| Bill Nye the Science Guy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Created by | Bill Nye James McKenna Erren Gottlieb |
| Presented by | Bill Nye |
| Starring | Michaela Leslie-Rule Chais Dean Suzanne Mikawa Ivyann Schwan Jaffar Smith |
| Narrated by | Pat Cashman |
| Theme music composer | Mike Greene |
| Opening theme | "Bill Nye the Science Guy" |
| No. of seasons | 6 |
| No. of episodes | 100 + Pilot(list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producers | Elizabeth Brock Erren Gottlieb James McKenna |
| Producer | Simon Griffith |
| Production locations | Seattle,Washington |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production companies | KCTS Seattle Walt Disney Television Rabbit Ears Productions McKenna/Gottlieb Producers, Inc. |
| Original release | |
| Network | PBS (1994–1999) Syndicated (1993–1999) |
| Release | April 14, 1993 (1993-04-14) – February 5, 1999 (1999-02-05) |
Bill Nye the Science Guy is an Americanscience education television program created byBill Nye, James McKenna, and Erren Gottlieb, with Nye starring as a fictionalized version of himself. It was produced bySeattle public television stationKCTS and McKenna/Gottlieb Producers, and distributed byBuena Vista Television with substantial financing from theNational Science Foundation.[1]
The show aired insyndication from September 10, 1993, to February 5, 1999, producing a total of six seasons and 100 episodes; beginning with its second season, a concurrent run of the series began airing onPBS from October 10, 1994, and ran until September 3, 1999, as it continued to be distributed in commercial first-run syndication.[2] After the show's first run was completed, Nye continued to portray the Science Guy character for a number ofshort interstitial segments for theNoggin cable channel that aired during reruns of the show. A video game based on the series was released in 1996, and a subsequent television show aimed at adults,Bill Nye Saves the World, ran from 2017 to 2018 onNetflix.
Known for its quirky humor and rapid-fireMTV-style pacing, the show was critically acclaimed and was nominated for 23Emmy Awards, winning 19.[3] Studies also found that people that viewedBill Nye regularly were better able to generate explanations and extensions of scientific ideas than non-viewers.[4]
Nye portrays a hyper-kinetic, tall, and slenderscientist wearing a bluelab coat and abow-tie.[5] He combines the serious science of everyday things with fast-paced action and humor. Each half-hour show begins with a cold open, where Nye introduces the episode's theme, which leads into an opening credit sequence, and featuring Nye in a computer-animated scientific world, along with his head spinning, radio frequencies, and plastic toy dinosaurs flying. In later seasons, the theme song was cut short by a static screen. After the opening credits (in most episodes), announcerPat Cashman says "Brought to you by...", in which a product name is related to the episode's theme.
Nye walks onto the set, which is called "Nye Laboratories", filled with scientific visuals including many "of science" contraptions announced dramatically, relevant to the theme of the episode. Science-related TV and movie parodies configure the facts of the episode's theme, along with parodies of TV commercials. The show has featured many guest appearances.[note 1] Each episode features Nye visiting many places relating to the episode's theme, showing interviews of people talking about their work and other contributions. At the end of each episode, Nye thanks the viewers for watching, before explaining in a clever description of a theme's activity. The closing credits roll overbloopers from the episode.
