Tucson Medical Center and the Ronald McDonald House of Southern Arizona will now be broadcasting the San Diego Zoo Kids channel at their facilities.
San Diego Zoo Kids is a closed-circuit television channel with programs produced primarily for medical facilities that serve pediatric patients and their families. The announcement about the new channel was scheduled to be made Tuesday, May 15, at an event at TMC.
The channel will be available on television monitors in patient rooms at TMC and in the children’s play area at the Ronald McDonald House.
San Diego Zoo Kids programming offers animal-oriented shows geared toward children and families. The channel will also feature animal stories from Tucson’s Reid Park Zoo. It features up-close video encounters with animals, stories about care for animals, animal quizzes, video from the San Diego Zoo’s panda cam and other online cameras around the world.
San Diego Zoo Kids debuted in 2013 at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. Since then, it has been installed at 137 children’s hospitals, Ronald McDonald houses, pediatric wards and children’s hospice centers in the United States and other countries.
The creation and development of the channel has been funded by philanthropist T. Denny Sanford.
In 2017, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded San Diego Zoo Global a grant to bring the channel to 75 children’s hospitals and Ronald McDonald houses across the nation during the next three years.
