JIM HENSON'S FRAGGLE ROCK, 37 YEARS OF A TV SHOW

Fraggle Rock

Today, The Grandma is resting at home. She has decided to watch TV and she has chosen one of her favourite entertainment TV Series, Fraggel Rock.

Fraggle Rock is a puppet television series of Muppet creatures created by Jim Henson. The Grandma loves it and she wants to commemorate the 37th anniversary of this show whose first episode was aired on a day like today in 1983.

Fraggle Rock, also known as Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock or Fraggle Rock with Jim Henson's Muppets, is a Canadian-British-American children's puppet television series about interconnected societies of Muppet creatures, created by Jim Henson.

Fraggle Rock was co-produced by British television company Television South (TVS), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, U.S. pay television service Home Box Office (HBO) and Henson Associates. Unlike Sesame Street, which had been created for a single market and later adapted for international markets, Fraggle Rock was intended from the start to be an international production, and the entire show was constructed with this in mind.

More information: The Jim Henson Company

Fraggle Rock debuted January, 10 1983 as one of the first shows involving the collaboration of Henson International Television (HiT Entertainment from 1989), the international arm of Jim Henson Productions. The co-production brought together British regional ITV franchise-holder Television South (TVS), CBC Television, United States pay-television service Home Box Office and Henson Associates, later Jim Henson Productions.

Filming took place on a Toronto sound-stage and later at Elstree Studios, London. The avant-garde poet bpNichol worked as one of the show's writers. In the early days of development, the script called the Fraggles Woozles pending the devising of a more suitable name.

Fraggle Rock & Jim Henson

Henson described the Fraggle Rock series as a high-energy, raucous musical romp. It's a lot of silliness. It's wonderful. The program proved accessible to audiences of all ages, and used the fantasy creatures as an allegory to deal with serious issues such as prejudice, spirituality, personal identity, the environment, and social conflict.

In 2009, as part of the Jim Henson Foundation's donation of puppets to the Center for Puppetry Arts, the Atlanta museum displayed many of the original puppet characters from Fraggle Rock in their exhibition Jim Henson: Wonders from his Workshop.

There are four main intelligent anthropomorphic species in the Fraggle Rock environment: Fraggles, Doozers, Gorgs and Silly Creatures. The Fraggles and Doozers live in a system of natural caves called Fraggle Rock that are filled with all manner of creatures and features and which connect to at least two different areas:

-The Land of the Gorgs which they consider part of the Universe.

-Outer Space where the silly creatures or humans live.

More information: Fraggle Rock-Youtube & @Fraggle Rock

One of the main themes of the series is that, although the three species depend on the other for their survival, they usually fail to communicate due to vast differences in their biology and culture. The series mainly follows the adventures of five Fraggles with five personalities: pragmatic Gobo, artistic Mokey, indecisive Wembley, superstitious Boober, and adventurous Red.

Some of the character's names are film industry in-jokes. For example, Uncle Travelling Matt is a reference to the travelling matte technique used with blue screen to give the impression a character is somewhere they are not; Gobo is named after a shaped metal grill placed over a theatre light to produce interesting shadows and Red is a reference to a redhead, another name for an 800w film light.

The CBC/HBO version of the series has been broadcast and dubbed in 95 countries. The series airs on Channel 7, Doordarshan, and Workpoint TV. Others were broadcast on Coub as an uploaded video, and others broadcast on TVtropolis (Canada), Bolivision (Bolivia), and CNC3 (Trinidad and Tobago).

After the show ended on HBO in 1987, the channel started to rerun the series. In 1988, it ran on TNT. The show aired on Disney Channel from October 1, 1992 to 1996.From 1999 to 2001, the show moved to Odyssey Network, which had recently been purchased by Henson and Hallmark. After Hallmark took full control, it discontinued the reruns. In 2010, reruns began airing on The Hub as part of the channel's launch.

In 2007, Fraggle Rock reruns aired on television in several countries. On July 23, 2007, Boomerang And Cartoonito started repeating episodes of the North American co-production of Fraggle Rock in the UK. In January 2013, ITV broadcast two episodes of this version as part of its Old Skool Weekend feature on the CITV channel.

On December 12, 2015, the remastered The Bells of Fraggle Rock episode debuted alongside Henson's remastered Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas on ABC Family in its 25 Days of Christmas programming block. Fraggle Rock is available on HBO Now in HD  and in 2016 the series began to air reruns on HBO Family until September 26, 2019.

