To be totally honest, I didn't even know about this next item, Gettin' To Know Me, which, while it was developed with African-American audiences in mind, is actually meant for everyone. That said, I cannot fairly rate this show, so we will forego the rating, and jump right into a sample episode:
Sunday, July 2, 2017
It Should've Been on a Saturday: Gettin' To Know Me (1979-80)
Back in the day, PBS affiliates filled the hours when the kiddo's were at school with an assortment of educational programs aimed at pre-schoolers. The lengths of these programs varied, but the vast majority of these shows have, unfortunately, been lost to the mists of time.
To be totally honest, I didn't even know about this next item, Gettin' To Know Me, which, while it was developed with African-American audiences in mind, is actually meant for everyone. That said, I cannot fairly rate this show, so we will forego the rating, and jump right into a sample episode:
To be totally honest, I didn't even know about this next item, Gettin' To Know Me, which, while it was developed with African-American audiences in mind, is actually meant for everyone. That said, I cannot fairly rate this show, so we will forego the rating, and jump right into a sample episode:
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Here in Baltimore, Maryland, out local PBS affiliate (which at the time was channel 67, but is currently channel 22) used to air "Gettin' To Know Me" weekdays at 5 PM, after Sesame Street and The Electric Company. I don't remember much about it, except that this was one of the few kids shows at the time to focus primarily on African American characters. They basically... did stuff.
And yes, during the 1980s, PBS would generally run all kinds of educational programming of varying lengths throughout the afternoons during the week. Occasionally, we'd see a few of them being shown in school for educational purposes.
IIRC, "Gettin' To Know Me" was part of a chain of shows which (in my area, anyway) aired later in the afternoons and were aimed at 'big kids' (i.e. tweens who were same target for the McDonald's commercials which would later in the day and didn't feature any McDonald Land characters) that also included "Bean Sprouts", "Freestyle" and later "Owl TV".
I preferred the antics of Uncle Smiley, myself.
Addendum: I now remember the full lineup I referenced earlier (actually, Goldstar reminded me of it):
The Adventures of Paddington (introduced by Joel Grey) aired on Mondays, Bean Sprouts on Tuesdays, Freestyle on Wednesdays and Fridays and Rainbow's End on Thursdays. Now that I recall, Gettin' to Know Me wasn't part of that block, but it did air on weekday afternoons on our local PBS affiliate.
I remember hearing of Owl TV, but didn't see any of the shows, though my brother would regale me with tales of mocking Uncle Smiley's slapstick antics. Have to see if those shows are also on YoUTube.
You guys remember the Righteous Apples? That's going up soon.
The title sounds familiar, though my memory on it's a little fuzzy. It's possible I might have seen it and not known what it was. We watched a lot of PBS as kids.
What Silverstar said. I do hearing recall that title, but not much else. I tend to forget that PBS, while publicly funded, is indeed a broadcast network, and like all broadcast networks, it has local affiliates. So it could be a regional thing. A show that aired primarily in some states, but not in others.
I'll look it up, and see if it was regional or national.
In TV Guides, these programs were typically listed as "Instructional Programming", because they were meant to be played during class in school. Most of these shows were 15 minutes in length and covered different subjects from kindergarten to high school years. I've saved a number of these myself. One best remembered by name is "The Letter People" a puppet show featuring characters representing different letters of the alphabet. Another familiar one was "Demonstrations in Physics with Julius Sumner Miler" who played Prof. Wonderful in a series of experiments shown on Mickey Mouse Club, but otherwise more well known in Australia for a similar program aired on ABC down under.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN2oALaRfL4
I've heard of the Letter People. I'm going to be looking for that real soon.
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