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| Season | Episodes | Originally released | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | Network | |||
| Pilots | February 24, 1991 (1991-02-24) | April 14, 1993 (1993-04-14) | KOIN-TV KCTS-TV | ||
| 1 | 26 | September 10, 1993 (1993-09-10) | March 25, 1994 (1994-03-25) | Syndication | |
| 2 | 26 | September 9, 1994 (1994-09-09) | April 28, 1995 (1995-04-28) | Syndication/PBS | |
| 3 | 13 | September 8, 1995 (1995-09-08) | December 1, 1995 (1995-12-01) | ||
| 4 | 13 | September 6, 1996 (1996-09-06) | April 25, 1997 (1997-04-25) | ||
| 5 | 14 | September 5, 1997 (1997-09-05) | April 24, 1998 (1998-04-24) | ||
| 6 | 8 | September 4, 1998 (1998-09-04) | February 5, 1999 (1999-02-05) | ||
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 First appearance of Bill Nye the Science Guy onYouTube viaKING-TV[6] |
Bill Nye was originally an engineer for the747 airliner atBoeing, having moved toSeattle in 1977 after he was accepted for the position.[7] Nye began to performstand-up comedy in his spare time after he entered and won aSteve Martinlookalike contest at acomedy club, which led to him meeting fellow comediansRoss Shafer andJohn Keister.[8] Nye eventually left Boeing in 1985 to join Shafer and Keister in writing and performing forAlmost Live!, a then-fledglingsketch comedy television show produced by localNBC affiliateKING-TV.[5] During his tenure on the show, Nye began cultivating a science-explaining TV persona; the first instance of the persona occurred in 1985 when Nye called Shafer on-air to correct his pronunciation of the word "gigawatt", to which Shafer retorted, "Who do you think you are – Bill Nye the Science Guy?"[5][9][10] As a result, Nye was subsequently asked to give scientific answers to the show'scall-in questions.[10] His persona's first on-air appearance, as it is contemporarily known, occurred on January 8, 1987,[6] by circumstance when the primary guest for that night's performance ofAlmost Live! called in to cancel their appearance; with no backup guest planned to fill the resulting empty time, the show's writers elected to have Nye demonstrate the household uses ofliquid nitrogen.[8][11] During the demonstration, Nye submerged anonion in liquid nitrogen and proceeded to shatter it, receiving acclaim from thestudio audience.[5]
As Nye produced more demonstrations forAlmost Live!, he began to develop the idea of a show featuring his "Science Guy" persona; KING-TV declined his proposal, though he eventually received assistance from station alumni James McKenna and Erren Gottlieb.[5] Together, the group pitched the show asWatch Mr. Wizard meetsPee-wee's Playhouse, though the latter part was later replaced withMTV after the arrest of actorPaul Reubens forindecent exposure in 1991.[5][12] Their pitch lasted for four years, being declined byFox and other networks over various concerns, until they convinced Elizabeth Brock of localPBS member stationKCTS-TV to take a chance on the idea.[5][13] KCTS-TV commissioned a pilot forBill Nye the Science Guy, which aired on April 14, 1993, on the station itself before airing on PBS stations nationwide for the rest of the month.[7][5] Nye successfully obtained underwriting from theNational Science Foundation and theU.S. Department of Energy.[7][14] Nye's program became part of a package of syndicated series that local stations could schedule to fulfillChildren's Television Act requirements;[15] because of this,Bill Nye the Science Guy became the first program to run concurrently on both public and commercial stations.[15]
TheBill Nye the Science Guy theme song was written by songwriter and former math teacher Mike Greene,[16] who also sang the "Bill Nye the Science Guy" refrain and the distorted voice saying "Bill Nye the Science Guy". The word "Bill" is repeated throughout as a percussive shout. In developing the theme, Greene first came up with the melody, which he stated was inspired byDanny Elfman and his work withOingo Boingo. When Greene was enlisted to write the theme song, the show's producers requested that the song "not sound like a kid's show"; the final result was accordingly uncommon for the time.[17] Greene initially sent the theme's producers a demo with Greene singing the theme. Greene then sent two alternate versions with professional singers. The producers ultimately chose to keep Greene's voice as they found it funnier.[16]
Set to a housebeat, Greene enlisted rappers to repeat the word "Bill!" as a percussive shout, deliberately imitating the shouting featured inHouse of Pain's 1992 song "Jump Around".[17] "I can't name them, because it was against their contract to do outside things without permission from their record company," Greene noted. "It was kinda funny, because they were in my studio one day to record a song. I was working on the Nye theme as they walked in and I told them, 'Hey, do me a favor and go in the booth and chant 'Bill, Bill, Bill' over and over again.' They had no idea what it was for, but they're cool, so they did. It sounded great, so that's the version we kept. The show didn't air until a year later, so it wasn't until then that they understood what this was really for."[16] In a comment that Greene posted onReddit in 2018, Greene mentioned that he believed that the rappers were from several groups in his studio on the day of recording, but the only rapper he could specifically recall was Bronz ofA.L.T. & The Lost Civilization. The spoken female vocals were provided by Leslie Kyle-Wilson.[18]
The show was created in 1992 by Bill Nye, James McKenna and Erren Gottlieb, produced by McKenna/Gottlieb Producers, Inc, in partnership with KCTS in Seattle. The following year, the production companies entered a distribution agreement withBuena Vista Television, a subsidiary ofDisney.[1] As part of the agreement, the profits of the show were split between Disney and the production team, with Disney owning full distribution rights across linear television, home video, and digital streaming. McKenna and Gottlieb all met while McKenna was a producer onAlmost Live!, a Seattle-based comedy show.[19]
The announcer for the program wasPat Cashman, whom Nye knew from his time onAlmost Live!. Before his show launched, Nye had previously worked alongsideChristopher Lloyd inBack to the Future: The Animated Series, where he playedDoc Brown's assistant and demonstrated several experiments.
