Bill Nye the Science Guy

Bill Nye the Science Guy is an American live action science program that originally aired from September 10, 1993 to June 20, 1998 and was hosted by Bill Nye. The show aired on PBS Kids and was also syndicated to local stations. Each of the 100 half-hour episodes aims to lecture a specific topic in a natural science to a preteen audience. Synopsis: Bill's TV persona is a tall and slender scientist wearing a blue lab coat and a bow-tie. He mixes the serious science of everyday things with fast-paced action and humor. Each half-hour show begins with Bill walking onto the set, called "Nye Laboratories", which is filled with scientific visuals including many "of science" contraptions announced dramatically, relevant to the topic of the episode. There are several individual segments that are featured in each episode, such as "Way Cool Scientist", which features an expert on the show's topic, "Consider the Following", where Bill discusses a certain aspect of the topic, "Nifty Home Experiment," where the audience is shown how to do a simple home experiment relating to the topic, and "Did you know that... ...Now you know," where an interesting factoid relevant to that episode's topic was presented. Most half-hour episodes contain a mock song parody and music video in the "Soundtrack of Science" by "Not That Bad Records" ("Not that bad" is a line that Bill will often say in episodes), substituting a scientific roundup of the episode for the lyrics to a popular song. This is usually the last segment of each episode. Each half-hour show ends with Bill saying, "Well, that was our show. Thanks for watching. Now, if you'll excuse me..." before explaining in a clever description of an activity on topic, followed by him saying, "See ya!" afterwards. The credits sometimes rolled next to a series of outtakes from the episode. Soundtrack: The show's theme song is set to a house beat with Bill's name shouted throughout the duration of the song. The sound and speed fluctuations of the voice were accomplished through a vocoder and electronic pitch fluctuation. The show's episodes consisted of several compositions from Associated Production Music. Most of these songs were also in SpongeBob SquarePants and The Ren & Stimpy Show. Production: Co-created by Bill Nye, James McKenna and Erren Gottlieb, the show was produced by McKenna/Gottlieb Producers, Inc, in partnership with KCTS-TV Seattle, and distributed by Buena Vista Television, a division of Disney. Nye, McKenna and Gottlieb all met while McKenna was a producer on Almost Live!, a comedy show in Seattle. The announcer was Pat Cashman, whom Nye knew from his time on Almost Live!. The theme song is credited to Mike Greene. Before this show, Bill had previously worked alongside Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future: The Animated Series, where he played Doc Brown's assistant and demonstrated several experiments. The show has been likened to the next generation version of Watch Mr. Wizard. The show ran about the same time as and covered similar topics to Beakman's World, in fact sharing one crew member, editor/writer/director Michael Gross. The show has been primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the annual financial support from the viewers/stations of PBS. Other funding sponsors included Ore Ida, The Boeing Company, and Intel.