More information: Mental Floss

Music played a central part in Fraggle Rock. Every episode featured two or three original songs co-written by Canadian poet Dennis Lee and Philip Balsam, as well as incidental music. Several episodes, usually involving Cantus and the Minstrels, focused primarily on music -such as Red Fraggle's attempt to find her song for the Fraggle Medley, or the effect of music on the breaking of winter or the presence of light in Fraggle Rock.

The Fraggle Rock Theme reached number 33 on the British music charts during the phenomenon. Writers included Jim Henson, Jerry Juhl, and Jocelyn Stevenson, with songs by Philip Balsam and Dennis Lee.

The Star Comics imprint of Marvel Comics published two separate Fraggle Rock comic-book series in 1985 and 1988 respectively. Originally, the first series was to be drawn by Marty Taras, the creator of Baby Huey, and the cover of the first published issue of the Fraggle Rock comic is done by him. Also, at least one penciled page of his Fraggle work for that first issue has been preserved in print. However the art assignment for the series finally went to Marie Severin, who illustrated all eight issue interiors and the other seven covers. The second series lasted six issues.

In early 2010, Archaia Studios Press published its first three-issue series of Fraggle Rock. A second three-issue series was followed in January 2011. Both series were collected into hardcover editions shortly after their respective publications. No further announcements were made regarding any future volumes.

More information: Time

When I was young, 

my ambition was to be one of the people 

who made a difference in this world.

My hope is to leave the world 

a little better for having been there.

Jim Henson

KERMIT THE FROG DEBUTS ON TV SHOW 'SAM & FRIENDS'

Kermit the Frog

Today, The Grandma wants to talk about one of her favourite characters, Kermit the Frog, a member of Sesame Street who is a great TV and Movie Star.

The Grandma loves The Muppets and she homages Kermit the Frog, this wonderful character who appeared by first time on TV on a day like today in 1955.

Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character and Jim Henson's best-known creation.

Introduced in 1955, Kermit serves as the straight man protagonist of numerous Muppet productions, most notably Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, as well as in other television series, films, specials, and public service announcements through the years.

Henson originally performed Kermit until his death in 1990; Steve Whitmire performed Kermit from that time up until his dismissal from the role in 2016. Kermit is currently performed by Matt Vogel. He was also voiced by Frank Welker in Muppet Babies and occasionally in other animation projects, and is voiced by Matt Danner in the 2018 reboot of Muppet Babies.

Kermit performed the hit singles Bein' Green in 1970 and The Rainbow Connection in 1979 for The Muppet Movie, the first feature-length film featuring the Muppets. The latter song reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Kermit the Frog

Kermit's iconic look and voice have been recognizable worldwide since, and in 2006, the character was credited as the author of Before You Leap: A Frog's Eye View of Life's Greatest Lessons, which is an autobiography told from the perspective of the character himself.

Kermit first appeared on May 9, 1955, in the premiere of WRC-TV's Sam and Friends. This prototype Kermit was created from a discarded spring coat belonging to Henson's mother and two ping pong ball halves for eyes.

Initially, Kermit was a lizard-like creature. He subsequently made a number of television appearances before his status as a frog was established. His collar was added at the time to make him seem more frog-like and to conceal the seam between his head and body.

Jim Henson originated the character in 1955 on his local television series, Sam and Friends. Brian Henson described his father's performance as Kermit as coming out of his own personality—was a wry intelligence, a little bit of a naughtiness, but Kermit always loved everyone around and also loved a good prank. He continued to perform the character until his death in 1990.

More information: @KermitTheFrog

Henson's last known performance as Kermit was for an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show to promote The Muppets at Walt Disney World. Henson died twelve days after that appearance.

A biography has been developed for Kermit the Frog as if he was an actual living performer rather than a puppet character. According to this fictional biography, he was born in Leland, Mississippi, alongside approximately 2,353 siblings, though a 2011 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show has him state that he was from the swamps of Louisiana.

Kermit the Frog & Jim Henson

As portrayed in the 2002 film Kermit's Swamp Years, at the age of 12, he was the first of his siblings to leave the swamp, and one of the first frogs to talk to humans. He is shown in the film encountering a 12-year-old Jim Henson, played by Christian Kriebel, for the first time.

