Don’t miss WORLD Watch

August marks Season 4 of WORLD Watch, our daily video news program for students. WORLD Watch has earned a reputation for serious news and fascinating features, substantial enough for adults, but built for kids.

I’d like to break that down.

Serious news: We’ve been publishing current-­events coverage for students for more than 40 years. It’s one of the things we do best. And every WORLD Watch program begins with a carefully reported newscast that fills about half the time—four or five minutes of the 10-minute daily program length.

We cover almost everything (a few topics simply aren’t appropriate for younger students), and we cover it thoroughly. Because WORLD Watch is daily year-round, we have a lot of opportunities to fill in background and details on big stories. If we don’t cover all the important facets of a story one day, we usually come back to it another day. Our hope is that students begin to develop a real ­understanding of important issues.

Fascinating features: Many of our features are connected to news stories, but all of them grow out of curiosity about God’s world. Creation is endlessly interesting, so we’ll never run out of things to talk about.

Substantial enough for adults: The first thing I noticed about WORLD Watch when we launched it three years ago was that I learned something new almost every day. That surprised me, because I assumed I had a pretty good grasp of the news. Another surprise has been the number of adults who tell us something similar about their experience. Households with no children have been an unexpectedly receptive market segment.

Built for kids: Our team every day thinks about how to write, visualize, and produce their stories to give student viewers an understanding of how God is at work in the world. The stories are accessible, entertaining, and appropriate. Families with children of all ages watch together, and that leads to fruitful dis­cussion. Teachers use the program to open their classes, and often launch their lessons from one of the program segments.

To summarize: WORLD Watch has something for everyone.

If you’re not already subscribing, I encourage you to stream a week of free ­episodes at worldwatch.news. You can also find short versions of the daily program on YouTube (@WORLDWatchNews). Right now, at the start of a new school-year season of the program, would be a great time to give it a try.