50 Fun Facts About PBS Kids

What was the PBS children's block called before it became PBS Kids in 1999?

PTV began in July 1994 on just 11 pilot stations, built for Ready to Learn, a push to bring early-learning television to underprivileged children.

In Martha Speaks, what does family pet Martha eat that gives her the power of speech?

Alphabet soup. The pasta letters go to her brain instead of her stomach, which is why the family pet suddenly starts answering back.

What were the boy and girl mascots of the 1999 PBS Kids logo called?

Dash and Dot. Each grinned under a thought bubble meant to stand for imagination, and Dash stayed on the logo until a 2022 redesign retired him.

What colour did the PBS Kids primary logo become in the 2022 rebrand?

Electric blue. The circle borrows the blue that parent network PBS adopted in 2019, while the lettering keeps the old lime green.

Which cable giant co-owned PBS Kids Sprout with PBS, Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment?

Comcast. Sprout took over the preschool cable rights in 2005, when the first 24-hour PBS Kids channel lost its DirecTV subsidy and closed.

Which live-action PBS Kids series follows child agents who solve cases with maths?

Odd Squad. Its agency is run entirely by children, who are sent after problems such as unicorns and wizards that have escaped from books.

Which animated PBS Kids series was the first to be inspired by Fred Rogers' long-running show?

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. Each episode is built around a short 'strategy song', and parents report singing them with their children when a hard moment comes.

The 1999 PBS Kids Channel was created partly to compete with which cable network?

Noggin was co-owned by Nickelodeon and the producers of Sesame Street, so the new PBS channel was left unable to show PBS's own most famous series.

Arthur Read, the star of Arthur, is what kind of animal?

An aardvark. Marc Brown made Arthur up as a bedtime story when his young son asked for a tale about an animal, and the first one that came to mind alphabetically stuck.

Arthur is set in which fictional place?

Elwood City borrows from creator Marc Brown's childhood in Erie, Pennsylvania: strict teacher Mr. Ratburn is modelled on his own algebra teacher.

Who performed Arthur's reggae theme song 'Believe in Yourself'?

Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers. Chance the Rapper later covered the tune, and in 2017 he and Ziggy performed it together on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

In Arthur's 2022 finale, set 20 years on, who has become a police officer?

D.W. Arthur's bossy younger sister ends up handing out traffic tickets, while Arthur himself is about to publish a graphic novel about his own childhood.

Buster Baxter, who got his own spin-off Postcards from Buster, is what animal?

A rabbit. Buster's travel show met real families, and when PBS dropped a 2005 episode about children with two mothers, some stations aired it anyway.

From 2016, new Sesame Street episodes premiered on which premium channel before reaching PBS?

HBO. The deal was a financial lifeline for the nonprofit that makes the show, and PBS stations still received every episode nine months later.

Who co-created Sesame Street with Lloyd Morrisett?

Joan Ganz Cooney wrote the 1966 study arguing that television could teach disadvantaged preschoolers, and it persuaded the Carnegie Corporation to help pay for the show.

Which segment was added to the end of Sesame Street in 1998 to hold its younger viewers?

Elmo's World filled the last 15 minutes of each episode, and in 2002 the rest of the show was rebuilt around longer stories in the same way.

In which US city was Mister Rogers' Neighborhood produced?

Pittsburgh. While working at the city's station WQED, Fred Rogers studied at its seminary in his lunch hours and was ordained a Presbyterian minister.

Fred Rogers first hosted on camera in Misterogers, a 1960s series made in which country?

Canada. Rogers had spent years out of sight as a puppeteer until the CBC's head of children's programming persuaded him to talk to viewers himself.

The PBS Kids puppet Donkey Hodie has a name that puns on which literary hero?

Don Quixote. Fred Rogers' original Donkey Hodie didn't tilt at windmills but lived in one, in a land called Someplace Else, where his granddaughter's show is set.

Who hosted Reading Rainbow throughout its original 1983–2006 run?

LeVar Burton. The show ended after funding shifted to programmes that teach children how to read, rather than why they might want to.

Which crowdfunding site hosted the 2014 campaign to revive Reading Rainbow?

Kickstarter. The show's longtime host launched the drive himself, promising to bring the series back for every child, and it took in about $6.5 million.

What kind of animal is Zoboomafoo, title star of a 1999 PBS Kids wildlife series?

A lemur. Zoboomafoo was played by Jovian, a real sifaka born at the Duke Lemur Center, with a puppet stepping in whenever he had to talk.

Which PBS Kids cartoon turns two real-life zoologist brothers into its animated heroes?

Wild Kratts. Chris and Martin Kratt appear in person to introduce each episode before their cartoon selves take over in 'creature power' suits.

Which actor voices the villainous Hacker in Cyberchase?

Christopher Lloyd. His Hacker is on a mad mission to overthrow Motherboard and rule Cyberspace, and three children from Earth keep beating him with arithmetic.

Between the Lions, the PBS Kids reading series, follows a lion family who run what?

A library. The lion parents are the librarians, a frazzled hen answers the phones, and two pigeons spend their days annoying a talking statue of the founder.

