Early history as Smile of a Child of Jan Crouch's initials with her
maiden name of Janice Wendell Bethany. Founded as
Smile of a Child TV by TBN co-founder
Jan Crouch, the network was developed and named after Smile of a Child, a children's outreach ministry founded by Jan and
Paul Crouch in the 1990s to provide services and donations to needy children worldwide. The network launched on December 24, 2005 at 3:00 a.m.
Eastern Time, with the holiday-themed special
Martin the Cobbler as its inaugural program. Smile of a Child was initially available as a 24/7 service on all platforms, and introduced on
digital subchannels of TBN
owned-and-operated station in 13 markets. Over the subsequent years, Smile expanded its national coverage to all of TBN's owned-and-operated and affiliated stations in nearly 40 markets, carried usually on the fifth subchannel (for example, if the local TBN station broadcasts on channel 17, then Smile would be carried on digital subchannel 17.5).
Multicasting consolidation with JUCE TV On June 1, 2015, Smile of a Child was combined into a single subchannel with a sister network
JUCE TV (which targeted teenagers and young adults 13 to 30 years of age), under a timeshare arrangement. As a result of the realignment, for over-the-air viewers, Smile was originally reduced to a 9-hour daily programming schedule (from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Time) on the third subchannel occupied by JUCE (which continued to air over its existing subchannel slot for the remainder of the broadcast day) on the 38 stations owned directly by TBN and through its subsidiary
Community Educational Television. The following week, the timeshare was modified so that Smile would air from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Eastern), with JUCE airing the remainder of the day, giving each network a daily 12-hour window on its owned-and-operated stations' DT3 subchannels. The change, which was required due to multiplexing limitations at the time with TBN's over-the-air stations, was required due to the launch of
TBN Salsa, a digital subchannel network targeting
English-speaking Latino viewers which launched on that date.
Closure Smile closed on January 12, 2025; promos announcing the channel's closure began airing in December 2024; TBN moved all of its programming to its Christian children's streaming service
Yippee TV. Outside of TBN's non-commercial broadcast stations that carried Smile (which removed their channel space entirely), the channel space is currently leased by
OnTV4U, an all-
paid programming network. ==Programming==