The Magic School Bus is an American
Saturday morningA Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...
animated television series based on
the book series of the same nameThe Magic School Bus is a series of children's books about science written by author Joanna Cole. They feature the antics of Ms. Valerie Frizzle, an elementary school teacher, and her class, who board a magical school bus which takes them on field trips to impossible locations such as the solar...
by
Joanna ColeJoanna Cole , is a United States author of children’s books. She is most famous as the author of The Magic School Bus series of children's books...
. It is notable for its use of celebrity talent and combining entertainment with an educational show, according to an article in
Animation World MagazineAnimation World Network is an organization for animators, with an extensive website with news, articles and links for professional animators and animation fans. AWN also publishes a printed journal, "Animation World"....
by Annemarie Moody incorporating an interview with Executive Producer Deborah Forte.
Broadcasting & CableBroadcasting & Cable magazine is a television industry trade magazine published by NewBay Media. Previous names included Broadcasting/Telecasting, Broadcasting and Broadcast Advertising, and Broadcasting...
said the show was "among the highest-rated
PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
shows for school-age children."
Production and airing
In 1994,
The Magic School Bus concept was made into an animated series of the same name by Scholastic Studios (USA), and premiered on September 10, 1994. Forte says that adapting the books into an animated series was an opportunity to help kids “learn about science in a fun way”. Around that time, Forte had been hearing concern from parents and teachers about how to improve science education for girls and minorities. Each episode of the show ran about 30 minutes. In the United States, the show originally aired on
PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, through South Carolina's
SCETVSouth Carolina Educational Television is the statewide public television and public radio network in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It consists of all the Public Broadcasting Service member [television stations and National Public Radio member radio stations in the state...
network; it was the first fully animated series to be aired on PBS. The last episode aired on December 6, 1997, when the series stopped production. The
FoxFox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
network aired repeats from September 1998 to September 2002. Starting September 27, 2010, the Magic School Bus started a daily run on
quboQubo is a multi-platform children's television specialty channel endeavor operated as a joint venture between ION Media Networks, NBCUniversal, Nelvana, Scholastic Corporation, and Classic Media...
(United States), and on Saturday mornings on
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
/Telemundo (Telemundo broadcast The Magic School Bus in Spanish). The Fox Kids and qubo airings both use a shortened version of the opening.
The Magic School Bus was also seen on
TLCTLC is an American cable TV specialty channel which initially focused on educational content. Since 1991 TLC has been owned by Discovery Communications, the same company that operates the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and The Science Channel, as well as other learning-themed networks...
and
Discovery KidsDiscovery Kids is an American website owned by Discovery Communications, Inc. created for children. Until October 10, 2010, it was an American digital cable specialty channel, owned by Discovery Communications with television programming for education of children. It was launched in October 1996...
in the U.S., Pop and
CITVCITV is a British television channel from ITV Digital Channels Ltd, a division of ITV plc. It broadcasts content from the CITV archive, as well as commissions and acquisitions. CITV itself is the programming block on the main ITV Network .The CITV channel broadcasts from 06:00 to 18:00...
in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, with no plans to make more episodes, on November 9, 2002. In 2005, Nelvana sold the show to Cartoon Network. The series continued on these six stations until February 4, 2006. Qubo picked the show up on September 27, 2010.
When
The Magic School Bus is syndicated on commercial networks, the
Producer Says segment at the end of each episode is cut out to make space for commercials. The
Producer Says segments are only seen when the series is shown on non-commercial networks (e.g. PBS and Knowledge) and children's networks (commercial breaks are shorter). Within the episodes, there also are timepoints where the episode fades out and then fades back in after a series of commercials are shown. On the VHS and DVD releases the scene immediately fades back in right after it fades out as no commercials are shown.
The show's theme song called "Ride on the Magic School Bus" was written by
Peter LuryePeter Lurye is a composer and lyricist.-Credits:Lurye is credited for theme music and/or songs in*Jungle Junction*Bear in the Big Blue House...
and performed by rock 'n' roll legend
Little RichardRichard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, and actor, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. He was also the first artist to put the funk in the rock and roll beat and...
.
The show was produced in an animation and audio style reminiscent of
Hanna-BarberaHanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
cartoons of the 1970s and 1980s.
The show's voice director is
Susan BluSusan Maria Blu , sometimes credited as Sue Blu, is an American voice actress, voice director, and casting director in American and Canadian cinema and television...
.
Two of the writers for the show were
Brian MuehlBrian Muehl born in the 1950s, is an American book writer, and a former Sesame Street puppeteer living in Connecticut.Brian's muppet characters included Oscar the Grouch's girlfriend, Grundgetta, Telly Monster, Barkley the dog and Forgetful Jones's girlfriend Clementine. He continued to voice...
, and one of the
Fraggle RockFraggle Rock is a children's live action puppet television program series created by Jim Henson. The central characters were a set of "Muppet" creatures called Fraggles. The show ran from January 10, 1983, to March 30, 1987, on CBC Television in Canada, ITV in the UK, HBO in the United States,...
creators Jocelyn Stevenson.
The series was released on
VHSThe Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
by
KidVisionKidVision was a Warner Bros-owned home video distributor of children's programing active from 1993 to 2002.-History:KidVision was founded as a division of A*Vision Entertainment, later WarnerVision Entertainment in 1993 and started distributing videos in 1994 with The Magic School Bus, Shining Time...
between December 13, 1994 and March 3, 1998 and by
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of the 20th Century Fox film studio. It was established in 1976 as Magnetic Video Corporation, and later as 20th Century Fox Video, CBS/Fox Video and FoxVideo, Inc....
between January 12, 1999 and April 2, 2002, and on
DVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
by
Warner Home VideoWarner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
between May 9, 2006 and August 4, 2009. Both the DVDs and VHS releases contain the funding credits. In the VHS and DVD releases, all the episodes are uncut with the
Producer Says segments intact.
Reception
Jason Fry, in a column for the online edition of the
Wall Street Journal, expressed an overall appreciation for the show, but wrote that the episode
The Magic School Bus Gets Programmed should have been about the perils of internet searches and network concepts surfacing at the time, rather than an old-fashioned technology-run-amok story about the respective roles of programmer and machine (although he admitted that the episode was ten years old).
Tomlin won a
Daytime EmmyAn Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for her role as Ms. Frizzle.
Funding
The series was primarily funded by the
National Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
,
Microsoft HomeMicrosoft Home is a defunct line of software applications and personal hardware products published by Microsoft. Microsoft Home software titles first appeared in the middle of 1993. These applications were designed to bring multimedia to Microsoft Windows and Macintosh personal computers...
, the
United States Department of EnergyThe United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
, and the
Carnegie Corporation of New YorkCarnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," is one of the oldest, largest and most influential of American foundations...
. The
Corporation for Public BroadcastingThe Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...
and the viewers/stations of PBS also provided funding.
External links