About Hop! Channel

Hop! Channel

Hop! Channel is Israel's preschool television channel, created exclusively for the youngest viewers and trusted by their parents. The channel caters for children between the ages of one and seven, presenting programmes specifically tailored to that age group, and it broadcasts as part of the base packages of the cable company HOT and the satellite company yes. Based in Tel Aviv, it is commercial-free, non-violent in its stated editorial mandate, and built around Hebrew-language educational and entertainment programmes for toddlers and kindergarten children. Its slogan and main song declare its promise in Hebrew: Hop! To grow up in good hands. In a television market where children's channels usually mixed preschoolers with much older children, Hop! was a deliberate break: a whole channel designed from the start for children under seven, and nothing else.

Launch in February 2000 by Alona Abt and Tamir Paul

Hop! Channel was launched in February 2000 in Israel by Alona Abt and Tamir Paul. It is described as one of the first channels in the world to belong entirely to preschool children, in contrast to many other Israeli children's channels such as Arutz HaYeladim, which caters for children between seven and fourteen and carries programmes that do not fit preschool children. Alona Abt, the channel's chief executive, has explained that the founders felt there was a need in the market for a channel that would be a safe haven for young children, a place parents could trust their children to sit and view, and that this conviction is how Hop!, and the multimedia company around it, were set up. At launch the channel broadcast from 6 in the morning to 8 in the evening. Its hours later expanded, and it now broadcasts from 5 in the morning to 11 at night Tel Aviv time, eighteen hours daily.

Identity, characters and the promise to parents

The channel's logo is a kite in red, yellow, green and blue. Idents between programmes show a cast of gentle characters: a bird, a mouse, a puppy and a cat, and in earlier years also a fly, a spider, a clock and a penguin. Another character identified with the channel in the past is a purple spacecraft called Tralalit. The main song, carrying the slogan about growing up in good hands, was sung by Ariel Zilber and later by the channel's presenters. These details are not decoration for Hop!: for a preschool audience, the space between programmes is part of the product, and the channel designed that space to be calm, recognisable and safe. Its programming mandate, as described by its own chief executive, is to air non-violent, parent-approved shows, and the channel is commercial-free, removing advertising pressure from a service aimed at children too young to recognise it.

The daily schedule and how it is built

Hop! broadcasts seven days a week to approximately 800,000 children aged one to seven, according to industry coverage of the channel, with a schedule shaped around a young child's day. From 5 to 7 in the morning the channel ran locally produced series, followed by an hour of before-school programming including shorts such as the in-house production The Kuntz Family. Through the day, airtime focused on non-violent programmes, and a two-hour evening block of bedtime programming capped the schedule with a bedtime story. Between 60 and 65 percent of the channel's programming came from acquisitions, cherry-picked, as an independent operator, from big studios such as BBC Worldwide and from independents alike; the remaining roughly 40 percent was produced in-house, including live-action puppetry, documentaries and animation. That balance, unusual independence in buying combined with substantial Israeli production, is central to how the channel has described its own model.

Rechov Sumsum and the Sesame Workshop partnership

The channel's most famous production relationship is with Sesame Workshop. In 2002 Hop! obtained the rights from Sesame Workshop to produce and broadcast an Israeli adaptation of Sesame Street, and from 2006 until 2016 the channel produced Rechov Sumsum, the Israeli Sesame Street. Four seasons of Rechov Sumsum were produced, along with a spin-off series titled Hop! I Know. The partnership in fact ran longer in other forms: the earlier Israeli Sesame project Sippuray Sumsum, Sesame Stories, was broadcast on Hop! from 2003, featuring the Muppets Noah and Brosh with hosts Tzachi and Ibtisam, funded largely by the European Union with the goal of promoting respect and understanding among Israeli and Arab children. When Rechov Sumsum returned under its own name on Hop! in December 2006, its rebuilt street brought back Moishe Oofnik from the original Israeli series and introduced new characters including Mahboub, an Arab-Israeli Muppet, and Abigail, an inquisitive three-year-old girl, alongside human characters including Tzachi, Ibtisam and Irina. In one season the channel and Sesame Workshop created Sivan, a little Muppet girl who uses a wheelchair, working with the Beit Issie Shapiro organisation for professional guidance on explaining disability to children and families. Few preschool channels anywhere carry a production partnership of this weight, and it anchored Hop!'s reputation for educational seriousness.

