The Full Story
Period of
Deregulation (1990-1999)
The show was created partially in response to the results of a National Geographic survey that indicated Americans had alarmingly little knowledge of geography, with one in four being unable to locate the Soviet Union or the Pacific Ocean. The show's questions were verified by National Geographic.
Challenging and exciting daily quiz show based on the best-selling computer game of the same name (which was created by Broderbund Software). videotaped in New York City at Chelsea Studios and Kaufman Astoria Studios and co-produced by WQED (Pittsburgh) and WGBH-TV (Boston) Contestants compete to recover exotic treasures from infamous thief Carmen Sandiego, and audience learns geography in the process. The shows stars Greg Lee as the host, Lynne Thigpen as "Chief" and features the four-man a cappella group Rockapella. In each episode, three middle-school-aged contestants compete against one another answering trivia questions to decipher a variety of clues to determine where master criminal Carmen Sandiego is hiding out with the day's stolen loot. Clues come in the form of animations, wacky live characters, props and "reports" from a wide range of celebrities that included David Cassidy, Kathy Lee Gifford, Sen. Joe Biden and X the Owl from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Prizes ranged from a subscription to National Geographic to a trip to anywhere in the contiguous United States (US).
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The show won seven Daytime Emmys and a 1992 Peabody Award. In 2001, TV Guide ranked the show at No. 47 on its list of 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time.
In 1988, the character's creator, Sheryl Leach, had grown dissatisfied with the selection of home videos on the market to amuse her young son. She wrote scripts for a children's video featuring a stuffed bear that came to life but changed the central character to a dinosaur, capitalizing on the renewed interest among children. Leach produced three "Barney and the Backyard Gang" videos and marketed them through day-care centers and video stores.
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A PBS executive saw the videos and in 1991 secured a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to produce thirty episodes of the series. The PBS series was entitled Barney and Friends and featured Barney (played by David Joyner, voiced by Bob West), his younger dinosaur sidekick Baby Bop (Jeff Ayers, voiced by Carol Farabee), and a gaggle of children representing the country's major ethnic groups (Caucasian, African American, Asian-American, Native American, Indian, etc.). The group would dance, sing songs, and learn valuable lessons about getting along with each other in work and play. Barney and Friends ' signature song, "I Love You," took the tune of "This Old Man" and substituted lyrics. Such popularity with the television-watching preschool demographic made Barney and Friends vulnerable to critical attacks that suggested the show was nothing but "an infomercial for a stuffed animal." The four million Barney home videos and $300 million in other Barney merchandise that sold within one year after its PBS premiere confirmed that "Barney" was a media force to be reckoned with. On April 24, 1994, NBC aired Barney's first foray into commercial television, with a prime-time special entitled "Bedtime with Barney: Imagination Island."
The ubiquity of Barney, Barney's songs, and Barney-related paraphernalia caused a backlash on late-night television and radio talk shows, in stand-up comedy acts, and on world wide web sites. Speculations that Barney was Evil incarnate, for instance, or lists describing 101 ways to kill the fuzzy purple dinosaur were not uncommon. Thinly-disguised likenesses of Barney became targets of crude, sometimes physically violent attacks on stage and screen. But Barney's commercial success did not flag. Indeed, the critical backlash may have contributed to the high profile Barney maintained in American cultural (and fiscal) consciousness throughout the 1990s. Forbes magazine ranked Barney as the third richest Hollywood entertainer for the years 1993 and 1994, behind director Steven Spielberg and talk show host cum media phenom Oprah Winfrey. In 1998 Barney became a bonafide Hollywood fixture when he and his pals leapt onto the big screen in the feature-length Barney's Great Adventure.
Starting in 1994, there were a series of lawsuits against Barney and Friends, mostly over copyright issues. This due to concerns on production issues led to the official cancellation of the Barney and Friends series in 2010.
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Ghostwriter (1992-1995; 1997; 2019-2020)
Ghostwriter is an American children's mystery television series created by Liz Nealon and produced by the Children's Television Workshop and BBC Television. It began airing on PBS on October 4, 1992, and the final episode aired on February 12, 1995. The series revolves around a group of friends from Brooklyn who solve neighborhood crimes and mysteries as a team of youth detectives with the help of a ghost named Ghostwriter. Ghostwriter can communicate with children only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences. The series was filmed on location in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
The series was designed to teach reading and writing skills to schoolchildren. Each mystery was presented as a case, covering four 30-minute episodes; children were encouraged to follow each mystery, and use the reading and writing clues given to attempt to solve them just as the Ghostwriter team does in the TV series. Ghostwriter was critically acclaimed and honored for presenting a realistic, ethnically diverse world. It has been broadcast in 24 countries worldwide, and generated a number of foreign-language adaptations.
