Sprout and Cablevision Systems will announce Friday that the
preschoolers' channel has launched on Optimum TV and Optimum TV to GO, the
cable company's TV Everywhere offering.
The channel, a joint venture that's part of Comcast's
NBCUniversal stable, launched May 2 on the Optimum platforms as part of a
broader NBC agreement Cablevision
agreed to last November, Sprout president Sandy Wax said. This is the only
NBCU network Cablevision is launching at this time. The network launched on
channel 127 in standard definition, Wax said, and reaches "a significant
portion of their subscriber base."
The launch brings Sprout closer to the 55-million mark from
about 53 million earlier, Wax said. Among major multichannel distributors, Dish
Network is the only one not to have a carriage deal with Sprout, she said.
"We are doing marketing together with them to support
the launch," Wax said in a phone interview. Marketing is being done on
Cablevision digital sites, and on cross-channel avails, and in a month or so
Sprout will do out-of-home marketing, notably on Long Island Rail Road and
other transit locations, to let the close to 3 million Optimum customers in the
greater New York City area know Sprout is available. "Cablevision is a
very very important customer base, a very valuable customer base, given their
proximity to New York and the advertising community, and it's a very affluent,
very solid customer base. We're very excited about the launch."
