PBS kids show goes interactive

For years, the classic children's show, "The Electric Company" opened with the signature line, "Hey you Guuuuuys!"

That was the verbal cue for school-age kids to gather around the television for some sketch comedy built around developing reading skills.

Now in the reinvented version of the much-heralded PBS show, that famous call is being used to lure kids to another screen — one in which they can create a digital version of themselves and become a character in the program they used to just passively watch.

The folks at Sesame Workshop — the non-profit educational organization that produces "The Electric Company" and its venerable forerunner "Sesame Street" — are calling this new marriage of television and Web a "transmedia experience."

"We are really letting the children be in the driver seat," said Erica Branch-Ridley, supervising producer of online content for "The Electric Company."

"The Electric Company," which aired for six seasons inthe 1970s with a cast that included big-name stars Bill Cosby and Rita Moreno, was revamped in 2009 with a new cast and a similar mission of building reading and math skills in kids age 6 to 9.

This third season of the new"Electric Company" begins airing today with episodes that will end with a two-minute animated segment. In the 12 mini-episodes, two animated versions of characters in the cast will battle a villain who is using a"wordsuckeruppernator" to steal all the words on Earth. Each episode ends in a cliffhanger, with the characters shouting the show's famous catch phrase and a narrator telling kids to log onto PBSKIDSGO.org/electriccompany, to join the adventure.



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