'The Electric Company' recharged for a new generation

The Orange County Register (MCT) - Three decades after "The Electric Company" went dark, PBS flipped the switch Monday on a new version of the '70s kids show, seeking to entertain and educate another generation of children.

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"'The Electric Company' has such love," says executive producer Karen Fowler, talking about why Sesame Workshop decided to bring it back. "People loved it so much it's really a pop culture icon.

"And so the opportunity to sort of step on the shoulders of what that movement was all about, and build on it for today's kids, gives us access in places and ways we wouldn't have had."

What the original movement was all about was promoting literacy in an entertaining package _ and that need and method still hold true today.

"The reason to do a literacy show is the statistics," Fowler says. ""Twenty-five percent of kids in second grade are not reading on grade level. If you look at African-American and Latino kids it's over 50 percent, which is frightening."

And so as Sesame Workshop set about creating a new literacy show, it eventually settled on a retooled "Electric Company," Fowler says.

"I looked at what was the inherent juice, the essential elements of 'The Electric Company' that made it so righteous for the day," she says. "So, pop culture of the moment, music of the moment, incredibly cast in front of the camera, amazing people behind the camera.

"I looked at that and said, 'OK, what does that mean for today?' Because obviously our media environment is much wilder, there's so much more choice."

What emerged is a hip show with modern sensibilities and a sincerity that avoids the pitfalls of overly earnest kids' TV.

The actors who play members of the Electric Company _ young people with super-word-powers _ all come off as real people. The Pranksters who try to foil the Electric Company's efforts, are an amusing crew of troublemakers.

And, as Fowler suggested, the brand-name talents that signed up to work on the show represent the fresh edge of entertainment today, with everyone from rapper Common and Fall Out Boy star Pete Wentz to Samantha Bee of "The Daily Show" and Jack McBrayer of "30 Rock" stopping by to appear in different episodes.

With all that to attract young viewers _ the target audience is roughly 6- to 10-year-olds _ the deeply embedded literacy curriculum stands a good shot of reaching young viewers, Fowler believes.

"It's got to be righteous enough for them to want to choose it, cool enough that they want to sing along with it, but its also got to have that educational rigor so that at the end of the day we've done our job," she says.

Keith Watson, a 13-year-old from New York City, plays Ricky Smith, one of the Electric Company kids, and says he landed his audition without much idea at all of what the show was, putting him pretty much in the same boat as its intended viewers today.

"My parents told me it was a show from the '70s, and I thought, 'OK, that's cool,'" Watson says. "And then I went on iTunes and watched some episodes to see.

"I thought they were really great, and that it was really cool that we're able to do things in a different way that would make sense for a different generation," he says, offering as an example that both shows, old and new, feature songs titled "Silent E," though they're done in the musical styles of the time in which they were created.

As an eighth grader, he's a little older than the target audience, and reading at a high level. (He's just started J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher In The Rye.") But the idea that his acting might inspire younger kids to improve their reading is a thrill, Watson says.

"It makes it all the better, because not only is all your hard work going to entertain people, but you're also going to give kids the skills that they're going to be needing for the rest of their lives," he says. "We could be changing hundreds of thousands of kids' lives.

"To think about that, that's a great thought and it's kind of mind boggling to think that what I'm doing at 13 could change the world," Watson says.

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THE ELECTRIC COMPANY

What: A new version of the classic PBS kids' show

When: New episodes will run at 3:30 p.m. Fridays and repeat at 11:30 a.m. Sundays

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© 2009, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).