Some news we've been following

A new study by Children Now, a non-partisan research and advocacy group, finds that only one in eight kid's educational TV programs meet high educational standards.  The study, entitled Educationally/Insufficient? An Analysis of the Educational Quality & Availability of Children's E/I Programming, looked at a total of 120 episodes across 40 program titles, then evaluating each show on a range of educational criteria that are associated with kid's learning from TV.  According to the study, "kids are being short-changed by broadcasters," as "few broadcasters offer more than the bare minimum of programming and confine their entire E/I schedule to one or two days of the week, " and that "more than one-quarter of E/I shows model harmful violent or socially aggressive behavior," and furthermore, "the vast majority of programs contain no basic academic or health-related lesson."  A similar study conducted in the 1990s found that between 20-30% of E/I programs were rated as 'highly educational.'  The current study singled out PBS (PBS Kids and PBS Kids Go!) as delivering educational programming that rated "significantly higher" than E/I shows on commercial stations, specifically pointing to the emphasis on cognitive-intellectual lessons on PBS kid-targeted programs.  Conversely, E/I programming on commercial channels focused more on emotional lessons.

Sesame Street is following young kids to digital platforms. The non-profit educational programmer announced new distribution points on iTunes, YouTube and Hulu: under an expanded deal with iTunes, 12 full-length episodes from Sesame Street's record 35th season are now available on iTunes for $1.99/each; the show's YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/SesameStreet) offers more than 100 clips; and a new channel on Hulu also offers 100+ clips including 30+ celebrity segments. In addition, the Workshop was awarded a Google Grant  a donation program awarding free AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations. When Google users search on keywords related to Sesame Workshop an ad will appear next to relevant search results.

This week marks Sesame Workshop's launch of a new interactive website for its animated series Pinky Dinky Doo at www.pinkydinkydoo.com.  The Pinky Dinky Doo website sit is aimed at K4-7 and their caregivers and offers a range of games, videos, podcasts and printable activities featuring storylines for the second season of the series, as well as a chance for users to create their own stories, which could be featured as user generated podcasts on the site.  The second season of Pinky Dinky Doo airs on Noggin in the US, CBeebies in the UK and Discovery Kids Latin America.