According to The Muppet Movie, Kermit returned to the swamp, where a passing agent (Dom DeLuise) noted he had talent and, thus inspired, he headed to Hollywood, encountering the rest of the Muppets along the way. Together, they were given a standard rich and famous contract by Lew Lord (Orson Welles) of Wide World Studios and began their showbiz careers.

In Before You Leap, Kermit again references encountering Jim Henson sometime after the events depicted in the course of The Muppet Movie and details their friendship and their partnership in the entertainment industry, crediting Henson as being the individual to whom he owes his fame.

At some point after the events of The Muppet Movie, Kermit and the other Muppets begin The Muppet Show, and the characters remain together as a group, before starring in the other Muppet films and Muppets Tonight, with Kermit usually at the core of the stories as the lead protagonist.

More information: Atlas Obscura

Kermit is shown in The Muppet Movie as stating that the events of the film are approximately how it happened when asked by his nephew Robin about how the Muppets got started.

On August 4, 2015, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy announced that they had ended their romantic relationship. On September 2, 2015, Kermit was stated to have found a new girlfriend, a pig named Denise, but around February 2016, Denise supposedly broke up with Kermit after almost six months together.

Kermit has been featured prominently on both The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. However, he had a prominent career before Sesame Street's debut in 1969, as he starred in Sam and Friends, and numerous Muppets made guest appearances on Today from 1961 and The Ed Sullivan Show from 1966.

Kermit the Frog

Kermit was one of the original main Muppet characters on Sesame Street. Closely identified with the show, Kermit usually appeared as a lecturer on simple topics, a straight man to another Muppet -usually Grover, Herry Monster or Cookie Monster-, or a news reporter interviewing storybook characters for Sesame Street News. He sang many songs on the show, including Bein' Green, and appeared in the 1998 video The Best of Kermit on Sesame Street.

In The Muppet Show television series, Kermit was the central character, the showrunner, and the long-suffering stage manager of the theater show, trying to keep order amidst the chaos created by the other Muppets. Henson once claimed that Kermit's job on the Muppet Show was much like his own: trying to get a bunch of crazies to actually get the job done. It was on this show that the running gag of Kermit being pursued by leading lady Miss Piggy developed.

On Muppets Tonight, Kermit was still a main character, although he was the producer rather than frontman. Kermit also served as the mascot for The Jim Henson Company, until the sale of the Muppet characters to Disney.

A Kermit puppet can be seen at the National Museum of American History.

More information: National Museum of American History

Kermit appears in Muppet*Vision 3D, an attraction that opened in 1991 at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. 

Kermit also appears at the Magic Kingdom at The Muppets Present...Great Moments in American History.

Kermit was awarded an honorary doctorate of Amphibious Letters on May 19, 1996, at Southampton College, New York, where he also gave a commencement speech. 

Miss Piggy & Kermit the Frog

He is also the only amphibian to have had the honor of addressing the Oxford Union. A statue of Henson and Kermit was erected on the campus of Henson's alma mater, the University of Maryland, College Park in 2003.

On November 14, 2002, Kermit the Frog received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star is located at 6801 Hollywood Blvd.

On Kermit's 50th birthday in 2005, the United States Postal Service released a set of new stamps with photos of Kermit and some of his fellow Muppets on them. The background of the stamp sheet features a photo of a silhouetted Henson sitting in a window well, with Kermit sitting in his lap looking at him.

In 2013, the original Kermit puppet from Sam and Friends was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. for display in the pop culture gallery.

In 2015, the Leland Chamber of Commerce in Leland, Mississippi opened a small museum containing puppets and memorabilia dedicated to Kermit.

Kermit's legacy is also deeply entrenched in the science community. One of the famous WP-3D Orion research platforms flown by the NOAA Hurricane Hunters is named after Kermit. The other is named after Miss Piggy.

In 2015, the discovery of the Costa Rican glass frog Hyalinobatrachium dianae also attracted viral media attention due to the creature's perceived resemblance to Kermit, with researcher Brian Kubicki quoted as saying I am glad that this species has ended up getting so much international attention, and in doing so it is highlighting the amazing amphibians that are native to Costa Rica and the need to continue exploring and studying the country's amazing tropical forests.

More information: Bored Panda

 Somebody like a Piggy or a Kermit, there needs to be

several versions and so there will be several of them.

Jim Henson