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The show resulted in the production of a Ghostwriter Activity Magazine that reinforced literacy through games and activities that were paired with the child stars of the series.
​Despite its popularity, the program was abruptly canceled after the third season due to inadequate funding after the BBC pulled out of co-producing the show.
.In 1997, CBS aired a new version of the series, The New Ghostwriter Mysteries, as part of their educational Think CBS Kids block, but it was canceled after one season due to low ratings. The new series had little in common with the original, changing Ghostwriter's on-screen appearance, introducing entirely new characters, and getting rid of the serial format of the original series. The series was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and featured a new team of three kids.
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The show was rebooted in 2019 by Sesame Workshop and Sinking Ship Entertainment as an original series for Apple TV+, and premiered on November 1, 2019, coinciding with the launch of the service.
Bill Nye the Science Guy was an American half-hour live action science program produced by KCTS Seattle and McKenna/Gottlieb Producers. It was substantially financed by the National Science Foundation. After the producers entered a distribution agreement with Buena Vista Television, the show aired in syndication from September 10, 1993, to December 21, 1994, and on PBS from January 5, 1995 to June 20, 1998, with reruns airing until September 3, 1999.
The show, hosted by Bill Nye, aired for 100 half-hour episodes spanning five seasons. Known for its quirky humor and rapid-fire MTV-style pacing, the show won critical acclaim and was nominated for 23 Emmy Awards, winning nineteen.
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Kidsongs (1994-1997)
The series began as video series in 1985. The videos were produced by Together Again Productions (TAP) and View Master Films. Each half-hour music video featured ten to fifteen songs, in a music video style production starring children. They sang and danced their way through well-known children's songs, nursery rhymes, and covers of pop hits from the mid 20th century.
The Kidsongs Television Show initially debuted on September 19, 1987, with 26 half-hour episodes for 30 minutes distributed by Orbis Entertainment. The half-hour, live action episodes featured the Kidsongs Kids running their own TV show in a top 8 countdown-style show, featuring music videos from the Kidsongs home video series. It ran on network affiliates, primarily on Saturday mornings. It garnered excellent ratings and ran for 2 years, before moving to the Disney Channel and Las Estrellas for another four years. It won the prestigious Excellence in Children's Programming Award from ACT. In 1987–88, it was called The Kidsongs TV Show.
In 1994, a new version of the television series was developed by Rosenstein and produced in conjunction with WTTW Chicago and distributed to PBS stations nationally. Airing as part of the PBS Kids "Ready to Learn" block, The Kidsongs Television Show aired throughout the country and, by 1998, reached 89 percent of households. Many of the original Kidsongs videos were used in the public television series, along with new educational content and in-studio guests. The kids are joined by the fantasy characters Billy and Ruby Biggle and their magical friends from Biggleland. The Biggles help the children resolve their problems and concerns in a comforting, kind way. They address age-appropriate issues, such as not wanting to share, jealousy, friendship, telling the truth and patience.
The series is available on DVD, digital download through iTunes and Amazon Video.
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The Magic School Bus (1994-1997)
The Magic School Bus is an animated children's television series, based on the book series of the same name by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen. It was originally broadcast on PBS from 1994 to 1997 The series received critical acclaim for its use of celebrity voice talent and combining entertainment with an educational series. The voice talent included Lily Tomlin as Miss Valerie Felicity "The Frizz" Frizzle, Malcolm Jamal Warner as the show's producer who address and correct any outstanding questions that were not addressed in the episode and Richard Wayne "Little Richard" Penniman who sang the show's theme song. Miss Frizzle embarks on adventures with her class on the eponymous school bus. As they journey on their exciting field trips, they discover locations, creatures, time periods and more to learn about the wonders of science along the way.
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The show received several award nominations and received one Daytime Emmy award.
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The Magic School Bus was produced by Scholastic Entertainment. The idea for the TV series was developed by former Scholastic Entertainment Vice President and Senior Editorial Director Craig Walker. Scholastic Entertainment president Deborah Forte explained that adapting the books into an animated series was an opportunity to help kids "learn about science in a fun way". During this time, Forte had been hearing concerns from parents and teachers about how to improve science education for kids and minorities across the globe. After production ceased in 1997 to allow more preschool oriented programming on PBS, the series was picked up by various networks from FOX to BBC to CBC to Nickelodeon. Globally, the show is still aired.
