Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Virgin Media UK and NOW TV Ireland Offering Kids Channels for Free Amidst Coronavirus Outbreak

With schools being closed and kids being asked to stay at home in the wake of the COVID-19 (aka coronavirus) outbreak, British and Irish television providers are offering a raft of children's channels, including Nickelodeon, to customers at no extra cost.


British cable television provider Virgin Media is giving its customers the chance to watch Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network for free. As schools are closed across the UK, the popular kids channels will be available to watch with no additional subscription fee required. The channels are home to Henry Danger, The Thundermans, Victorious, Teen Titans Go and Apple & Onion to name a few.

Typically Virgin Media customers would have to add-on these channels and pay extra but for the foreseeable future it looks like families can make the most of the free kid’s channels until April 21.

The upgrade is available to customers on Virgin Media’s Player, Mixit (without Kids TV pick) and Maxit (without Kids TV pick) bundles at no extra cost.

Virgin Media has also given 2.7 million of its pay monthly mobile customers an additional 10 GB data and unlimited minutes at no extra cost, as well as permanently removing data caps for customers on its legacy broadband to help them stay connected.

To see the latest bundles available from Virgin Media go to the website here.

NOW TV Ireland, the Irish arm of the IPTV series from Sky, has announced they're giving away free three-month kids passes for the remainder of March. It's in a bid to help parents keep their kids entertained while they juggle work and home responsibilities. According to a survey commissioned by the Irish government, 52% of Irish adults are working from home. And with kids on a hiatus from school, many houses will be a little busier than normal. This may impact work productivity for those juggling their day job and their role as Mum or Dad.

The kids pass includes uninterrupted access to hundreds of episodes of ad-free children’s entertainment. It includes channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network plus a range of educational kid’s documentaries. The pass allows you to stream favourites such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The Loud House, Pokémon, Paw Patrol, Gruffalo, Peppa Pig and iCarly. Following the free period, the pass will cost €7.00 a month unless cancelled, so don’t forget to cancel your subscription after the three months if you don’t want to continue. The reason being, the pass renews automatically at €7 per month once your subscription is up.

To claim your free NOW TV Kids Pass, you'll need to follow the steps below:

- Head to www.nowtv.com/ie/wfh
- Click to redeem voucher (populates automatically)
- Continue to sign in or create an account
- Sit back & enjoy!

Head of NOW TV Ireland, Michael Forry said, 'NOW TV really wants to help out all the parents who might be finding it difficult to balance work and home duties at the moment.'

With the hundreds of shows available to stream on the NOW TV Kids Pass we hope to make life a little easier over the next few weeks.'

Additionally, British satellite television provider Sky is giving extra benefits to its customers amid the coronavirus outbreak, including free Sky Go Extra, so homes can watch Sky TV on three screens at once, films being launched on its platform at the same time as their original cinema release and Disney+ available to stream from this week (March 24).

While Amazon is offering a free trial on its Kids Unlimited service. It gives customers access to thousands of kid-friendly books, movies, TV shows, educational apps and games.

Virgin and NOW TV join other TV providers around the world offering children's channels for free amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Update (31/3) - Official Virgin Media press release:

Virgin Media gives TV customers popular kid’s channels at no extra cost

Virgin Media will be giving its TV customers seven of its most popular children’s channels at no extra cost until 21st April.

With some parents across the UK at home with their littles ones, Virgin Media is offering families a helping hand to keep their kids entertained.

This includes family favourites such as Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Cartoonito and Nickelodeon. Across these channels, a range of shows from Ben 10, Paw Patrol, Teen Titans and classics like Tom and Jerry, ScoobyDoo and Spongebob Squarepants, will be available for kids to watch.

For extra flexibility, there’s also a thousand episodes On Demand, so parents can pick and choose a their kids’ favourite shows.

The full line up of extra channels for families to enjoy includes:

Cartoon Network
Boomerang
Cartoonito
Nickelodeon
Nick Jr
NickToons
Nick Jr Too

This television upgrade is available to customers on Virgin Media’s Player, Mixit (without Kids TV pick) and Maxit (without Kids TV pick) bundles at no extra cost. Eligible customers don’t have to do anything and there will be no change to their contract.

During these unprecedented times, Virgin Media has also given 2.7million of its pay monthly mobile customers an additional 10GB data and unlimited minutes at no extra cost, as well as permanently removing data caps for customers on its legacy broadband to help them stay connected.

And to ensure customers can access important information from the NHS website without fear of going over their data allowance, Virgin Media has zero-rated www.111.nhs.uk, www.nhs.uk, www.gov.uk meaning these websites will not decrement customer’s allowances.

Ends

###

More Nick: Milkshake!, Nickelodeon UK Ramp Up Content Due to Coronavirus Pandemic!

Originally published: Monday, March 23, 2020.

Sources: WalesOnline, SPIN1038, RSVPLive, Broadband TV News, Advanced Television.
Follow NickALive! on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, via RSS, on Instagram, and/or Facebook for the latest Nickelodeon UK News and Highlights!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Have your say by leaving a comment below! NickALive! welcomes friendly and respectful comments. Please familiarize with the blog's Comment Policy before commenting. All new comments are moderated and won't appear straight away.