‘Encyclopedia’: Where Educational Fare Meets Comedy

The weight of the title alone is enough to suggest that the force behind “Encyclopedia,” a new children’s TV series about words, is none other than Children’s Television Workshop, the venerable producer of “Sesame Street” and other highbrow kids’ TV.

Substance and lofty aim are the hallmarks of CTW productions, and “Encyclopedia”--by name--would seem to qualify on both counts, leading to the assumption that the program is the logical educational complement to other CTW productions, most notably the science show “Three-Two-One Contact” and the math series “Square One TV.”

The show’s premise is certainly suitable educational TV: Humorous skits, jazz music and a wealth of dazzling graphics are used to explain and illuminate various entries that a youngster might come across while thumbing through the encyclopedia.

And yet “Encyclopedia” is something out of the ordinary for CTW, owing to the difference between the public service-minded PBS, heretofore the usual venue for CTW projects, and for-profit television, with its premium on entertainment value. “Encyclopedia” is the first series outside of public TV that CTW has had a hand in.

Given the distinction that sets “Encyclopedia” apart, the project had to deviate from the normal CTW way of developing a show, which, stated simply, is to identify an educational weakness among the nation’s youngsters and then attack with a broad lesson plan presented entertainingly over the course of, say, 40 TV episodes.

“Encyclopedia,” which the pay-cable channel HBO has been airing Mondays at 7:30 p.m. since Sept. 19, wasn’t designed so much as a video study aid as it was a comedy show for children that happens to have meat.

“You do have to take into account the medium of distribution,” explained David Britt, president of Children’s Television Workshop. “In terms of the networks or syndication or cable, where the purpose is less strictly educational, the balance can be changed.

“If you looked at the first 75 episodes of ‘Square One TV’ and the 30 new episodes (on PBS), you would begin to see a textbook underneath there. In ‘Encyclopedia,’ you’re seeing the pages torn out of that textbook.”

The 23-episode “Encyclopedia” series is a joint production of CTW and HBO, a partnership that created an amalgam of a production team best illustrated by the fact that some of the writers came from “Sesame Street” and others from “Saturday Night Live.”

The series’ executive producer, Franklin Getchell, was a senior producer for “3-2-1 Contact” and still writes for the science series. Meanwhile, the director of “Encyclopedia,” Joshua White, did HBO’s “Max Headroom Show.”

“Encyclopedia” took a less cumbersome route to fruition than the typical CTW project, which is usually put together over a period of two to three years at the behest of a large advisory board of educational professionals.

Once the go-ahead was given, the “Encyclopedia” pilot was made in about four months. A handful of educational consultants had their way in the show’s content, but the program was devised mainly by TV professionals who relied heavily on the HBO staff’s expertise in the comedy scene.

The HBO staff was able to steer the production team to clubs and improvisation groups, which yielded some of “Encyclopedia’s” regular cast members--for instance, the trio of female jazz singers that goes by the name “Betty.”

“We worked with them to boost the entertainment qualities of the program,” said Sheila Nevins, HBO’s vice president of documentaries and family programming, who happens to have been a producer at CTW. “We wanted their informational expertise so we wouldn’t be singing and dancing without some impact. It was a wedding.”

Nevins had gone looking for a new children’s series two years ago as the end of the run of Jim Henson’s highly regarded “Fraggle Rock” on HBO began to loom. The licensing agreement ended earlier this year.

“We tried to get a high profile with one impactable show. ‘Fraggle Rock” was a hard act to follow,” Nevins explained. “There are very few places to go (for children’s shows). People who don’t want to make the toy before the show are hard to come by.”

She remembered being intrigued by the title of a show that CTW was kicking around, “Encyclopedia,” and so she pursued the idea. “We never worried (with a CTW show) that we would be doing something bad for children. We didn’t know if we’d succeed, but we knew we wouldn’t be doing harm.”

The CTW side of the production team, for its part, is pleased with the company’s first long-term venture into the profit-making TV arena. Executive producer Getchell says the show fulfills what it set out to do, and that is to “entertain, and provide some vocabulary and information along the way.”