The Electric Company

The Electric Company was a live-action series produced by the Children's Television Workshop following the success of Sesame Street. Developed by Sesame alumni, including executive producer Dave Connell, the program ran on PBS from 1971 to 1977. The last two seasons remained in reruns until 1985. 130 episodes were produced per season, a total of 780 episodes.

While Sesame Street was targeted primarily at preschool children and covered a broad curricular base from letter and number recognition to shapes, relational concepts, and abstract ideas, The Electric Company was aimed at elementary school kids aged 6–9 and intended to teach and supplement reading skill instruction, with emphasis on phonics, rhymes, punctuation, and basics of sentence structure. Although the series used a variety of short segments and animated commercials much like Sesame Street, there was no one central set equivalent to Sesame Street as the primary starting point. Its slogan was "for the graduates of Sesame Street."

The show also utilized a repertory cast portraying a variety of recurring and one-shot characters, in contrast to the central human figures on Sesame, who generally had fixed names and identities. The company included such name players as Rita Moreno and Bill Cosby (for the first two seasons), as well as a then-unknown Morgan Freeman (as Easy Reader, Dracula, and others) and a motley group of stage veterans and improvisational comedians including Skip Hinnant, Jim Boyd, Luis Avalos, Hattie Winston, Judy Graubart, and Lee Chamberlin, among others.

Recurring characters included the surly old man J. Arthur Crank; detective Fargo North, Decoder; diner owner Vi; the bellowing Hollywood director Otto (played by Rita Moreno); and Spider-Man. Puppetry was minimal, limited to the aniform character Lorelei the Chicken and a handful of guest appearances by the Sesame Street Muppets.

In May 2008, Sesame Workshop began shooting for a new revival of the series that debuted January 19, 2009, and features few references to the original series. Muppet performer Tyler Bunch provides voices for several of the cartoon segments, notably in the Jack Bowser series.

1971 series
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2009 series
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