The hard, cold business reason? Muppets. Think about the tie-in merchandise potential between Sesame Street and The Electric Company for one second and you realize they’re not even playing the same sport*.
The reason Sesame Street has lasted longer in the “hearts and minds” of people who grew up with both? Also Muppets. I was just thinking … when I aged out of the target demographic for The Electric Company, I just left those characters behind. Outside of the occasional adulthood nostalgia, I don’t think about them. When I aged out of the target demographic for Sesame Street … hey look! The Muppet Show! A show with a target demographic I’m just aging into! And then movies! Point being, Sesame Street characters gave me many more years of “beloved childhood memories” than did The Electric Company.
(Oh man, I just pictured a Sesame Street with no Muppets, in which all of the live-action segments were just the adult cast interacting with children and each other. I don’t think I would have watched that show.)
*Granted, if McFarlane studios ever came out with an Easy Reader action figure I’d be all over that shit.
Spider-man, where are you coming from Spider-Man, nobody knows who you are! (damn ninja’d)
Marvel even put out the Spidey Super Stories series based loosely on the segment (the lettering was extra large so dumb kids could read it.) I had an issue guest starring Ms. Marvel.
The theme song from Spiderman is the only thing I fondly remember from Electric Company. By the time I was ready to move on from Sesame Street both Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact were also too young-centric for my tastes.
Back when I was a toddler, my dad had a brief stint as a DJ on a station out of Brattleboro. At one point he came home with a 45 of promo spots for TEC, which was just starting out on PBS. I think they may have actually featured the actors from the show. My favorite one revolved around a fellow who thought it was going to be an action show called “The Meter Readers”, and kept up a running commentary about what he thought would make good programming while the other person kept talking about what the show was actually about. At one point the guy burst out with “Fighting off hostile dogs…” in a Long Island accent.
It still makes me giggle, forty-odd years later.
I stupidly left it behind when we moved out of that house. Might be a collector’s item today.
All of the above. The public Library in our town was my home away from home when I was a kid; it was a great library considering the size of our town, and I used to wander the stacks endlessly, pulling any book off the shelf that attracted my attention for any reason whatsoever.
One day, a book entitled, “Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle,” somehow caught my eye. I opened it to discover sheet music, lyrics, weird illustrations, and there, toward the back, music and lyrics for, “-LY,” and, “Silent E.” Hey, they were from The Electric Company!! As luck would have it, the library’s record collection included both, “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,” and, “That Was The Year That Was,” and thus started my lifelong love of all things Tom Lehrer.
Similarly, the first time I remember seeing Morgan Freeman in anything, my immediate thought was, “Hey, it’s Easy Reader!!”
And, yeah, count me as very late to the game with, “Fargo North, Decoder” as well.
I was sort of the opposite. I watched The Electric Company, but discovered, and loved, Lehrer’s work independently. When I found out later that he did “Silent E” and “-LY”, and others, I was very surprised. I just hadn’t recognized the voice.
Oddly, while I remember that I watched “the Electric Company” daily, I only remember bits and pieces.
I remember that “Who’s the Dummy Writing this Show?” was a recurring catchphrase.
There was a gorilla as a regular character (an actor in a gorilla costume, of course). He never talked, just mimed what he wanted to say. I think everyone called him “Oscar” ???
Rita Moreno had a recurring bit where she was a silent movie director (dressed in the cliche of a pretentious old-time movie director) who was constantly exasperated because her actors couldn’t get their lines right.
There was a chorus of kids who did song & dance numbers.
But then, I also remember a time when even “The Electric Company” was for little kids and I, being a mature and sophisticated eight-year old, preferred watching the much more grown-up 3-2-1 Contact.
The Short Circus, one of whom was Denise Nickerson, who played Violet in the Gene Wilder Willie Wonka, and another of whom was Irene Cara, who had hits in the late 70s/early 80s with “Fame” and “Flashdance (What A Feeling)”.
Slightly off topic but every time I hear Lancelot Link I think of the speech given by the General Monkey in MST3K’s Land of the Apes (starting at 1:30):
"Lancelot Link alone set us back a hundred years "
Brings back memories!
“Love of Chair”
Rita Moreno: “MAKE-UP!”
Many years after I watched TEC, I became an elementary teacher. I was astonished to discover that I was teaching my Kindergartners to do what I saw on TEC. We don’t “sound out” words anymore; now we "decode"them, So Fargo North, Decoder is right up with the times. I already knew how to read when I started watching that, so the silhouette faces saying onset and rime (Word beginnings and endings) made no sense to me until I needed to teach it. I wish the original show was back, because it would be much better for our kids to watch than what they do see now.
My son watched every episode of the revived series in about two weeks. I tried to sit him down with an episode of the old version and he lasted five minutes.
Growing up in the New York area in the 70s, of course I loved the EC. When my son was two (in 2012), I bought the 4-DVD package of episodes. My kid got into them, on three separate occasions: for a couple months when he was almost three (though he was scared of the gorilla), and most recently for a few months when he was almost six (and could finally appreciate the learning-to-read aspect, not to mention his beloved Spider-Man). I was thrilled that the show held up so well today (while also beng quintessentially 70s).
Rita and Morgan are of course great, but so are the kids, and the other adult actors (David Avalos — I think that’s his name — died about three years ago, and his obituary made me realize what a wonderful guy he was).
Those melting-letters colorful graphic sequences used a then-innovative technology.
