PBS Kids Celebrates 30th Anniversary with Launch of New Retro Channel on Roku

 From the town of PTV Park to the golden age of Dot and Dash, PBS Kids turns 30 years old on Thursday, July 11th and to celebrate, PBS and Roku have joined forces to create an all-new PBS children's network dedicated to both the young and the young at heart.

Launching today on the Roku app and Roku TV channels, the all-new PBS Kids Retro channel offers a special catalog of over 55 years of classic quality children's television made possible by the United States Department of Education, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's PBS Kids Ready to Learn television cooperative agreement grant, and of course, by contributions to your local PBS and PBS Kids stations from Viewers Like You. Thank You!

At launch, PBS Kids Retro will have five classic PBS Kids shows available to revisit both for millennial fans and for their newly born offspring, including every single episode of their very first series that the PBS Kids network has ever made, Mister Fred Rogers' Neighborhood (1968-2001), the first twelve seasons Model Era of Thomas & Friends (1984-present), which since then has gotten its episodes owned, distributed and broadcasted by Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Netflix, Reading Rainbow hosted by the cool factors of LeVar Burton (1983-2006) and the other two series from the Kratt Brothers' catalog, including Zoboomafoo (1999-2001) and their one-hit wonder Kratts' Creatures (1996).

Other classic shows from the PBS Kids library including Barney & Friends (1988-present) with its upcoming reboot Barney's World set to be released on Cartoonito later this year, the first 33 seasons and 4,000 episodes of Sesame Street (1969-present) cuurently in its 54th-55th seasons on Cartoon Network and Max, Shari Lewis' Lamb Chop's Play-Along franchise (1992-1999), The Puzzle Place (1995-1998), BBC's UK port The Noddy Shop (1998-1999) and the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? game show collection (1991-1997) starring Tony-winning late great Lynne Thigpen of Disney Channel's preschool pioneer hit Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior series Jim Henson's Bear in the Big Blue House are also set to be available on the service in the coming months.