If you find the news stressful and hard to keep up with in 2020, imagine how your kids must feel.
NBC feels it may have a solution. The NBC Nightly News is launching a experimental version of the evening network newscast aimed specifically at children and teens. The first edition of Nightly News Kids Edition streams this evening on YouTube and the program, viewed as a test within NBC News, is likely to appear at least twice per week and potentially with greater frequency.
The new kids’ edition of Nightly News is aimed at kids between 6 and 16
According to Variety, the idea for the children’s edition came from a senior producer on Nightly News who was mindful of the current environment and thought kids might want to hear more about the pandemic, home-schooling and more.
“Kids are no different than the rest of us. They’re a little scared and they want answers,” Nightly News anchor Lester Holt told Variety. “But they also want to be empowered and so we wanted to put together a broadcast that would inform and also provide inspiring stories of what other young people are doing around the country.”
Holt will anchor the program, so you know the network is taking this seriously.
In the debut episode, which runs nine minutes, the NBC newsman is seen reporting from his home office and wearing a charcoal colored hoodie, with bookshelf and two bass guitars noticeable in the background. The tone and setting may be a bit more casual than what you typically see from NBC Nightly News, but Holt takes the program seriously.
“As a newsman and a father, I got used to explaining to my children difficult events I was covering, whether it was the famine in Somalia, the Gulf War or 9/11,” said Holt, who recently became a grandfather. “I suppose this program is in some ways an extension of that.”
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