Who voiced Clifford in every episode of the 2000 Clifford the Big Red Dog series?

John Ritter. He died in 2003, and Clifford's Really Big Movie, released the following year with his voice, became the series' farewell.

Which voice actor behind Scooby-Doo also voices the title character of PBS Kids' Curious George?

Frank Welker. George never says a word, so Welker plays him entirely in chirps and squeaks while a narrator, at first William H. Macy, explains what he is thinking.

In Dragon Tales, which two dragons share a body as conjoined twins?

Zak and Wheezie. The show's co-creator says someone first wanted to call the two-headed dragon Snarf and Bugger, an idea that was quickly squashed.

WordGirl's secret identity is a fifth-grader with what name?

Becky Botsford. She was born on the planet Lexicon, named for the word meaning a language's vocabulary, which is her superpower.

What kind of animal is Captain Huggy Face, WordGirl's sidekick?

A monkey. Captain Huggy Face arrived on Earth with WordGirl when their spaceship crash-landed, and the two have fought crime together ever since.

Craig Bartlett, who created Dinosaur Train for PBS Kids, earlier created which Nickelodeon cartoon?

Hey Arnold! Bartlett says the later show was born while he watched his young son, who was mad about both, put a toy dinosaur in a toy train.

Which PBS Kids series was the first nationally distributed US children's show with an Indigenous lead character?

Molly of Denali. Its makers mentored Alaska Native writers for the scripts and trained Indigenous children to voice the characters, Molly included.

2024's Carl the Collector is PBS Kids' first series led by characters who are what?

Autistic. Carl is a raccoon who loves making collections, and the producers hired neurodivergent actors, writers and advisers so the portrayal would ring true.

Which longtime Sesame Street cast member, Maria to generations of viewers, created Alma's Way?

Sonia Manzano drew on her own childhood for Alma, a Bronx six-year-old who pauses for 'Think Through' moments to work each problem out.

In Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, history's heroes are met at what age?

As children. Meeting the likes of Harriet Tubman and Albert Einstein when they were kids shows that the famous started out ordinary, the idea behind Brad Meltzer's books.

In the PBS Kids series Ready Jet Go!, what is new neighbour Jet Propulsion?

An alien. Jet's family comes from the planet Bortron 7, so he looks at Earth with a newcomer's curiosity, which is how the show teaches astronomy.

Which TV journalist voiced Benjamin Franklin in Liberty's Kids?

Walter Cronkite. The veteran anchorman played a newspaperman here: the show's teenage heroes report on the Revolution from Franklin's print shop.

The literature-loving dog in the PBS series Wishbone is which breed?

Jack Russell Terrier. Something in his owners' day sends Wishbone daydreaming into a classic, where he plays the hero himself, from Robin Hood to D'Artagnan.

Which vocal group was the house band on the PBS game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Rockapella. The show was created after a National Geographic survey showed how little Americans knew about geography, and the group wrote and sang its theme song.

Who performed the theme song of The Magic School Bus?

Little Richard. The song's composer, Peter Lurye, recalls that the rock-and-roll pioneer asked for more backbeat and a rocking piano part before recording it.

Which secret language did the young hosts of PBS's Zoom teach their viewers?

Ubbi Dubbi. Speakers slip 'ub' in before every vowel sound, and the show's website offered a machine to translate whole messages into it.

Barney, the purple star of Barney & Friends, is which kind of dinosaur?

Tyrannosaurus rex. Barney was dreamed up by a Texas mother who could find no video that held her two-year-old son's attention, and he began in home videos in 1988.

Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman followed which TV format?

Reality game show. Its young contestants were unscripted and never knew which real-world challenge the animated host would send them on next.

Bill Nye the Science Guy's host began as an engineer at which Seattle company?

Boeing. Nye took up stand-up after winning a Steve Martin look-alike contest, and his Science Guy character was born on a Seattle sketch comedy show.

Ghostwriter, the 1990s PBS mystery series, followed young detectives in which New York City borough?

Brooklyn. The series was shot on the streets of Fort Greene, and its ghost could talk to the team only by rearranging written words and letters.

Which puppeteer created and hosted Lamb Chop's Play-Along?

Shari Lewis. Lamb Chop began as a sock puppet she introduced on Captain Kangaroo in the 1950s, and was still her partner when PBS brought the pair back in 1992.

Which stand-up comedian took over from Ringo Starr as the tiny conductor on Shining Time Station?

George Carlin. The comic whose routine about seven words you can't say on television led to a Supreme Court case spent the early 1990s as a kindly guide for preschoolers.

Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat is based on a book by which novelist?

Amy Tan. In her tale a white kitten falls into an inkpot and smudges a harsh decree into an order to sing, which is why Siamese cats have dark faces and paws.

Martin Short voiced which Dr. Seuss character in a 2010 PBS Kids series?

The Cat in the Hat. Dr. Seuss's troublemaker turns science guide here, flying two children off in his shape-shifting Thinga-ma-jigger to answer questions about nature.

Which future film star played Easy Reader on PBS's 1970s reading series The Electric Company?

Morgan Freeman. The series gave him steady pay and a national audience, but he found making children's television an exhausting grind.