behind Sid, but there’s still some Walter Benjamin deep inside me who likes to see the puppeteers working with actual puppets (although I should say I definitely think there’s room for all types of puppet work, the more the merrier). Here's how these ones look:

At any rate, the Jim Henson website indicates that they only produced ten three-minute spots, so I hope PBS KIDS sees fit to order more. You can also learn about the show from a series of Muppet News Flashes (from April, June, and September). Though there’s some repetition, here’s a longer news release from all three companies.

Finally, here’s a fantastic video from that last release that contains a couple minutes of clips and then a couple minutes of interviews with the show’s developers, including the aforementioned Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack of Sleepy Planet.

In closing let me say that Sprout’s head of programming Andrew Beecham came to the Little Airplane Academy I attended this summer and described the emphasis the station wants to put on its packaging shows like The Good Night Show and The Sunnyside Up Show. I see these as Sprout’s competitive advantage; the quality of preschool programming is the best it’s ever been since Sesame Street launched in 1969, and that’s across the board at Nick, PBS, Disney, and all the other stations globally. Where Sprout has a niche, therefore, is in the interactivity, the live broadcasts, and the thematic groupings of their programs in these time-of-day-appropriate broadcasting blocks. Pajanimals is a further step in this direction, and I’m excited to see what else Sprout has store.