This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David B. and Cooley, sitting in for Terry Gross.

Last month was the Golden Anniversary of Schoolhouse Rock, the series of animated musical shorts

that aired on ABC from 1973 to 1984. If you don't know how many years ago that was,

you may not have watched enough Schoolhouse Rock. Like Sesame Street, which had premiered on public

television four years earlier, Schoolhouse Rock set out to use catchy music and friendly visuals

to teach kids about things. Like whether the word thing was a noun or a verb.

Each Schoolhouse Rock segment was a three-minute interstitial cartoon inserted between ABC's

other shows on Saturday morning. The subject of the first series of cartoons was Multiplication Rock,

followed by Grammar Rock, America Rock, Science Rock, Money Rock, and Earth Rock.

The songs in those series included a number of informative earworms that educated young viewers

in the 1970s and beyond, songs such as I'm just a Bill and Conjunction Junction. An advertising

agency, McCaffrey and McCall came up with the idea, commissioned a composer to write a song featuring

multiplication tables, then took the song and animation storyboards to ABC. At the time, network TV

was under increased scrutiny by politicians and watchdog groups, and the head of ABC children's

programming eagerly made room for Schoolhouse Rock. That young ABC executive, by the way, was

Michael Eisner, who later became CEO of the Walt Disney Company, which now owns ABC.

Schoolhouse Rock won four Emmys, and some of its songs have persisted in pop culture.

Last week, ABC presented a primetime special Schoolhouse Rock 50th anniversary sing along,

with guest stars singing new renditions of old favorites. Here's the rapper Nio on that new

special singing his version of Verde. That's what's happening.

Today on Fresh Air, we salute the 50th anniversary

of Schoolhouse Rock. That's five times ten. By revisiting an interview with Bob D'Roe,

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