Why PBS Canceled Caillou But Brought Him Back Anyway

On January 5th, 2021, PBS Kids posted a tweet. It was not a press release. It was not a formal statement. It was not an apology to the millions of parents who had spent two decades writing letters, signing petitions, and sitting through forty-eight hours of what they considered the most irritating twenty-two minutes of children's television ever produced. It was a tweet. It said: "We're saying farewell to #Caillou." They attached a link. Not to an explanation. Not to a timeline of what went wrong. A link to an article on their own website called "What To Do When Your Child's Favorite Media Goes Away." That was the goodbye. No ceremony. No acknowledgment. No moment of reckoning. Just: he's gone, here's how to break the news to your kids, and have a nice day. The internet did not have a nice day. The internet lost its mind. #caillou #caillougetsgrounded