BabyFirst TV (lost British dubs of infant program; 2007-2010?)

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Babyfirst-logo.png

BabyFirst Logo.

Status: Lost

BabyFirst is a media company that produces TV, Internet, and app content for babies. The company is based in Los Angeles, California.[1] The educational content includes color recognition, counting, and vocabulary lessons for infants. There are about 90 BabyFirst TV shows and 41 apps for mobile devices. Founded in 2004, they started distributing to DirectTv customers and gradually expanded to other media in the latter part of the decade.[2] As of 2014, the network is distributed to 81 million homes and provides 24-hour content for babies.[3]

In 2007, BabyFirst TV launched in the UK.[4] This was likely in hopes of competing with a competitor called Baby TV, which is still broadcasting in the UK today. Most of the American shows were dubbed with British voice actors to adapt them for a British audience before being released on their British channels.

Around 2008 or so, BabyFirst UK began using prints in which the show names were not displayed on screen, instead (unless a pre-2008 print already had the title being spoken) having a female narrator say the title (Hide and Seek and Safari Scrapbook [whose title was ironically spoken in the US dub and pre-2008 prints of the UK dub] are the only exceptions). In the case of Safari Scrapbook, post-2008 prints had the title reduced to just the name of the featuring animal being repeated at certain intervals.

Status

No footage of the UK dubs of any of its shows has resurfaced. The channel was taken off the air on May 15th, 2010, for unknown reasons, though it still airs in Europe and Australia. The post-2008 prints of the UK dubs of the BabyFirst TV shows were available on BTVision starting in late 2011, but they've since been removed.

The UK dubs can apparently be accessed on the BabyFirst app when you switch the language to "English (UK)". As of 2022, they can no longer be accessed when it was rebranded as the First app.

References

External Links