Thomas &amp; Friends
Thomas & Friends (originally known as Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends or simply Thomas the Tank Engine; also known as Thomas & Friends: Big World! Big Adventures! in the twenty-second series) is a British children's television series. In the United Kingdom, it had its first broadcast on the ITV network in Great Britain in 1984. In the United States, it had its first broadcast on "Shining Time Station" in 1989. It is based on "The Railway Series" of books by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry and his son, Christopher Awdry.
Thomas &amp; Friends
In the United States, the series had first appeared only as sequences on "Shining Time Station" during the program's run from 1989 to 1995 on PBS. The sequences of the series later aired in 1996 on "Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales". The series aired as "Storytime with Thomas" on Fox Family (now Freeform) from 1999 to 2001. When "Thomas & Friends" premiered as a stand-alone program on PBS Kids, it was first distributed from 2004 to 2007 by Connecticut Public Television, and then by WNET from 2008 to 2017, and Sprout 2005 to 2015. The rights to broadcast the series through PBS expired in December 2017, thus ending a period of almost 30 years of programming related to "Thomas & Friends" on American public television. Now it airs on Nick Jr. and Nickelodeon.