About Logi (TV channel)

Logi (TV channel)

Logi (TV channel) is an Israeli children's cable television channel devoted to knowledge: science, nature, discovery and learning presented as entertainment. Its name comes from logic, and in Hebrew it is written Logi. The channel is owned by the RGE Group through its subsidiary Noga Communications, has its headquarters in Tel Aviv, broadcasts nationwide in Hebrew, and is the sister channel of Arutz HaYeladim, the Children's Channel. Where its sister channel offers drama, comedy and presenters for school-age children, Logi specialises primarily in scientific and educational content aimed at children and teenagers. Reference listings give its picture format as 576i standard-definition television. In the Israeli children's television landscape, Logi holds the edutainment position: the channel for inquisitive children who ask how things work.

Launch on 17 August 2003

Logi was launched on 17 August 2003. On 14 August 2003 the cable companies, then in the process of merging to form HOT, announced the launch of a new channel from Noga Communications for 17 August. The channel was set to provide educational content aimed primarily at the six-to-twelve demographic, which is the prime demographic of its sister channel Arutz HaYeladim. Logi was made available on channel 7 of the digital platform, a slot that had been set to be occupied by a news channel which ultimately never launched. The position also placed Logi consecutively with Arutz HaYeladim on channel 6 and Channel 8 in the cable line-up, enabling Noga to hold three consecutive channels. At launch the channel broadcast between 6 in the morning and 8 in the evening and was available as part of the enhanced children's package.

A Hebrew-language knowledge remit

From the start, Logi's identity was defined by language and subject together. Eighty percent of its content at launch was in the Hebrew language, with a substantial amount of local programming dedicated to the Israeli cultural landscape, such as the language itself, places in Israel and Israeli inventions. Foreign programmes in Hebrew were also part of the schedule, mainly documentaries, as well as an evening slot for families. In total, Noga Communications committed to broadcast 250 hours of new content a year on the channel, of which 150 hours were in Hebrew. That commitment matters for understanding the channel: Logi was not simply an imported science channel dubbed for Israel, but a locally made knowledge service in which Israeli subjects, Israeli places and Israeli innovation were part of the curriculum. The family evening slot also recognised that knowledge programming, unlike cartoons, is often watched by children and parents together.

Launch programming: Two Experts and a Fool and Once Upon a Time

Among Logi's launch programming was the original programme Two Experts and a Fool, hosted by Shai Avivi, a format whose very title shows the channel's intended tone: expertise presented with humour rather than classroom formality. The launch schedule also included reruns of the French educational series Once Upon a Time..., first broadcast in Israel by Israeli Educational Television, giving the new channel an inheritance from the older public educational tradition. The pairing of a playful new Israeli studio format with a respected European educational classic captures Logi's founding formula: local originals for identity, proven international educational series for depth, all of it in Hebrew and all of it built around curiosity.

Just a Minute: the channel's signature interstitials

In September 2005 Logi premiered the Noga-produced series Just a Minute, known in Hebrew as Logikon, a series of short interstitial segments about the history of topics ranging from science to fast food. Each segment lasts about two minutes and features a robot storyteller who magically transforms into different objects and characters, using humour to explore its subject; one account of the series describes its range as running from Leonardo da Vinci to the food chain. The series was produced with Pil Animation. As of June 2005 it already had the ambition of running to hundreds of episodes, with two seasons of 26 episodes finished and a third season in pre-production, and industry coverage described a 100-episode animated short series anchoring the channel's September line-up. The interstitials also travelled: by the time of their Logi premiere the series had been acquired by foreign broadcasters, and the longer series sold to Discovery Kids in the United Kingdom, TPS Jeunesse in France and TVOntario in Canada. A two-minute format made for an Israeli knowledge channel thus became one of Noga's exportable properties.

The hard problem: finding balanced educational content

Logi's history also records the difficulty of its own remit. By 2005 the channel was struggling to acquire new content, because of the failure to find balanced educational content that satisfied the channel's mandate. Industry coverage from the same period, in the trade magazine Kidscreen, put the requirement plainly: the channel's buyer saw large numbers of pitches for science and nature shows, but few of them also had good storytelling, and storytelling was crucial for this particular broadcast mandate. Scholastic's The Magic School Bus was cited as an example of the balance being sought, a series that teaches through characters and narrative rather than lecture. Kidscreen described Logi at that point as a pay-TV edutainment channel for children of six to twelve, owned by the Children's Channel parent company Noga Communications, broadcasting about 300 new hours per year. The tension between teaching and entertaining, documented in the channel's own trade coverage, is the defining creative problem of edutainment, and Logi's record shows an Israeli channel working through it in public.

Position among Israel's children's channels

Logi's role is clearest when set beside its neighbours. Arutz HaYeladim, its sister, entertains the same six-to-twelve and seven-to-fourteen audience with drama, comedy, animation and live presenters. Hop! serves the under-sevens. Within that ecology, Logi was created in 2003 as the entertainment-knowledge channel for inquisitive children, a sub-brand for a specific interest group inside the broader children's audience. Academic writing on Israeli children's television notes exactly this development: the establishment of Logi in 2003, offering an entertainment-knowledge channel for inquisitive kids, alongside the arrival of Fox Kids in 2001, pushed the older Children's Channel to keep reinventing itself for narrower audiences. Noga's own channel family came to include Arutz HaYeladim, Channel 8 in its Noga years, and Logi, and distributors licensing programmes to Noga in later years described the reach of that multiplex of channels, naming the Children's Channel, Channel 8 and the Logi Channel together as holding a large share of Israel's entertainment market for their audiences.

Ownership, RGE and the people behind the channel

Logi is owned by the RGE Group through Noga Communications Limited, the same structure that owns Arutz HaYeladim and the Sports Channel, and its listed sister channels include Arutz HaYeladim and the Knesset Channel among RGE's services. The channel's administration left a mark on the group's later leadership: when RGE hired Healy Horev-Kasuto in March 2021 to lead Noga Communications, trade coverage noted that she had previously administered the Logi channel. The channel's website has been logitv.co.il. Through changes in Israel's cable map, first the merging cable companies that became HOT and later the satellite and streaming platforms, Logi remained a Noga brand: a small, clearly defined channel whose name tells Hebrew-speaking children and parents exactly what it promises, knowledge presented logically and entertainingly.

Removal, streaming on BIGI and return to HOT

Logi's recent distribution history mirrors that of its sister channel. In September 2020 RGE launched its own over-the-top streaming platform, BIGI, in the wake of the removal of Arutz HaYeladim and Logi from yes and HOT, carrying the Noga children's brands to viewers directly online; in April 2021 a Moonbug Kids channel also joined the BIGI platform through a partnership involving Noga. Then, on 20 February 2023, RGE and HOT brought back the Noga brands to the cable platform after the two companies signed a new agreement. Logi's path, from enhanced cable package in 2003, through removal and a streaming interval, to restoration on HOT in 2023, tracks the wider journey of Israeli pay television itself, while the channel's knowledge remit has stayed unchanged throughout.

Logi today

Today Logi continues as Noga Communications' knowledge channel for children and teenagers within the RGE Group, broadcasting in Hebrew from Tel Aviv with scientific and educational programming at its centre. Its founding facts still define it: launched on 17 August 2003 for viewers aged six to twelve, built on a promise of hundreds of hours of new Hebrew-rich content a year, and distinguished by original formats such as Two Experts and a Fool and the Just a Minute interstitials. For the WorldNM directory, Logi is recorded as Israel's children's knowledge channel: the educational sister of Arutz HaYeladim, created to prove that science, nature and discovery could hold a channel of their own.