“Schoolhouse Rock” helped teach an entire generation of kids about civics with “I’m Just a Bill” and grammar with “Conjunction Junction,” among many other classics.
But the series of Saturday morning cartoon shorts, which debuted 50 years ago this month, started with more modest aims: A parent, frustrated that his boys knew the lines to rock songs but couldn’t multiply, asked a co-worker at his advertising agency if he could help by setting multiplication tables to music.
The agency happened to be a client of ABC, and when it came up with “Three Is a Magic Number,” the timing couldn’t have been better to pitch the idea for TV. The network, under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission and parents upset about violent cartoons and incessant ads for sugary cereals, had recently started leaning into more educational programming.
The head of children’s programming at ABC was a young executive named Michael Eisner. He greenlit “Schoolhouse Rock” after hearing “Three Is a Magic Number,” by jazz musician Bob Dorough, and seeing the storyboards for the educational cartoon that accompanied it. That episode would debut in January 1973.