The Future Is Now: Children’s TV Creators Embrace New Technology to Make Content More Accessible

“I went into television because I hated it so,” the late Fred Rogers famously told CNN in 1999. “I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.”

Twenty-five years after the creator of the groundbreaking “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood” said those words, the production company that bears his name is embracing technology to make children’s content easier to watch for a wider swath of young viewers.

In the American Sign Language (ASL) space, for example, Fred Rogers Productions currently offers episodes from “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Donkey Hodie” and “Alma’s Way” that have been fully translated on screen by an ASL interpreter so that hard of hearing or deaf children too young to read can still follow along. These special episodes can be found on YouTube and the PBS Kids app, which streamed them 8.5 million times from July to October.

It’s just one of the ways companies are using technology to reach and educate more children through what are often called accessibility measures. When television was bound by the linear model, where shows were constrained by network time slots, devoting an entire episode to an ASL translation would have proven time-consuming and costly. Now, in the age of streaming, it’s an investment Fred Rogers Productions can make, and it’s proven to be a popular one. 

“Once you see it, it’s self-evident,” Ellen Doherty, Chief Creative Officer for Fred Rogers Productions, told TheWrap about the need for accessibility. “The more that you see, the more that you’re like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot that’s not accessible.’ It’s just like when my parents were older, I suddenly became aware of everywhere there’s a few steps.”

In the world of kids TV, the push to provide more accessibility is on the rise as networks and production companies embrace technology to increase visibility for their youth oriented programming. The efforts are aimed at children with disabilities, who are hard of hearing, don’t speak English as their primary language or may have a different socioeconomic background. It also appears in more tactile forms, such as when Playstation released a customizable controller that allowed players with disabilities to play video games more comfortably and for longer periods of time. 

Streamers, including YouTube, have given creators and production companies an avenue to expand and invest more into accessibility technology. Ironically, those companies are using the same streaming technology that has led to linear ratings plummeting as much as 90% to reach underserved children in a way that was never before possible. 

And when it comes to the world of children’s television, a subgenre that strives to educate and nurture as many children as possible, that leveling is essential in a way that doesn’t appear in branches of entertainment aimed at older audiences. In an era now dominated by streaming, PBS is dedicated to maintaining a linear presence so it can continue to reach the lowest-income kids. The brand’s 24/7 children’s arm, PBS Kids, averaged 1.6 million viewers aged two to eight years old a month in 2023, according to Nielsen — a 30% decrease from 2022 and a 41% decrease from its monthly viewership in 2021.

The accessibility push comes as children’s TV is undergoing a historic evolution, with the rise of streaming, gaming and YouTube negatively impacting the subgenre’s traditional linear ecosystem. As TheWrap previously reported, the curated programming blocks of the past have been upended by streaming, a point-and-click system that requires parents and children to know exactly what they want to watch. And the rise of creator-driven YouTube shows that aren’t easily replicated at the studio level has disrupted decades of knowhow around developing and programming TV shows for children.

“Mister Rogers’” virtual neighborhood

The feeling that technology could be used to “nurture” led Rogers to create “The Children’s Corner” in 1954, a weekly Canadian children’s show that featured Rogers, a puppeteer and a composer. Later, it inspired “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood,” the 31-season show that has been credited for forever changing the course of the genre. Instead of focusing on entertaining children, “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood” dedicated itself to teaching them about kindness and inclusivity while tackling big, difficult issues like the Vietnam War. 

This idea of treating children seriously rather than pandering to them continued a year later with “Sesame Street,” another revolutionary juggernaut in the space. That series featured multiracial children and adult hosts — a rarity in 1960s American TV — while pioneering the practice of testing its content before airing it to ensure that it handled difficult topics like death or divorce in the most age-responsible way possible. 

Fittingly, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” became the first kids or family website PBS made in 1999. An embrace of technology has also remained a part of “Sesame Street” and PBS. Even though it moved to HBO and the streamer formerly known as HBO Max in 2016, new episodes of “Sesame Street” are still available to watch on PBS and through the network’s websites and streaming platforms.

“Mission-wise, we have to be thinking about the lowest-income kids,” Sara DeWitt, SVP and general manager of PBS Kids, told TheWrap.

