The Electric Company

I've heard that PBS is bringing back The Electric Company, a great educational show from when I was a kid.

Sort of.

There's going to be a new "Electric Company," which isn't going to have much in common with the old one other than it will be geared toward helping kids learn to read and it will include the classic "Hey, you guys!" line that opened the original Electric Company.

It's too bad there won't be more in common between the two because I LOVED The Electric Company as a child. We watched it in school every Friday, and it was fun to sit with other students and shout out the words that were being taught to us. I also remember, though this had nothing to do with The Electric Company, that a splash screen saying "KET" (for Kentucky Educational Television) appeared, and for three straight years one of the kids in my class would yell to another, "Hey, Kent, there's your name on TV: K-E-T!" and that Kent would yell back, "That's not how you spell it, dummy!"

The Electric Company did make me aware of actor Morgan Freeman a good ten years before most people had heard of him. In fact, when I see him in a movie today I still look at him and think, "Hey, it's the dude from The Electric Company." Same with Joan Rivers. She was the narrator for "Letterman," and no matter how gross she gets I still think fondly of her.

And it's because of The Electric Company that I can't get out of my head the idea that Spiderman is a mute.

I miss this show. I wish PBS had just starting doing re-runs of the old show rather than creating a new one. Or create a new show but give it a different name. Only the original Electric Company is the REAL Electric Company.

If you remember it fondly, like I do, enjoy these videos: