About Kan Educational

Kan Educational

Kan Educational, known in Hebrew as Kan Hinuchit, is Israel's public television channel for children and young people. Operated by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation and headquartered in Jerusalem, it broadcasts in Hebrew educational and entertainment programming for children and teenagers. The channel launched on 15 August 2018, when it replaced Israeli Educational Television on Channel 23, bringing to an end more than five decades of educational broadcasting under the Ministry of Education and beginning a new era in which children's public television became part of the same corporation as Kan 11 and Makan 33. Kan Educational combines brand-new series made for today's children with new seasons of established favourites and repeats of classic programmes inherited from Educational Television and from Channel 1, and its programmes are also available to stream through its website for children. It is the youngest of the corporation's three television channels in both its audience and its on-air identity.

The predecessor: the first television in Israel

To understand Kan Educational it is necessary to begin with its predecessor, because Israeli Educational Television was not merely an earlier children's channel but the first television station in Israel. It was established in 1965 as a joint project of the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Rothschild Fund, at a time when the Israeli government was reluctant to introduce television at all, fearing it would lead to cultural decadence, but approved limited broadcasts as an instructional tool. Its first transmission, on 24 March 1966, was the first television transmission in Israel. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol pressed a symbolic button to mark the beginning, Lord Jacob Rothschild spoke on behalf of the Rothschild Fund, and the then Instructional Television Trust opened regular transmissions with televised lessons in mathematics, biology and English. Sixty television sets were distributed to 32 schools so that pupils could receive the first broadcasts and comment on their quality, an origin story that explains why education, not entertainment, was Israel's first reason to switch on.

Educational Television from classroom aid to national channel

Within its first year Educational Television expanded its infrastructure and began to broadcast nationwide. In May 1968 it began to share a channel with the newly established general public channel of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, and the two organisations shared Israel's single channel for many years, the only Israeli television channel until experimental Channel 2 transmissions began in the late 1980s. From the early 1970s until the early 1990s it was known as the Instructional Television Centre. Although it concentrated at first on programmes for schoolchildren, from the 1980s it also produced television magazines and programmes aimed at adults and senior citizens, while remaining an autonomous unit of the Ministry of Education broadcasting more than 200 hours of programming a week. Since 1997 it had its own channel position as Educational 23 on Channel 23. In December 2013 it rebranded simply as Educational, or Hinuchit in Hebrew, with a new children and educational schedule from five in the morning and an adult educational schedule from eight in the evening, and it began uploading programmes to YouTube before their television broadcast.

Closure on 14 August 2018 and the launch of Kan Educational

The end came through the same reform that created Kan 11. Following a public broadcasting reform initiated by the government and approved by the Knesset in the summer of 2014, the Israel Broadcasting Authority was replaced in 2017 by the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, and the Public Broadcasting Law provided that a quarter of the new body's employees would come from the Authority and educational television. Educational Television survived the first stage of that change but was shut down on 14 August 2018 after 52 years on air, a closure widely reported in Israel and abroad as the end of an institution that had taught generations of children. The next day, 15 August 2018, Kan Educational launched in its place as part of the broadcasting corporation. The new channel broadcasts existing Educational Television programmes, both older and newer, provides new seasons for some of those programmes, and introduces new series of its own.

A different production model

One important change was how programmes are made. Israeli Educational Television produced many of its shows in-house, with its own studios, puppets, presenters and archive built up over decades. Kan Educational was established on a different model: all of its content is bought from third parties rather than produced in-house by the channel itself. That commissioning model matches the wider approach of the new broadcasting corporation, which commissions original Israeli work from independent producers, and it shapes the channel's character. Instead of a single house style, Kan Educational assembles series from a range of Israeli production companies, mixing live action, animation, puppetry and formats for different ages, while drawing on the inherited archive for continuity. The archive matters to parents as well as children, because many of the channel's repeat series are programmes today's parents themselves watched on Educational Television or Channel 1.

Original programmes for children and teenagers

Kan Educational's original programme list shows the breadth of its Hebrew offer for different ages. Its series include Cramel, the fantasy adventure that has become one of its best-known children's dramas, Shakshouka, Levad Babait, Makif Milano, HaBe'er, Hamenachem ha-25, HaShmartefim and Yaldei Bayit Ha'etz, alongside learning and curiosity formats such as Chayot Reshet, Chayot Shetach, Mischakey HaMoach and Ir Hamisparim, a city of numbers for younger mathematicians. Other original titles include Anachnu Kan, Cafe Amalya, Bluga Blues, Ateret Hatzeva, HaShofetet Lital, Kol Od Bilvad, Lamah Zeh Tov?, Mi Po HaBoss?, Mishpacha Be'oto, Meyuchedet and Rak BeHatzbaa. A revival, Parpar Nechmad - New Version, brought back in a new form one of Educational Television's most beloved puppet formats, explicitly bridging the old Hinuchit and the new Kan Educational. The channel also created Sha'at Sipur Im Nasi Hamedinah, a story hour with the President of the State, connecting children's broadcasting to a national institution in a way only a public channel would attempt.

The inherited archive: Educational Television classics

A defining feature of Kan Educational is that it did not discard its predecessor's catalogue. Programmes from Israeli Educational Television shown on the channel include Bli Sodot, the literacy series whose name means without secrets, Rechov Sumsum, the Israeli version of Sesame Street, Parpar Nechmad in its original form, Rega im Dodley, BaBait Shel Fistuk, Keshet VeAnan, Heshbon Pashoot, Inyan Shel Zman, Hayot Bama, HaChafranim, HaYeladim MiSchoonat Hayim, Kriyat Kivun, Ma Pitom?!, Shuster VeShuster and Shraga Bishgada, among many others. From Channel 1 the channel inherited children's favourites including Rosh Kroov, Carousela, Hopa Hey, Jinji, Telepele and Zap LaRishon. For schools and families this continuity has practical value: programmes made to teach reading, arithmetic and social skills over fifty years remain available in a modern schedule and online, rather than surviving only as nostalgia clips, and teachers who used Educational Television material can still find its successors in one place.

Imported programmes

Alongside its Israeli production, Kan Educational broadcasts imported children's programmes, generally dubbed or adapted for a Hebrew-speaking young audience for whom dubbing, unlike adult subtitling, is the norm in Israeli television. Its imported list includes Bluey, the Australian preschool series that has become a global phenomenon, Shaun the Sheep, The Smurfs, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, Charlie and Lola, Dinosaur Train, Martha Speaks, Fraggle Rock, Gigantosaurus, Hero Elementary, Llama Llama, Ready Jet Go!, Splash and Bubbles, Zack and Quack and The Storyteller, as well as Beat Bugs, Dot., Johnny Test in its 2021 version, The Littl' Bits, Once Upon a Time... Life and Sadie Sparks. The mix is deliberate: Israeli originals carry the channel's public and cultural duty to reflect children's own lives in Hebrew, while well-chosen imports give the schedule the variety and production scale that a single small country's commissioning budget cannot supply alone.

Channel position, distribution and viewing online

Kan Educational began at the position its predecessor had made familiar, Channel 23, and inherited its national availability on terrestrial, cable and satellite platforms. On 5 January 2021 the channel moved from Channel 23 to Channel 80, accompanied by a new schedule presentation, a change that separated it numerically from the main free-to-air numbers 11 to 14 and placed it among the dedicated children's positions on Israeli electronic programme guides. Its picture is available in standard definition at 16:9 576i and in high and ultra-high definition formats listed as 1080i and 2160p. For a young audience that increasingly watches on tablets and family computers rather than at a set broadcast hour, its streaming presence is essential: programmes are offered live and on demand through its children's website, extending the old Educational Television practice, begun in its final years, of uploading programmes online for viewing whenever schools and families need them.

Place within the broadcasting corporation

Kan Educational is the third television channel of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, sister to Kan 11 and Makan 33, and it fulfils a specific clause of the corporation's founding law. Section 7 of the Public Broadcasting Law requires the corporation to provide diverse content for children and youth and to promote the creation of educational content for them. That legal duty distinguishes Kan Educational from commercial children's channels carried on Israeli pay television, such as the Children's Channel and Hop!, which entertain without a statutory educational mission. Kan Educational's budgets and schedules are approved through the same public board that governs the rest of the corporation, and its commissioning supports Israel's independent production sector for children's drama, animation and factual entertainment. Its headquarters with the corporation in Jerusalem, rather than in the Tel Aviv offices its predecessor used, reflects its full absorption into the Kan organisation.

Kan Educational today

Today Kan Educational holds a unique inheritance. No other Israeli channel can claim direct descent from the country's very first television transmission in 1966, from lessons beamed to 32 schools, and from puppet and classroom programmes remembered by three generations. At the same time it is a modern children's service that must compete for attention with global streaming platforms, commercial-free and built around Hebrew originals such as Cramel and Shakshouka, revivals such as Parpar Nechmad, and imports such as Bluey. Its launch in August 2018 closed a 52-year chapter in Israeli education, but it did not end the idea behind it: that the state should provide children with television made for their learning and imagination, in their own language, as a public good. Kan Educational carries that idea, under a new name and a new corporation, to a generation that watches very differently from the schoolchildren of 1966.