Sister channel Luli and the Hop! group

Hop! did not remain a single channel. Its owners built a small preschool group around it, including the sister preschool channel Luli, founded in 2004 and aimed at the youngest toddlers. Industry coverage in 2011 described Hop! together with Luli leading Israel's children's channels with a 28 percent market share in the territory, ahead of the Children's Channel, Nickelodeon and Disney, and described Hop! itself as the third most viewed channel among the 160 found on the platform in Israel, seen in 90 percent of Israeli households, some 1.6 million homes. Alona Abt has described the company growing from the single channel into a multimedia company with additional channels and a large market share in Israel. The group's strategy stayed consistent: own the preschool years completely, age band by age band, rather than compete for older children against the general children's channels.

Programmes Israeli toddlers grew up with

The channel's acquired and produced programmes are the soundtrack of Israeli early childhood for the generation that grew up after 2000. Its in-house and local productions include the presenter-led and puppet formats around its own characters, the series Yuval Hamevulbal, and shorts such as The Kuntz Family. Its Hebrew-dubbed acquisitions over the years have included series such as The Backyardigans, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Roary the Racing Car, Fifi and the Flowertots, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, Mister Maker, Handy Manny, Rob the Robot, Little Einsteins and Strawberry Shortcake, whose newer series Berry in the Big City appears in current listings of the channel's programming alongside S.M.A.S.H!. The channel produced Hebrew dubs for many of the series it carried, acting as the sole Israeli television broadcaster for a number of them. For parents, the practical effect was a single trusted address: one channel number where a two-year-old and a six-year-old could both be left watching age-appropriate programmes in Hebrew.

International expansion: Boom Hop! in Romania

Hop!'s preschool model was also exported. In 2006, Romania, in partnership with Israel, launched Boom Hop! on Boom TV, a local version of the channel in Romanian. The Romanian version closed in 2012. The experiment is a small but telling part of the channel's history: a format devised in Tel Aviv for Israeli toddlers was considered transferable enough to be rebuilt for another country's preschoolers, with local language and presentation. It also fits the channel's wider international posture, since its flagship production relationship, the Sesame Workshop partnership, was itself an international co-production model, and its executives spoke publicly about building digital reach and expanding into other territories as the channel entered its second decade.

Digital reach and the channel's second decade

Just over a decade after launch, the channel was focusing on building its digital reach alongside its broadcast service, recognising that preschool viewing was beginning to move onto new screens. The broadcast foundations remained strong: a place in the base packages of both HOT and yes meant Hop! was present in the great majority of Israeli homes with young children without any extra subscription decision by parents. Its independence also remained a stated advantage, allowing its team to choose programming freely from major studios and small independents rather than filling the schedule from a single corporate library. That combination, universal carriage, a narrow and clearly understood age remit, commercial-free broadcasting and a heavy investment in Israeli production, explains how a channel for children under seven became one of the most viewed channels on the entire Israeli platform.

Hop! Channel today

Today Hop! Channel continues broadcasting from Tel Aviv from 5 in the morning to 11 at night, serving children aged one to seven with Hebrew-language educational and entertainment programmes as part of the basic HOT and yes packages. The kite logo, the good-hands promise and the Rechov Sumsum legacy remain the pillars of its identity. For the WorldNM directory, Hop! is recorded as the Israeli preschool channel launched in February 2000 by Alona Abt and Tamir Paul: the first fully dedicated channel for children under seven in Israel, and one of the first of its kind anywhere in the world.