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The series was rebooted in 2017 by Netflix with the title The Magic School Bus Rides Agaian. The new series has Valerie Frizzle received her PhD and retire from teaching at Walkerville Elementary School. She then hires her younger sister, Miss Fiona Frizzle, to teach the class, and passes the keys of the Magic School Bus over to her. The kids journey on exciting new field-trips, discovering new locations, creatures, time periods and more to learn about the wonders of science, educating viewers along the way, on the eponymous Bus.
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Full Episodes
The Magic School Bus
The Magic School Bus Rides Again
Arthur (1996- )
The television series is based on the Arthur Adventure book series, written and illustrated by Marc Brown. WGBH (Boston) and Cinar began production of the animated series in 1994, and aired its first episode on October 7, 1996.
Arthur Read, the series' titular character, is an anthropomorphic brown aardvark who lives in the fictional town of Elwood City. He is a third-grade student at Lakewood Elementary School. Arthur's family includes two home-working parents, his father David (a chef) and his mother Jane (an accountant), his two younger sisters, Dora Winifred (D.W.), who is in preschool, and Kate, who is still an infant, and his dog Pal. Arthur also has several friends who come from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and he also occasionally meets with members of his extended family. Each episode consists of two independent stories focusing on themes and events central to children's lives.
​Elwood City is portrayed as a largely suburban area which bears a strong resemblance to the Boston. There are also firm references to Brown's hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. Most notably, the local shopping mall in the TV show is called "Mill Creek Mall", a reference to Millcreek Mall. Brown himself stated that the series is influenced by his upbringing as a child in Erie, and specifically noted that Mr. Ratburn is based on a middle-school algebra teacher he had in Middle School.
​The series often deals with important issues families face such as asthma, dyslexia, cancer, diabetes, and autism spectrum disorder. It also encourages reading and relationships with family and friends by explaining that people have different personalities and interests. It is the longest-running children's animated series in the U.S.
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Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego (1996-1997)
The show was created to replace Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and was cheaper to produce than its predecessor. It was a challenging and exciting daily quiz show about world history. It was videotaped in New York City at Kaufman Astoria Studios and co-produced by WQED (Pittsburgh) and WGBH-TV (Boston) Contestants compete to recover exotic treasures from infamous thief Carmen Sandiego, and audience learns geography in the process.
The show starred Lynne Thigpen as "The Chief", Kevin Shinick as "ACME Time Pilot Squadron Leader" and "The Engine Crew" who is sang the theme song and acted as various informants. In each episode, three middle-school-aged contestants compete against one another answering trivia questions to decipher a variety of clues . Clues come in the form of computer animations, wacky live characters and props. Due to the smaller budget prizes ranged from Britannica world atlas, a Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? t-shirt, baseball cap, a collection of Carmen Sandiego CD-ROM games and acomplete multimedia computer system, a year of Britannica Online, a Britannica CD-ROM encyclopedia, and a 32-volume set of Encyclopædia Britannica.
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Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego was nominated thirteen times for awards. It also won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1998.
Bob the Builder (1999-2011)
Bob the Builder is a British stop motion animated children's television series created by Keith Chapman for HIT Entertainment and Hot Animation. In the original series, which aired from 1999 to 2011.
Bob appears in a stop motion animated program as a building contractor, specializing in masonry, along with his colleague Wendy, various neighbors, and friends, and their gang of anthropomorphized work-vehicles and equipment. The show is broadcast in many countries but originated from the United Kingdom where Bob was voiced by English actor Neil Morrissey. On each episode, Bob and his group help with renovations, construction, and repairs and with other projects as needed. It started airing in the United States (US) on Nick, Jr. before appearing on PBS in 2003.
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The North American version of the show uses the original British footage and script, but dubs the voices in American accents and slang; for example, the word "soccer" is used instead of "football" to avoid confusion with the gridiron forms of the game. The original North American voice of Bob was William Dufris, however, he was replaced with comedian Greg Proops. More recently, Bob's US voice has been provided by Marc Silk, an English voice actor from Birmingham.
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The series has led to several spin-offs including Bob the Builder: Project: Build It and Bob the Builder: Ready, Steady, Build!
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