Musical Show for Children Is Coming to PBS in the Fall

With an eye trained on teaching music education and appreciation to children, PBS announced Thursday the launch of a new half-hour series from “Lamb Chop” creator and 12-time Emmy Award winner Shari Lewis.

The 40-episode series titled “The Charlie Horse Music Pizza” will debut this fall and will be targeted to 2- to 8-year-olds, but apparently with an emphasis on preschoolers.

With music and comedy, the series is set primarily at a beach pizza parlor that serves as a local hangout for neighborhood kids. The setting is home to Shari, Charlie Horse, a drum-playing, skateboarding orangutan named Take Out and Fingers, a saxophone-playing raccoon, plus those familiar puppet figures Lamb Chop and Hush Puppy. Guest stars from the worlds of music, entertainment and sports will also pay frequent visits.

“It’s very important to get them early because children are never as receptive to music, and to developing the skills that are necessary to learn music, as they are when they are very, very young,” Lewis said.

“Music Pizza” is being produced by 8 Candles Production Inc. in association with KCET-TV Channel 28.

Other productions announced by PBS at the winter meeting of the Television Critics Assn. in Pasadena were a four part-documentary series, “Addiction and Recovery: A Bill Moyers Special,” planned for spring 1998; “Challenging Art,” four hourlong programs for the 1998-99 season about now classic works of visual arts, music, literature and film that were once censored or challenged; and “Healthweek,” a weekly half-hour magazine series about health and environmental issues, premiering this spring.

Much of the questioning tossed at PBS President Ervin S. Duggan Thursday dealt with the overwhelming financial success during the holidays of the Tickle Me Elmo doll, based on a character from PBS’ “Sesame Street.” Duggan insisted that “Sesame Street” is “a good deal for us.” He said PBS pays $7 million a year for what is a $21-million-a-year product. The remaining $14 million comes from Children’s Television Workshop, the production company, which gets some of its money from “sales of ancillary product.”

Duggan added that while PBS tries to get the best contracts possible from children’s producers, taking money directly in profit-sharing on products such as Tickle Me Elmo would be like the public library asking for royalties from best-selling authors.

Meanwhile, Duggan said that PBS is working “quietly” and “nimbly” to become much more “entrepreneurial,” forming partnerships with such companies as Reader’s Digest and Time/Warner. As a result of these activities, he noted that PBS’ budget for fiscal 1997, which ends June 30, is $224.5 million, up 32% from $172 million the previous year.

PBS programming chief Kathy Quattrone noted that money for programming is going up as well--from $115 million in fiscal 1995 to a projected $165 million by the year 2000. The current program budget is $132 million.

As for the increased use over the past year by its major member stations of 30-second corporate messages or commercials, Duggan predicted that there will be an “intense debate” within public TV in the coming year about use of these spots. While he noted that the “last thing” the system needs is another commercial network, he said he doesn’t believe in “imposing” his own point of view on the stations.

“I am a friendly but intense skeptic,” he said.