The show has been likened to the next-generation version ofWatch Mr. Wizard.[20][21] The show ran about the same time as and covered similar topics toBeakman's World, in fact sharing one crew member, editor/writer/directorMichael Gross.
The show was primarily funded by theNational Science Foundation, theCorporation for Public Broadcasting and the annual financial support from the viewers/stations of the PBS network. Other funding sponsors includedOre Ida,The Boeing Company (which Nye worked for until 1986, Boeing was also based in Seattle until 2001 when it relocated its corporate headquarters toChicago, Illinois and laterWashington, D.C.), andIntel. The syndicated airings were credited as being "Produced in Association with the National Science Foundation", while the PBS airings changed it to being "Produced in Association with Walt Disney Television".
The show began with a 26-episode order for the 1993–1994 television season.[22] After its initial success, it was renewed for a second 26-episode order for the 1994–1995 season, followed by 13 additional episodes for the 1995–1996 season.[23] In February 1996, it was renewed for two more years, bringing the final episode total to 100.[24] The final episode aired in 1999, well after production ended in 1997.
Despite Disney's association and ownership with the show, it has never aired on any network owned byWalt Disney Television in the United States (such asDisney Channel andABC, the latter of which Disney would acquire in 1996, three years after the show premiered.)
In September 1999, Bill Nye signed a multi-year deal to develop and star in original programs forNoggin,[25] a cable channel co-owned byMTV Networks and theChildren's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop). In addition to producing the new content, Noggin acquired all 100 episodes ofBill Nye the Science Guy; this made it the first-ever program acquisition by the channel.[26] Noggin and Nye chose not to develop new episodes of the show, and instead created original shorts featuring Nye, in character and costume fromBill Nye the Science Guy. In the shorts, Nye's "Science Guy" persona worked as the "head sparkologist" of Noggin,[27] and he tried to find out what topics sparked viewers' imaginations. Bill Nye toldMultichannel News that he was interested in creating multiple original shows for Noggin, including a math-based series and one "showing kids how to exercise good judgment."[26]
Bill Nye also hosted "Noggin's What Sparks You? Special," a half-hour special that aired on April 7, 2000.[28]
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In conjunction with the production ofBill Nye the Science Guy, KCTS-TV conducted several research studies that evaluated how effective the program was as an educational tool. In one study, it was found that viewers of the program made more observations and sophisticated classifications than non-viewers.[4] In surveys of elementary students who watched the program, most children concluded that Nye made "kids like science more". When surveyed whether Nye was a scientist or actor and comedian, most students asserted he was a scientist, though many said both. Students also described Nye almost equally as both "funny" and "smart", and believed he was a "source of good information."[29]
During its run,Bill Nye the Science Guy was nominated for 23Emmy Awards, winning nineteen.[3]
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has released every episode individually onDVD,[30] but never released a full series set. Instead, each episode was released separately on its own DVD, for a total of 100 DVDs costing a combined $1,500. In the United Kingdom, it was distributed onVHS by ViewTech, Bristol. In 1994 and 1995, Walt Disney Home Video released five volumes ofBill Nye the Science Guy, such as "The Human Body: The Inside Scoop", "Powerful Forces: All Pumped Up", "Dinosaurs: Those Big Boneheads", "Reptiles & Insects: Leapin' Lizards", and "Outer Space: Way Out There". All five volumes were released on VHS, containing two episodes. As of May 2017, the 1996 episode "Probability" is edited from its original airing, with a segment removed featuring a cast member saying there are only two genders.Netflix denied allegations they edited it (their new seriesBill Nye Saves the World features Nye stating gender is on a spectrum) saying "It was delivered to us that way byBuena Vista TV."[31]
A set of 31 episodes is also available for purchase on theiTunes Store, though they have been split into two separate volumes; one containing 14 episodes[32] and the other containing 17 episodes.[33]
Despite Disney's involvement in the series, the series has not been available onDisney+ due to a dispute with Nye over revenue sharing.[34]
A computer game based on the series, titledBill Nye: The Science Guy - Stop the Rock!, was released in 1996 forMicrosoft Windows andMacintosh by Pacific Interactive.[35]
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Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata
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