Remembering BBC Kids: Canada’s Unique Spin On British TV

BBC Kids was a children’s TV channel in Canada. It was owned by BBC Studios. In Canada, a company called Knowledge West Communications held the licence from 2011. The channel first started in November 2001. It was the first BBC children’s channel outside the UK.

In the UK, people saw it as BBC’s second children’s channel (after CBBC). In Canada, many kids saw it more like a bigger version of CBeebies because it also showed preschool shows.

When it launched, BBC Kids showed programmes like My Parents Are Aliens, The Strangerers, and later Kate and Mim-Mim. It also used older BBC shows. Because of Canadian rules, the channel had to show some local programmes too. These included Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Magic School Bus, and Rainbow Fish.

For many of us, BBC Kids felt special. It was not like National Geographic or a pure learning channel. It felt closer to Cartoon Network, but with a British feel. It was the channel you watched after school. The shows were fun, relatable, and easy to remember.

What went wrong?

The channel changed owners a few times.

- First, Alliance Atlantis owned it with the BBC.  

- In 2008, Canwest (through CW Media) took over.  

- In 2010, Shaw Communications bought it.  

- In 2011, Knowledge West Communications bought the channel and partnered with the BBC again.

When Knowledge took over in 2011, they changed the channel from one that showed adverts to a commercial-free channel. After that, fewer cable companies carried it, and the number of viewers went down.

In 2018, Knowledge West Communications and BBC Studios decided to close BBC Kids. The programmes moved to Knowledge Kids. The partnership under Knowledge lasted seven years. Overall, the BBC had been involved with the Canadian channel for 17 years.

Knowledge wanted to focus on bigger brands. BBC Kids became a casualty of that decision.

Later years

After the Canadian channel closed, BBC Kids still ran in other places like the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, the Middle East, and South Africa. But those versions were different. Most of their shows came from CBeebies and CBBC. They did not feel the same as the Canadian version many of us grew up with.

Children who watched the Canadian BBC Kids may not connect with the newer versions in other countries. Still, somewhere there is probably a child who enjoys the current BBC Kids and feels the same connection we once did.

Final thoughts

Looking back, people sometimes ask why the BBC used the name “BBC Kids” for other countries instead of “CBBC”.  

I think it was for marketing reasons. The short name CBBC looks and sounds too close to CBeebies (the preschool channel). By using “BBC Kids”, they avoided confusion. The word “Kids” also felt clearer and more suitable for older children than the word “Children”.