It draws from the long history of children's programming on the BBC, and is strongly related to the CBBC channel in the United Kingdom.

It was described as a specialty television service devoted to educational and entertaining programming for children and youth (ages 2–17).

[5] On 2 October 2018, a joint statement from Knowledge Network and BBC announced the channel would cease operations at the stroke of midnight on 1 January 2019.

[7] This complemented an existing CBeebies channel available in Australia, catering to children aged 0 to 6.

[10] A BBC Kids subscription app service with 100 hours of content became available in South Africa in September 2022, through a partnership of Switch Media and MTN Group.