BabyFirstTV begins broadcasting in Canada

A TV channel aimed at babies and children under three years old has begun broadcasting in Canada.

BabyFirstTV's first broadcast was Wednesday via Bell ExpressVu Digital TV and Rogers PersonalTV.

The CRTC has approved the channel as a digital subscription service, but Bell and Rogers are offering free access for a limited time this summer...

A 2003 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a U.S.-based independent health think-tank, found 68 per cent of American children under age two watch TV or videos daily.

"Our mission is to provide parents with the best content for their babies in the most convenient manner and means, and to give all babies a positive head start in life," said Sharon Rechter, executive vice president at BabyFirstTV, in a news release.

from the CBC

Wanting to make sure that JP would not miss out on anything, I quickly checked out the BabyFirstTV program guide.  I will have to get a Baby Sofa for him to lay on; as well as a six pack of Baby Bud for him to suck back while he begins that life long habit of channel surfing.  Maybe a bag of Baby Doritos just for good measure.

Over a year ago I noted that Baby TV was up and running, but at that time it was not available in Canada.

 

Comments

[Scott Gilbreath]

JP will also need a baby credit card to charge BabyFirstTV's fee, and then a baby job to pay the baby credit card bills, and then ...

[joseph]

they sure grow up fast these days, don't they?

[alex]

Since the general insinuation is that TV for kids is bad....

Is it bad that our 2 year old son gets to watch 10 minutes of Kleiner Eis Bar (German: The Little Polar Bear) every day while doing his inhalations? What kinds of things do we look at to determine if we should let our kids watch TV / videos? Or how long they should?

[joseph]

I think it is tied to a number of other factors that have to do with child-rearing in general. In your case, Alex, I might suppose that one of your chief aims, in addition to occupying baby during a necessary routine, is to expose your child to language skills; personally I think they should learn Latin first :^). I suggest this also has to do with what is being suggested by the producers of the channel. When I first saw this news item last year, there was an interesting observation:

Dr. Michael Rich, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who studies the impact of the media on children's health, says it "defies reason" to suggest that television could help parents and babies interact.

"Television primarily is a medium that demands attention to the TV, not to other people in the room," he said in an interview with CBC Television.

Babies' brains cannot decode the two-dimensional image on a television screen, Rich said. Their brains are developing and they need a different kind of stimulation to help them grow, he added.

"They need interaction with other human beings and to manipulate their environment. They need to pick up the block or try to get the Cheerios into the mouth," he said.

But Rich said it was inevitable that broadcasters would identify babies as a market niche to be exploited.