Schoolhouse Rock Case Study
Schoolhouse Rock! began as a commercial advertising venture by David McCall, half of the Madison Avenue advertising agency McCaffrey & McCall. The idea came to McCall when he noticed one of his sons, who was having trouble in school remembering the multiplication tables, knew the lyrics to then-current rock songs.[1]
The first song recorded was "Three Is a Magic Number", written by jazz veteran Bob Dorough. It tested well,[clarification needed] so a children's record was compiled and released. Tom Yohe listened to the first song, and began to doodle pictures to go with the lyrics. He told McCall that the songs would make good animation.
When a print workbook version fell through, McCall's company decided to produce their own animated versions of the songs, …show more content…
which they then sold to ABC (which was already the advertising company's biggest account)[citation needed] based on a demo animation of the original "Three Is A Magic Number" for its Saturday morning lineup. They pitched their idea to Michael Eisner, then vice-president of ABC's children's programming division. Eisner brought longtime Warner Bros. cartoonist/director Chuck Jones to the meeting to also listen to the presentation.
The network's children's programming division had producers of its regular 30- and 60-minute programs cut three minutes out of each of their shows, and sold General Foods on the idea of sponsoring the segments.[citation needed]
The series stayed on the air for 12 years.
Later sponsors of the Schoolhouse Rock! segments also included Nabisco, Kenner Toys, Kellogg's, and McDonald's.[citation needed] During the early 1970s, Schoolhouse Rock was one of several short-form animated educational shorts that aired on ABC's children's lineup; others included Time for Timer and The Bod Squad. Of the three, Schoolhouse Rock was the longest-running.
The original lineup, consisting of thirty-seven episodes, was recorded and produced between 1972 and 1979. The first season of Schoolhouse Rock, "Multiplication Rock", debuted in 1973 and included all of the multiplication tables from two through twelve, with one episode devoted to powers of 10 (My Hero Zero) instead of multiples of ten. This original series was followed in short order by a new series, ran from 1973 to 1975, entitled "Grammar Rock", which included nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech (such as conjunctions, explained in "Conjunction
Junction").
The first song recorded was "Three Is a Magic Number", written by jazz veteran Bob Dorough. It tested well,[clarification needed] so a children's record was compiled and released. Tom Yohe listened to the first song, and began to doodle pictures to go with the lyrics. He told McCall that the songs would make good animation.
When a print workbook version fell through, McCall's company decided to produce their own animated versions of the songs, …show more content…
which they then sold to ABC (which was already the advertising company's biggest account)[citation needed] based on a demo animation of the original "Three Is A Magic Number" for its Saturday morning lineup. They pitched their idea to Michael Eisner, then vice-president of ABC's children's programming division. Eisner brought longtime Warner Bros. cartoonist/director Chuck Jones to the meeting to also listen to the presentation.
The network's children's programming division had producers of its regular 30- and 60-minute programs cut three minutes out of each of their shows, and sold General Foods on the idea of sponsoring the segments.[citation needed]
The series stayed on the air for 12 years.
Later sponsors of the Schoolhouse Rock! segments also included Nabisco, Kenner Toys, Kellogg's, and McDonald's.[citation needed] During the early 1970s, Schoolhouse Rock was one of several short-form animated educational shorts that aired on ABC's children's lineup; others included Time for Timer and The Bod Squad. Of the three, Schoolhouse Rock was the longest-running.
The original lineup, consisting of thirty-seven episodes, was recorded and produced between 1972 and 1979. The first season of Schoolhouse Rock, "Multiplication Rock", debuted in 1973 and included all of the multiplication tables from two through twelve, with one episode devoted to powers of 10 (My Hero Zero) instead of multiples of ten. This original series was followed in short order by a new series, ran from 1973 to 1975, entitled "Grammar Rock", which included nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech (such as conjunctions, explained in "Conjunction
Junction").