Eventually used in Nike and ESPN commercials years later and was sampled for the De La Soul song "The Magic Number" off their Three Feet High And Rising album in 1989. The song that started it all, used as the initial pitch to ABC and still one of the best ever produced for the series, centered on the three times tables and the Rule of Three. " Three is a Magic Number " (Multiplication Rock, performed by Bob Dorough) - Yes, it is.The newer Earth Rock set is also available as a separate release. As the name implies, this is a singalong, with 10 new arrangements of the show's most famous songs sung by various celebrities and musicians, and hosted by Ryan Seacrest of American Idol fame.Īll of the classic Schoolhouse Rock! shorts are now available on DVD - save one installment of "Scooter Computer" thought lost until 2013, which eventually emerged on YouTube. On February 1st, 2023, ABC celebrated the show's 50th anniversary with a special called Schoolhouse Rock! 50th Anniversary Singalong. A live stage show, Schoolhouse Rock Live!, began touring in 1993. In 2009, yet another reunion produced Earth Rock, about environmental issues.īetween 19, a series of CD-ROM games were published by the now defunct Creative Wonders. In 2002 the team reunited again to produce two new America Rock segments ("I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College" and "Presidential Minute") as a Milestone Celebration. Reruns later aired on Toon Disney in the mid 2000s. The shorts continued airing, now part of the One Saturday Morning block, until 2000. In addition, two new Grammar Rock segments ("Busy Prepositions" and "The Tale of Mr. Chips) and in 1995/96 the original team reunited for the much more successful Money Rock. 1983 saw an earnest but ill-fated attempt at Computer Rock (a.k.a. Taking cues from Sesame Street and other contemporary educational programming, Schoolhouse Rock! avoided the blandness and conformity plaguing most animated shows of the era and instead presented a hip, inclusive, fast-paced, and funny (often downright snarky) attitude to learning.Įpisodes initially fell under one of four headings, in order of production: Multiplication Rock, Grammar Rock, America Rock (history, mostly released around the 1976 American Bicentennial) and Science Rock. Many of the shorts were permanently burned into the minds of young viewers.Īlong with the educational content, the series won accolades for the consistently high quality of the songs - besides Dorough and Ahrens, performers included genre legends Jack Sheldon, Blossom Dearie, Essra Mohawk, and Grady Tate - and the overall cleverness of the lyrics and animation. The Saturday morning format provided a perfect vehicle to repeat the shorts over and over until the lesson was learned from the start, Schoolhouse Rock! was a roaring success as both education and entertainment, running for 37 episodes repeated endlessly over 12 years. Jones loved the concept, Eisner persuaded his regular program lineup to snip three minutes off each program's running time to accommodate it, and a legend was born. The initial pitch was made to Michael Eisner, then vice president of ABC's children's programming, who brought along one Chuck Jones. Thus the idea to introduce basic learning concepts to young minds via simple-but-catchy rock, jazz, folk and pop tunes - most of them written by jazz mainstay Bob Dorough and eventual Broadway lyricist Lynn Ahrens - accompanied by entertaining visuals, animated by a team led by Tom Yohe. Networks couldn't advertise things related to the cartoons they were airing in those timeslots, so there was an opening for educational shorts even after running through cereal commercials.Īt around the same time, advertising executive David McCall noticed that while his son was struggling in school, he had no trouble remembering the lyrics to his favorite songs. Schoolhouse Rock! was a series of educational short cartoons - so short, that they'd fit into the space of a single commercial break - that aired Saturday mornings on ABC, originally between 19 and again from 1993–2000.īack in the day, Saturday morning children's programming was supposed to be at least tangentially educational, and Merchandise-Driven advertising was severely limited.
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