The Electric Company

The Electric Company is an American children’s educational television series produced by the Children’s Television Workshop from 1971 to 1977. Its comedy sketches taught reading skills, including phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Phonics: A method of teaching reading by connecting speech sounds with written letters and letter patterns. Many sketches isolate letter-sound relationships to help beginning readers decode words.
Children’s Television Workshop: An American nonprofit production organization established to create educational television for children. The organization developed and produced The Electric Company.
Rita Moreno: A Puerto Rican-American actress, singer, and dancer whose career includes stage, film, and television. Moreno was a featured performer and won an Emmy for her work on the series.
Letterman: An animated character in The Electric Company who delivered comic letters and words to the program’s sketches. The character made individual letters a recurring visual and comic teaching device.
Educational television: Television programming designed to support learning or communicate educational material. The series became a prominent example of teaching academic skills through entertainment.
Consonant blend: A sequence of consonants in which each sound remains audible, as in the opening of “stop.” The show’s “blends” segments animated sound sequences such as consonant clusters.
Joan Ganz Cooney: An American television producer who co-founded the Children’s Television Workshop and helped create Sesame Street. Cooney’s educational television work helped establish the institution behind the series.
Morgan Freeman: An American actor known for film, television, and stage roles. Freeman was a cast member before becoming widely known for later screen roles.
The Short Circus: A group of young performers who appeared in musical segments on The Electric Company. Their songs used performance and repetition to reinforce language and reading skills.
Public Broadcasting Service: An American public television network that distributes programming through member stations. PBS carried the series nationally after its initial distribution through the National Educational Television system.

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Joss WhedonRelated: Whedon worked as a staff writer on the series early in his television career.