The Best Children’s Show Is Getting A Podcast
Arthur is getting his own podcast.
After concluding its 25-year run on PBS in February, Arthur is getting its own podcast featuring the beloved anthropomorphic aardvark. The popular kids’ show will revisit tales from the television series in a new audio format where fans will hear from Arthur, D.W, Buster, and other characters as they navigate school, friendships, and more. Listeners can also send messages to Arthur’s Inbox on the PBS Kids for Parents website which could potentially be included in future episodes.
The first season of The Arthur Podcast consists of eight episodes which will launch weekly starting on October 20th. According to Variety, the show will be available for free on pbskids.org, the PBS Kids Video app, the Arthur YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and other major podcast platforms. The project comes from PBS Kids, Boston’s GBH Kids, and production partner Gen-Z Media, distributed by PRX.
Speaking about The Arthur Podcast, Senior Executive Producer for GBH Kids, Carol Greenwald said it’s been fun to help the popular kid’s character make his new podcast. She added that Arthur, D.W, and Buster have done a great job sharing their adventures. Now, the audio platform will allow them to reach new audiences and reconnect longtime fans to many classic stories. “We hope the podcast version provides kids with a new way to enjoy these wonderful and relatable stories,” CEO of Gen-Z Media, Ben Strouse added.
To promote The Arthur Podcast, PBS Kids released a new digital short called “Arthur Makes a Podcast” which follows Arthur and his sister as they navigate podcast production. The new audio format comes eight months after the series ended earlier this year. Considered the longest-running kids’ animated series in history, the show has aired in 80 countries, and won seven Emmy Awards and a Peabody. The books that inspired the cartoon have sold over 65 million books in the United States.
Although the finale of the television series sees Arthur and his friends as adults, the cast seems to be back to their younger selves for the podcast. In the digital short, the protagonist is wearing his signature mustard sweater and round glasses, while his sister D.W. desperately tries to get his attention. And the aardvark’s headphones are still not worn on his actual ears.
Developed for PBS by Kathy Waugh, Arthur, like the podcast, is set in fictional Elwood City. The story follows a third-grade student named Arthur Read and his adventures at Lakewood Elementary School. His family consists of two working parents (David and Jane) two younger sisters, (pre-schooler Dora Winifred and baby Kate), and a dog named Pal. Arthur also has several friends from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and he also occasionally meets with his extended family.
The show is based on the Arthur book series by Marc Brown. Interestingly, a pilot for a spin-off series called Postcards from Buster aired in December 2003 as a season eight episode of Arthur. After airing intermittently from October 2004 to February 2012, it was canceled. Hopefully, The Arthur Podcast, which is primarily aimed at children aged four to eight, is as successful as the flagship series.
