Provincial Canadian public broadcaster TVOntario has received the regulatory green light to launch an educational television channel aimed at grade-schoolers.
TVO Kids, okayed this week by the Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), will target children in junior kindergarten to grade five (roughly four- to 10-years-old) and take its cues from the curriculum set out for the province's schools.
The channel shares a name with TVO's online service, www.tvo//ki//ds.co//m . It will be commercial-free and air educational programming, animation and some general entertainment shows. It is also allowed to run a small amount of drama series and movies. Half of its programming will come from Canada, said TVO.
The application to launch the service was opposed by Knowledge Network, which argued that the new, country-wide channel would encroach on its own educational programming in British Columbia. Corus Entertainment also complained that the TVO Kids audience would overlap with those of its own Treehouse and Teletoon outlets.