The Electric Company rip-off

[mikealan]

The Electric Company is a sister show of Sesame Street produced by the Children's Television Workshop from 1971 until 1976. When I was born, I never watched it, because I watched Sesame Street and the Muppets many times. I never got Noggin until I got it in December 2002, but it now had the preschool block from 6AM to 6PM and the teen block called The N from 6PM to 6AM. My dad taped few of the Electric Company episodes for me a few months ago from late Friday/Saturday nights until in late January 2003, it's GONE. Noggin now had features many Nick Jr. shows and new shows like Oobi and the Tweenies and PBS Kids had really stupid and boring shows like Barney, Teletubbies and Dragon Tales, but I have four TECs! We, the Electric Company lovers, would know that TEC would be gone forever. Do you remember watching the Electric Company?

 

[Ol' Buddy Bert]

Yup...I loved the Electric Company and still do.

As an adult watching it, I'm amazed by the creativity employed throughout the show. Not just the music, sketches and sets but technically, I think the show is a marvel. You can do a lot with a low budget.

 

[Jeffrey Gray]

This show actually does air sometimes, during Cable in the Classroom. I should know, because I sometimes get TEC closings at the beginning of my SSU recordings...

However, it doesn't always come on, but if you check Noggin's schedule (not on their website, but on some place like DirecTV.com), you can probably find out when. It would come on between 3 AM - 5 AM Eastern/12 AM - 2 AM Pacific, on weekday mornings (3-4 AM ET/12-1 AM PT on Mondays, since SSU takes up the last hour on Mondays).

 

[ssetta]

And what about Season 25? Is that still on....ever? I know the lady said that it would go into limited rotation.

 

[Jeffrey Gray]

I wouldn't know...I never watched season 25...

 

[ScottMonster]

Originally posted by Ol' Buddy Bert
As an adult watching it, I'm amazed by the creativity employed throughout the show. Not just the music, sketches and sets but technically, I think the show is a marvel. You can do a lot with a low budget.

I don't think that TEC could be considered "low budget". In fact I think one of the reasons it got cancelled after only six seasons is because they found it too expensive to produce. And that's why from 1977 untill the mid 80s it only survived on PBS in reruns and even those were only from the last two seasons of the show's original run. My guess is that they stopped showing it altogether in the 80s because...well have a look at them now and take note of the clothes, hairstyles, songs and the fact that this would have been before the whole "retro" fad took hold and I think it's easy to see why.

 

[muppetfan620]

I remember watching TEC and loving it!

Millicent

 

[ssetta]

That's not why it's going off Noggin. They don't really like the old shows anymore, such as TEC, SSU, and all those other old shows, including season 25. It's because they have new shows.

Wanna know something else? Noggin is no longer owned by Sesame Workshop. And because of that, there's no reason for them to show Sesame Street anymore. I mean, they do still have Sesame Street, but not very much of it. They don't like Sesame Street, they think it's too old-fashioned, and they wanna do more modern things, like The Tweenies and Oobi. I actually had a feeling that Oobi would get his own show eventually, since he was pretty popular in the first place. But the only reason why they still have Sesame Street is because of Elmo's World. That's the only part of the show that's still popular. They may just as well just cancel Sesame Street and just spin off Elmo's World as its own show, because kids don't really like the old characters. Because they're old.

 

[SillyRed]

DRAGON TALES IS NOT STUPID!!

 

[CookieFan]

Originally posted by ssetta
They may just as well just cancel Sesame Street and just spin off Elmo's World as its own show, because kids don't really like the old characters. Because they're old.

Aren't there some places that have Elmo's World as its own show?

Can't agree that the kids don't like the old characters. How would they know they're "old"? My daughter just loves Cookie Monster and sings that "old" C is for Cookie song. OK, so Elmo is her fave, but she still loves Cookie, Big Bird and "Bertnie".

I can't think of any other children's program that focuses on letters and numbers (and finally again we're getting shapes and opposites) like SS does. Either its baby drivel (Teletubbies, Oobi) or preschool "morality" stories (DragonTales, JayJay). My kid's 21 months and knows her letters and can count to 20 purely on the power of SS. So it still works wonderfully. If they took it off the air, I honestly can't think of anything that would fill the void.