Kan Educational

Kan Educational is Kan's dedicated children's and youth television service. It emerged from the 2014 restructuring of Israeli public broadcasting and replaced the former Israeli Educational Television service in August 2018.[1][2] It is part of Kan's television network alongside Kan 11 and the Arabic-language Makan 33, and its programming is also distributed through applications and Kan's digital video-on-demand services.[9][5]

The service that eventually became Kan Educational traces its origins to 1964, when the Rothschild Foundation established what was initially called "Nemanut ha-Televisia ha-Limudit" — the Learning Television Trust — with the aim of using television broadcasts as a teaching aid within school curricula.[4] Its stated purpose was "להשתמש בשידורי טלוויזיה ככלי עזר להוראה" ("to use television broadcasts as a teaching aid").[4] A three-year pilot served 32 schools; in 1966, the Foundation transferred the trust and its facilities to government ownership, after which it was renamed the Center for Educational Television.[4]

Israel was the first country in the world to establish educational television before general-purpose television, with the government recognizing the medium's educational potential before authorizing broader broadcasting.[3] Instructional broadcasts were designed to fill half a class period, allowing teachers to complete the lesson, and covered subjects including mathematics, English, and biology.[10] The National Library of Israel gives March 15, 1966, as the date of the first broadcast.[4] The Center for Israel Education and the Jewish Virtual Library instead give March 24, 1966, identifying the broadcast as an instructional mathematics program for seventh- and ninth-graders in 32 schools in central Israel.[10][3] The sources do not reconcile the two March dates.

Responsibility for the service passed from the Foundation to the Ministry of Education and Culture, which provided its funding.[3] From 1968 to 1986, Israeli Educational Television and the Israel Broadcasting Authority shared Israel's single television channel.[11] In 1986, the service was renamed Israeli Educational Television, reflecting a broader range of genres, programs, and audiences, with its appeal directed to the public as a whole.[4]

The creation of Kan Educational followed a major restructuring of Israeli public broadcasting. The Public Broadcasting Law passed in 2014 provided for Educational Television to close after the new public broadcaster began operating and for a children's and youth service to be operated within the corporation.[1] Kan began broadcasting on May 15, 2017, while IETV continued operating until August 2018.[1]

The transition was contested. Knesset members from the Zionist Union, including Merav Michaeli and Yossi Yonah, made last-resort efforts to prevent IETV's closure, expressing concern that absorption into Kan could lead to staff dismissals and a major change in content.[12] Employees of the old broadcaster campaigned against closure, and a proposal to delay the shutdown by a year failed shortly before it took effect.[1] The law provided for the Corporation to absorb 40 of IETV's approximately 180 state employees, with up to 12 million shekels in additional annual state funding allocated for that purpose.[1]

IETV aired its final sign-off overnight on August 13–14, 2018. Its replacement, Kan Educational, continued on channel 23.[2] At launch, the channel was expected to carry many former IETV children's and youth programs, including Parpar Nechmad and Rehov Sumsum, alongside international programming.[13] The former broadcaster's adult programs — among them "New Evening," "Media File," and "Making Order" — ended, and its adult-program archive was transferred to Kan 11.[2] The early schedule relied on repeats of children's and youth series including "Children of the Treehouse," "The Excavators," "Galileo," and "Shuster and Shuster."[2]

Early educational-television broadcasts included lessons for schools, programs for young children, and enrichment programs in the afternoons.[4] The service's scope expanded over the decades: it produced scholastic programs for classroom use, collaborated with university education professionals and teachers' seminars on developing teaching methods, and pursued an aim of "lifetime learning" through enrichment for preschoolers, entertainment for youth, courses for adults, and news broadcasts for all.[14] The service aired on two channels six days a week, for approximately ten hours daily.[14]

A significant turning point came in 1982, during the Lebanon War, when the service began broadcasting a program called "Shalom ha-Galil," later renamed "Erev Hadash" (New Evening). This marked the beginning of entertainment and current-affairs content alongside purely instructional material.[4] The long-running variety program "Zehu Ze" first aired in 1978 as a summer magazine broadcast live twice a week; during the Gulf War, it addressed Israelis' experiences in sealed rooms, queues for gas masks, and shelter life, and was credited with helping raise morale among viewers sheltering during missile alerts.[4] The program left the screen in 1998.[4]

Children's programming became one of IETV's most enduring legacies. "Parpar Nechmad" first aired on Educational Television in March 1981 and ran for 16 seasons through 2004, with songs by Datia Ben-Dor — including "I Always Remain Myself" and "My Land of Israel" — becoming cultural classics.[15] The Israeli version of Sesame Street, Rehov Sumsum, featured characters such as Kippi Ben Kippod and Moishe Oofnik.[13] A Kan retrospective described the original children's series "The Children from Shkhunat Haim" as groundbreaking for giving children from Mizrahi communities a platform and visibility.[16] IETV also broadcast educational content related to higher learning: six films about Jerusalem, produced as part of the Open University course Jerusalem Throughout the Ages designed by Prof. Yael Katzir, aired on the service.[17]

