Having already burned through every episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Painting and Julia Childs’ The French Chef, Twitch has announced its next massive marathon of a public broadcasting classic. Starting on May 15 at midnight PT, Amazon’s livestreaming site will be broadcasting the entire 886-episode run of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The marathon will last 18 days and, Twitch notes, “includes many episodes that have only aired once or are unavailable elsewhere online. ”
These marathons are all a part of the site’s attempt to branch out from its video game-focused beginnings. While digging up Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is a powerful nostalgia-play to bring in eyeballs that aren’t already glued to League Of Legends and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Twitch is also using this marathon as an opportunity to raise money for PBS via a donation button built right into the Mister Rogers channel. And the company isn’t shy to talk about why that might be a good thing to do at this particular moment in our history. “Mister Rogers not only brings a different type of show into the mix, but it is coming at a time when the importance of PBS is very topical,” the site’s Director Of Business Development told TechCrunch.