Picture_Pages

<i>Picture Pages</i>

Picture Pages

American educational television program

For the British television programme, see Picture Page.

Picture Pages is a 1978–1984 American educational television program aimed at preschool children, presented by Bill Cosby—teaching lessons on basic arithmetic, geometry, and drawing through a series of interactive lessons that used a workbook that viewers would follow along with the lesson.[1]

Animated intro, featuring a caricature of Bill Cosby.

Picture Pages was created by Julius Oleinick and started on a local Pittsburgh children's show in 1974 with the Picture Pages puzzle booklets given away at a supermarket chain. It debuted as a national segment of the Captain Kangaroo show in 1978 (then directed by Jimmy Hirschfeld[2]), in which Captain Kangaroo would do the lessons on his "magic drawing board". Bill Cosby took over hosting the segments in 1980, presenting the lessons with a marker named "Mortimer Ichabod Marker" (M.I. for short), which was topped with a cartoon figure that played musical notes whenever he drew with it.[3]

When the Captain Kangaroo show left CBS in 1984, the Cosby-era Picture Pages series was rerun as an interstitial program on Nickelodeon from 1984 to 1993.

The show also aired in Canada on the YTV cable network.

References

  1. [1]
    Woolery, George W. (1985). Children's Television: The First Thirty-Five Years, 1946-1981, Part II: Live, Film, and Tape Series. The Scarecrow Press. pp. 393–394. ISBN 0-8108-1651-2.
  2. [2]
    "Jimmy Hirschfeld". Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
  3. [3]
    "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2005-12-26. Retrieved 2005-12-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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