About Kaku TV

Kaku TV

Kaku TV, also known as Kaku Kids and formally as the Kaku Animation Satellite TV channel, is the children's animation satellite channel of Beijing Radio and Television Station, based in Beijing. Channel listings date Kaku to 2004, when it was set up as Beijing Television's dedicated cartoon satellite service. It broadcasts Chinese and imported animation and children's programming nationally by satellite and cable, in Mandarin. As one of the small group of licensed national cartoon satellite channels created in China in the mid-2000s, alongside Hunan's Golden Eagle Cartoon and Shanghai's Toonmax, Kaku has been a principal television home for domestic Chinese animation and a showcase through which new Chinese animated series reach a national children's audience.

Origins in 2004

Kaku's creation belonged to a deliberate national development of children's animation broadcasting. In the early 2000s Chinese policy sought to strengthen domestic animation, which faced heavy competition from imported Japanese and American cartoons, and dedicated cartoon channels were licensed to major broadcasters. Beijing Television's service, dating to 2004 in channel listings, took the name Kaku, a friendly brand built around mascot characters rather than the numbered BTV pattern used by the station's other channels. From Beijing, the channel was uplinked by satellite so that a municipal broadcaster's children's service could be carried by cable networks across China, the same model used by its Shanghai and Hunan counterparts.

Owner: Beijing Radio and Television Station

Kaku's owner, Beijing Radio and Television Station, is the capital's municipal broadcaster. Beijing Television began broadcasting on 16 May 1979, started satellite broadcasts on 1 January 1998 as regional stations moved to nationwide distribution, and on 1 June 2020 Beijing Television, Radio Beijing Corporation and Beiguang Media merged into the Beijing Media Network, today known as BRTV. The group operates a family of television channels for the capital, including the Beijing TV satellite channel, arts, science and education, entertainment, finance, sports, lifestyle, news and youth services, together with the Kaku children's channel. BRTV broadcasts in Chinese from Beijing and is available across China, Asia and North America in the group's own description. In October 2022, BRTV also took a minority ownership stake in the short-video platform Kuaishou, a sign of the group's extension into digital media alongside its channels.

Programming

Kaku broadcasts animation and children's programmes for children and families. Its schedule mixes Chinese original animation with imported series, and it has served as a launch platform for domestic productions. A documented example is All New Jackie Chan Adventures, the 104-episode CGI series from Shanghai-based VJ Animation with a reported budget of six million US dollars: in 2017 it was reported as picked up by at least three Chinese children's satellite channels, including BTV's Kaku Children's Channel, and 200 terrestrial channels. The series, developed after nearly two years of research into children's psychological needs and viewing habits, encouraged positive values, Chinese etiquette, traditional virtues, good habits and discipline, themes typical of the content Kaku exists to carry for young viewers.

The Kaku Spring Festival Gala and original characters

Kaku has built its own programme brands around its mascots. The Kaku Children's Animation Spring Festival Gala, also billed as the BRTV Kaku Children's Animation Spring Festival Gala, is an annual animation-themed gala made by Beijing Radio and Television Station's Kaku network, based on characters from Kaku Kids and starring many of Kaku's own original mascot characters alongside characters licensed to the channel. It has run since 25 January 2009. A related live-action programme, Kaku's Big Plan, performs storylines of the gala world in live form. An annual gala of this kind gives a cartoon channel what entertainment channels take for granted: a New Year event property, built from its own characters, that anchors its identity with child viewers and their families.

Role in the Chinese animation industry

Kaku operates inside an industry shaped by policy. Research on the Chinese animation industry describes how, from the mid-1990s, the Chinese government began actively supporting domestic animation, and how the growth of digital, cable and satellite television in the late 2000s multiplied the channels needing animated content. National cartoon satellite channels such as Kaku were the demand side of that policy: guaranteed buyers and broadcasters of Chinese originals, giving studios a route to a national audience. New Chinese series are still routinely announced as launching across platforms including KAKU, as when Winsing Animation's GG-Bond: Kung Fu Pork Choppers arrived in 2022 across online platforms and television stations including KAKU and Hunan's Aniworld. For producers, carriage on Kaku remains a mark of a series reaching national children's television.

Distribution and audience

Kaku is a satellite channel distributed nationally, carried by cable networks across China and available through digital platforms, broadcasting in Mandarin from Beijing. Its audience is children and the families who watch with them. As a satellite service of a municipal broadcaster, it competes for that audience with CCTV's children's programming, with Hunan's Golden Eagle Cartoon, Shanghai's Toonmax and Guangdong's Jia-jia Cartoon, and increasingly with online video platforms, which now launch many of the same series simultaneously with television.

Beijing identity

Although national in reach, Kaku is a Beijing institution. It is the children's service of the capital's own broadcaster, produced within BRTV alongside the news, arts, sports and lifestyle channels that serve the city. Its gala and mascot characters are presented under the BRTV name, and its programmes carry the expectations placed on a capital-city public broadcaster: safe, educational and value-led entertainment for children, of the kind described in the research and publicity surrounding the series it launches.

Significance

Kaku TV's significance is structural. Dating to 2004, it is one of the founding national cartoon satellite channels through which China built a television market for its own animation, at a time when imported cartoons dominated children's viewing. Owned by Beijing Radio and Television Station and broadcasting nationally from the capital, with its own mascot world and an annual Spring Festival Gala running since 2009, Kaku remains a reference point for how Chinese children's television was organised in the satellite era: a small number of licensed, city-based channels serving the whole country's children.

Children's channels in the streaming era

Kaku's second decade has been lived alongside the rise of online video, which changed how Chinese animation reaches children. New series are now routinely launched simultaneously across over-the-top and IPTV platforms and television stations, as when GG-Bond: Kung Fu Pork Choppers arrived in 2022 across iQiyi, Youku, Tencent and Mango TV as well as KAKU and Hunan's Aniworld. In that environment a satellite channel's role shifts from sole window to trusted curator and premiere brand: carriage on Kaku still signals that a series has reached national children's television, and the channel's own characters, gala and live programmes give it originals that platforms cannot simply license elsewhere. The parent group's own strategy points the same way; Beijing Radio and Television Station's minority stake in the short-video platform Kuaishou, taken in October 2022, placed the owner of Kaku inside the short-video economy its young audience also inhabits. Kaku's endurance since 2004, through the cable, satellite and streaming transitions, is the measure of the founding decision to give Beijing's broadcaster a dedicated children's brand rather than a numbered channel. Its official presence sits with Beijing Radio and Television Station at brtv.org.cn, where the group's channels and programmes are published for viewers in the capital and across China.