If you were a kid in the '70s - or the parent of one - chances are you can still belt out a jangly version of the Constitution's preamble or chant a certain Boston postal code. In their time, television's Schoolhouse Rock and Zoom were innovative, visually stimulating, and effective learning tools. Two decades later, they're both making comebacks - in traditional and high-tech versions.
The WGBH-produced Zoom, which ran from 1972 to 1979, was an early lesson in interactivity - the games, stories, and songs its kid cast enacted all originated from viewer ideas. This September, a pilot for a new series of Zoom episodes finished shooting, based this time on suggestions delivered not merely to the famous "Box three-five-oh, Boston, Mass., Oh-two-one-three-four!" but to the show's e-mail address as well. A jingle featuring the words "dot com" can't be far behind.
In the interim, Zoom is already alive and kicking at its Web site, where curious youngsters and nostalgic grown-ups can listen to the relentlessly catchy Zoom theme song, learn a "Zoomdo" or two, and gaze at the gleefully polyester-era Zoom logo.
"We were looking for interest and we thought, We need a new solicitation," says producer Alison Bassett. "Zoom is made up of material from kids, and kids are out there on the Net." Not all of them, though. "We're PBS. We're trying to reach all economic levels," explains Bassett. "People think the computer is everywhere, but it's not in a lot of homes and schools. We have to offer different levels." In other words, the PO box stays.
For those who do have access, however, the Zoom site promises to keep expanding with fresh "Zoomdo" activities and a Zoom bulletin board. The cast is also ready to spend some time hanging out on the page, chatting with a new generation of baby Zoomers. "We just selected the cast," says Bassett. "They know that they're part of a legacy. It's cool."
If Zoom is about tapping a child's creativity, Schoolhouse Rock has always delivered more practical information on history and conjunctions, albeit in a whimsical package. The TV segments, with their naïvely drawn cartoon figures and easy-to-learn songs, ran between ads for sugar-encrusted breakfast cereals on ABC each Saturday morning for 12 years, beginning in 1973. They were brought back, complete with new songs and lessons in economics, in 1992. One of the original creators, George Newall, is a longtime advertising executive who was also behind some of the most memorable ad campaigns of the '70s. He takes a certain amount of redemptive pride in his educational snippets. "When I get to the pearly gates and St. Peter asks me, 'What have you done?' I'm not going to say High Karate cologne, I'm going to say Schoolhouse Rock."
Today, Schoolhouse Rock is being offered in several new forms. "Digitally remastered" versions of the segments are now available on video and CD-ROM, and a tribute album is on the way. The half-hour videos are divided into their familiar grammar, multiplication, America, and science categories. Creative Wonders's Schoolhouse Rock CD-ROM, due in November, includes all the old standards along with new games and activities.
Even if Web pages and CD-ROMs are presenting Schoolhouse Rock and Zoom in upgraded formats, the straightforward, unfussy concepts of both and the way they teach without letting kids know they're being taught remain the same. After all, it worked the first time. "When we tell people we're doing a new Zoom," says Alison Bassett, "you'd be amazed at how many sing us the Zip code."
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Schoolhouse Rock of Ages
