The Magic School Bus (TV series)

Production and airing

In 1994, The Magic School Bus concept was made into an animated series of the same name by Scholastic Entertainment, and premiered on September 10, 1994. The Idea for the show was thought up by Former Scholastic Entertainment Vice President and Senior Editorial Director Craig Walker. Scholastic Entertainment president Deborah Forte said that adapting the books into an animated series was an opportunity to help kids "learn about science in a fun way". Around that time, Forte had been hearing concerns from parents and teachers about how to improve science education for girls and minorities across the globe. Each episode of the series ran for 30 minutes. In the United States, the series originally aired on PBS as a part of its children's block, PBS Kids, through South Carolina's SCETV network; it was the first fully animated series to be aired on PBS. The last episode aired on December 6, 1997, the series then aired reruns on PBS until October 1998. The Fox network, in a hasty effort to fill educational television mandates for its stations, aired repeats on its Fox Kids weekday block from September 1998 to September 2002. Starting September 27, 2010, The Magic School Bus started a daily run on Qubo in the US, and on Saturday mornings on NBC. The Fox Kids and Qubo airings both used a shortened version of the opening. Based on information from their website, Qubo no longer carries The Magic School Bus in their programming lineup.

The Magic School Bus was also seen on TLC from February 24, 2003 until 2008, and aired on the Ready Set Learn block on Discovery Kids from 2004 to 2009, TVOntario and the Knowledge Network in Canada and Pop, Channel 4 and CITV in the United Kingdom, with no plans to make more episodes. The series was widely known in Canada for showing reruns on CBC as part of its children's block, now known as Kids' CBC, from 1999 to 2004. In 2005, Nelvana sold the series to Latin America's Cartoon Network.

When The Magic School Bus was syndicated on commercial networks, the Producer Says segment at the end of each episode was cut out to make space for commercials. The Producer Says segments were only seen when the series was shown on non-commercial networks, international networks, VHS, and DVD releases. Within the episodes, there were also time points where the episode fades out and then fades back in after a series of commercials are shown. On non-commercial networks, VHS, and DVD releases the scene immediately fades back in right after it fades out as no commercials are shown.

The show's theme song called "Ride on the Magic School Bus" was written by Peter Lurye and performed by rock 'n' roll legend Little Richard.

The show was produced through cel animation and in an audio style reminiscent of Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the 1970s and 1980s.

The show's voice director is Susan Blu.

Two of the writers for the show were Brian Muehl and Jocelyn Stevenson, who also worked on Fraggle Rock.

On the PBS version, the show was funded by the National Science Foundation, Microsoft Home, the US Department of Energy, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the annual financial support from the viewers/stations of PBS.

The show was close captioned by the National Captioning Institute when it aired on PBS.

Broadcast History

Reception

Jason Fry, in a column for the online edition of the Wall Street Journal, expressed an overall appreciation for the show, but wrote that the episode The Magic School Bus Gets Programmed should have been about the perils of Internet searches and network concepts surfacing at the time, rather than an old-fashioned technology-run-amok story about the respective roles of programmer and machine (although he conceded that the episode was ten years old).

Tomlin won a Daytime Emmy for her role as Ms. Frizzle.

Home video releases

The series was originally released on VHS by KidVision between 1995 and 2003 and by PBS Home Video between 1998 and 2002, and on DVD by Warner Home Video between 2002 and 2013. Only the DVDs contain the funding credits. In the home video releases, all the episodes are uncut with the Producer Says segments intact. In the UK, it was broadcast until mid-2007 when it was removed off the air on POP channel.

On July 31, 2012, New Video Group released the complete series on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time.

On August 15, 2013, Scholastic announced the entire series would be available on Netflix.

Games

Various computer and video games associated with the series were released from 1994 to 2001, and were typically amalgamations of storylines from both the original book series and the television show. The games were published by Microsoft.

A video game titled The Magic School Bus: Oceans was released for Nintendo DS on October 25, 2011, ten years after the release of the last game. The video game, similar to the computer game before it, was likely based on the book, The Magic School Bus On the Ocean Floor and the TV episode, The Magic School Bus Gets Eaten. This is the only game to have been released for the Nintendo platform.

Reboot

A new series was announced by Netflix and Scholastic Media titled The Magic School Bus 360°. The new iteration of the franchise features a modernized Ms. Frizzle and high-tech bus that stresses modern inventions such as robotics, wearables and camera technology. The hope is to captivate children's imaginations and motivate their interest in the sciences. It will be produced by 9 Story Media Group. It is scheduled to come out in 2017. Producer Stuart Stone, who voiced Ralphie in the original series, stated that The Magic School Bus 360° will feature some of the original voice actors in different roles. In February 2017, Netflix announced that Kate McKinnon was cast in the role of Fiona Frizzle, the younger sister of Ms. Frizzle. The series then changed its name to The Magic School Bus Rides Again.