Pinwheel (TV series)


Pinwheel is an American children's television show and the first to air on Nickelodeon. It originally premiered on December 1, 1977, on Channel C-3 of QUBE's local cable system in Columbus, Ohio. Channel C-3 made the move to national television in April 1979 when Nickelodeon first launched. The Pinwheel program would continue to air on the network until 1990.
In the late 1980s, Pinwheel was gradually phased out in favor of another puppet series, Eureeka's Castle. The Los Angeles Times called Eureeka's Castle a successor series to Pinwheel.

Broadcast

Pinwheel was the flagship program of C-3, a children's network in Columbus, Ohio, in the earliest days of cable television broadcasting. C-3 soon changed its name to Pinwheel. In 1979, Warner Cable purchased the Sat-1 communications satellite from Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and rebranded the Pinwheel Channel as Nickelodeon, where it reformatted Pinwheel as hour-long episodes shown in three- to five-hour blocks, a format which eventually became the model for Nick Jr. programming for younger children.
There were a total of 260 Pinwheel episodes recorded from 1977 to 1984. Pinwheel continued to air in reruns until 1990. It remains the longest-running Nickelodeon show in episodes and hours on air and was the longest-running in years until You Can't Do That on Television broke the record. It is now #7, behind All That, You Can't Do That on Television, Nick News, Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents. The program was also the last original program on Nickelodeon to end.
A half-hour version of Pinwheel was created for international distribution; it aired in Canada on Superchannel and TVOntario, in the UK on Channel 4 and later on The Children's Channel, and on Nick Jr. during the show's final year of reruns.

Premise

The show was similar to Sesame Street; action scenes took place in and around a large Victorian-style boarding house called Pinwheel House with a pinwheel on one of the peaks. Live actors interacted with puppets, discussing various concepts familiar to children's programming like sharing, being considerate, the environment, and colors. All of the characters lived and worked in the various areas in and around the house. The QUBE episodes relied heavily on songs mostly performed by Jake.
Pinwheel underwent several changes when the Pinwheel channel was relaunched as Nickelodeon in 1979. Taping of Pinwheel moved to Matrix Studios in New York City, where the set was rebuilt. Arline Miyazaki, Betty Rozek and Dale Engel joined the cast as Kim, Sal and Smitty, Craig Marin and Olga Felgemacher created new puppet characters, and Nickelodeon acquired a package of children's shorts from Coe Film Associates to reduce the show's workload.

Characters

Humans

Kim - Aurelia’s niece who was also the resident artist of Pinwheel House.
Sal and Smitty - an elderly couple who ran a local newspaper called The Daily Noodle. One of Smitty's long-running obsessions was to capture a photograph of the elusive Admiral Bird for the front page of the Daily Noodle, though he was constantly missing his chance.
Jake - a boarder who enjoyed music and whose hobby was collecting unusual sounds in small boxes.
Franci - an artist and storyteller; she was on the show during its earliest years, but her character was eventually phased out.
Coco - a Parisian mime.

Puppets

Aurelia - a bohemian-style character who owned Pinwheel House. She had a ginger bob, olive green eyes, fuchsia lips and wore colorful head scarfs and large hoop earrings. She was friendly and bubbly, but firm.
Plus and Minus - twin boys who lived in the attic room and were Aurelia's nephews. The color schemes for the twins were the exact opposite, with Plus having black hair and orange skin and Minus with white hair and purple skin. Minus was very upbeat and enthusiastic, while Plus was more thoughtful and easily discouraged. A recurring sketch was Plus's attempt to board a spaceship to the moon, and Minus distracting him and causing him to miss the take-off. Their favorite game was "Gotcha Last," a combination of tag and hide and seek that went on eternally.
Silas the Snail - an elderly snail who was constantly on his way to an annual snail gathering, who extolled the virtues of slowing down and enjoying life, telling people that "half the fun is getting there."
Ebenezer T. Squint - a grumpy, green-skinned boarder who lived in a dusty basement storage room where he conspired to be featured in Smitty's newspaper. He pretended to be grouchy and antisocial but secretly enjoyed being included in the house activities.
Luigi O'Brien - a produce vendor who ran a small vegetable stall in the backyard of the boarding house. All of his produce also talked, sang, and had individual personalities, but were only known by their respective fruit and vegetable names.
Molly McMole - an elderly lived in a tree in the backyard and often introduced cartoon shorts in the form of telling stories.
Herbert and Lulu the Hobo Bugs - a brother-and-sister pair of marionettes who liked to dance and play on the hedges in the backyard and often appeared at Luigi's produce stand to ask for special items, such as an impossible pair of custom sandals that Luigi somehow manages to produce. They also loved to play with Ebenezer, who would typically tell them to leave him alone in a grumpy manner, even though he really enjoyed their company.
Admiral Bird - a bright red bird marionette who would drop from the sky with a strange, echoing call. Admiral Bird rarely appeared, but seemed to enjoy teasing Smitty.
Buzzy - Ebenezer's fun and somewhat dimwitted cousin who enjoyed sports.
Tika, Gorkle & Woofle - three bird-like alien marionettes from the planet Zintar who lived in a garden terrarium. They were removed from the show along with Sorbin in 1979.
Sorbin - a green and blue alien creature who also came from the planet Zintar.

List of shorts

Nickelodeon secured the rights to a number of international short segments, including those that were already written in English, such as the Franco-British children's show The Magic Roundabout. Pinwheel became a showcase for these acquisitions and featured a wide variety of both animated and stop-motion animation shorts or cartoons from many different countries.
The 1981-1984 episodes featured several shorts produced for the show that were around a minute long and set to different arrangements of the theme song. After Pinwheel was cancelled in 1984, Picture Pages shorts with Bill Cosby were shown during commercial breaks in reruns.

Works cited

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