Over the years, this belief that technology can be used to better educate and entertain children has cropped up time and time again. It appeared in the mid-2000s in the form of more Spanish-language cable networks, such as Discovery Familia, which was launched in 2007, and the Nickelodeon on Telemundo block of Nickelodeon, which ran from 1998 to 2001. Yet as well intentioned as these accessibility pushes have been, they often faded away, largely because of the time block limitations of linear television. The era of streaming doesn’t have such limitations, and certain branches of children’s TV have taken advantage of it.

How accessibility appears today

As a partner with PBS Kids, Fred Rogers Productions is required to deliver its shows with captions in English. But the production company often goes beyond that requirement, delivering shows with additional audio captions in Spanish, English audio descriptions, Spanish audio descriptions and ASL interpretation. That last one proved to be a challenge for the production hub. How do you communicate with deaf or hard of hearing preschoolers who don’t yet know how to read?

“If we make it available in sign language, then they can follow right there in the moment and on the same screen,” Doherty said, emphasizing that this couldn’t be done without the production company’s partnership with The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP), Bridge Multimedia and Dicapta. Outside of PBS Kids, the production company has released nearly 200 episodes including ASL interpretation, with more to come.

This dedication to accessibility has appeared in other ways. Most of PBS Kids’ viewers are children that come from lower income households and watch over 12 hours a month, a number DeWitt described as “a huge amount of consumption on linear.”

There have also been recent pushes when it comes to portraying characters with developmental disorders and physical disabilities. In November, PBS Kids unveiled “Carl the Collector,” the first show for children aged four to eight years old to explicitly star a character on the autism spectrum. The series from Zachariah OHora specifically uses an adjusted color palette and pacing structure so as to not overwhelm viewers on the spectrum. 

Similarly, in 2018 the show “Cyber Chase” released a game that could be customized for children with physical and cognitive impairments. “Railway Hero” included features such as customizable text size, color and contrast options as well as audio description and keyboard controls for users who may be blind or visually impaired. With this move, PBS was both able to better reach children where their interests are in the gaming space and provide a customizable option that catered to children of varying ability. 

Speaking of new technology, around the time of the 2024 Paralympics in August, YouTube Kids released a playlist highlighting these athletes targeted at the platform’s younger users. 

“We have this breadth of opportunity that we can really celebrate diversity and, with that, we can really celebrate accessibility,” Katie Kurtz, global head of youth and learning for YouTube, told TheWrap.

Modern challenges

When it comes to actually making children’s content, creators have to worry about a new headache: dwindling attention spans. 

“The metric used to be the attention span is like that of a goldfish,” Olivia Charmaine Bernardez, founder and CEO of Black Monarch Entertainment, told TheWrap. Before founding her own production company in the children’s entertainment space, Bernardez worked for companies like Nickelodeon and DreamWorks. “I don’t even think the attention rate is that long anymore. It’s like that of a swipe or even half a swipe.”

It’s an especially difficult balancing act when some of the biggest competitors in the space ignore researched best practices. A good example is “Cocomelon,” a children’s YouTube channel that has over 186 million subscribers and has been repeatedly accused of being overstimulating for younger viewers. 

To its credit, YouTube has implemented creation principles for its children’s content and works to connect creators in the space with experts. But the competition between something like “Sesame Street” and “Cocomelon” can feel akin to offering a kid the choice between raisins or a cookie. That may prove to be a bigger problem as YouTube — a platform where more than 500 hours of content are uploaded every minute — continues to dominate the battle for children’s attention compared to its better researched peers.

There are also political matters to consider. For instance, the broadband credits issued in New York City through the Affordable Connectivity Program have already expired, meaning that children in lower income households may have less access to televised entertainment altogether. 

Also, the way Fred Rogers Productions incorporates ASL into its shows aimed at viewers who can’t yet read — along with their English audio descriptions and Spanish audio descriptions — only happens thanks to funding through grant programs covered by the Department of Education and the Office of Special Education Programs, which are paid to the production company’s corporate partners.

“It’s not just a sweet thing to do,” Doherty said. “There’s a good business perspective for it, and there’s a way to make it happen.”

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