It’s Really Here: TV for Babies

BabyFirstTV, which is making its way into more US homes after cutting deals with pay-TV distributors including Time Warner Cable, is aiming its programming at children as young as six months.

The channel, owned by closely held BFTV LLC, carries mostly animation programs that focus on rudimentary skills including counting, vocabulary and differentiating shapes and colors. It launched in 2006, but started gaining real momentum only in recent years and now reaches more than 50 million U.S. households, a mark it passed in January. The channel’s viewership figures will become public in the third quarter of this year, when a grace period ends with measurement firm Nielsen. The notion of targeting infants is controversial. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children under the age of two, arguing that children learn best by interacting with people. But that may be wishful thinking. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found most babies are watching some television.