Academic study of IETV's cultural significance has continued. A 2025 peer-reviewed article by Eitan Bar-Yosef and Tali Diskin, titled "'We Too Are Judges': Law, Culture, and Society in Israeli Educational Television in the 1970s," appeared in volume 42 of Iyunim, pages 255–282.[18]

Kan Educational is one of three television channels operated by the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation, alongside Kan 11, largely devoted to news and current events, and Makan 33, which carries current-affairs and news programming in Arabic.[9] The children's and youth service offers a live broadcast, a program schedule, and a dedicated application.[6]

In December 2020, Kan Educational announced a new app, website, and schedule for 2021, alongside a planned move from channel 23 to channel 80, subject to approval by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council.[19] The announced schedule included 20 original series across drama, comedy, documentary, and science for audiences from early childhood through adolescence. Subjects included nature, mathematics, art, literature, and language, with psychological consultation suited to the intended age groups.[19] The app was to offer more than 80 series and 135 seasons on demand, with some new episodes available before their television broadcasts.[20]

In January 2026, Kan announced an upgraded generation of its Kan BOX applications. The smart-TV version was to include catch-up viewing for Kan Educational, while the wider platform brought together Kan's television channels, radio stations, and video-on-demand library. The upgrade also provided for a dedicated, safe, branded children's area operating under the Kan Educational identity.[5]

Kan Educational also offers children's podcasts covering a range of subjects, available through its app and for free listening at any time.[6] Examples include "History for Children," about inventors, leaders, military commanders, and artists; "Pocket Cubs," in which children ask economics questions answered by the "Pocket Animals" team; and "The Lab for Girls and Boys," in which researchers discuss living things and humanity's place in the natural world.[6]

Since its launch, Kan Educational has produced original content that has achieved domestic cultural resonance and international recognition.

The children's fantasy series "Kramel," based on books by Meira Barnea-Goldberg, follows three orphaned children adopted by a generous woman and living in a castle with a talking ginger cat.[21] A new episode was posted to YouTube each day at 3 p.m., and by 2022 the series had accumulated more than eight million online views.[20] By 2023, after returning for a second season, the show had passed 30 million digital views and received eight Academy of Television awards.[21] Director Shirili Deshe has said that the channel's series often show conflicts being resolved and give children hope.[21]

"Parpar Nechmad" was revived in 2021 with four new presenters — Mushi Klainstein, Uri Banai, Ester Rada, and Ben Yosipovitch — alongside the familiar puppet characters from the original run.[15] A revival of "Shkhunat Haim," based on a black-and-white predecessor that first aired nearly 50 years earlier, also began airing on Kan Educational. A Kan retrospective characterized the original as groundbreaking for its representation of Mizrahi children.[16]

The teen drama Kol Od Balevav (Memory Forest) follows two Israeli teenagers — Shani, a cynical teen from Herzliya, and Kobi, from a more traditional Zionist home in Karmiel — who meet on an educational trip to Poland and become romantically involved despite their trip leader's disapproval.[7] Filmed in Poland, with scenes at Treblinka, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lublin, the series addresses Holocaust remembrance through younger generations' perspectives.[7] It was screened in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 24, 2023, won the best scripted series for youth award at the BANFF World Media Festival's Rockie Awards International in June 2023, and was nominated for an International Emmy in the Kids: Live Action category.[7]

In 2023, Kan Educational also created and broadcast Journey to the Past, a documentary about five Israeli actors traveling to Poland, which won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 40th Chicago International Children's Film Festival.[8] The series Mekif Milano ranked eighth in Google's December 2024 summary of trending television-series searches among Israelis.[22]

The archive of Israeli Educational Television, covering broadcasts from 1966 until the service's closure in 2018, is preserved as part of Kan's broader public-broadcasting archive.[23] The wider archive holds at least 400,000 hours of television and one million hours of radio, including material from Educational Television, Channel One, and Kol Yisrael. Its digitization is intended to make archival material accessible to the public at no cost.[23]

A collaboration with the National Library of Israel has made part of the educational-television archive available online. The full archive has been estimated at approximately 14,000 program episodes, with hundreds of episodes available in the online collection when the collaboration was described and further material intended to be added gradually.[4] The archive reflects Israeli history and culture across more than half a century of broadcasting.[23]

The date of the service's first broadcast is reported differently across the sources. The National Library of Israel places it on March 15, 1966.[4] The Center for Israel Education and the Jewish Virtual Library give March 24, 1966, describing an instructional mathematics broadcast.[10][3] My Jewish Learning dates the first television programming aimed at Israel's general public to 1968, distinguishing it from the earlier school broadcasts.[11] The 1968 date therefore concerns general-public programming, but the discrepancy between the two March 1966 dates remains unresolved.

The institutional merger that created Kan Educational was also contested. Opponents warned of workforce reductions and major changes in content, while employees campaigned against closure.[12][1] A last-minute legislative effort to delay the shutdown by a year failed before IETV went off the air in August 2018. The transition proceeded under the Public Broadcasting Law, with the Corporation absorbing 40 of approximately 180 former state employees.[1]