Zoom is a half-hour educational televisionprogram, created almost entirely by children, which aired on PBS originally from January 9, 1972, to March 24, 1978. It was originated and produced by WGBH-TV in Boston. Inspired by educational shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company, but designed to give the kids who watched it a voice without adults on screen, it was, for the most part, unscripted. Far from seeking to make stars of the child performers, their contracts prohibited them from making any television appearances or doing commercials for three years after they left the show. The show was revived in 1999 and aired on PBS until 2005.
Description
Zoom encouraged children to "turn off the TV and do it!" On the show, a cast of seven kids known as Zoomers presented various activities such as games, plays, poems, recipes, jokes, songs, movies, science experiments, and informal chats on subjects such as hospitals, prejudice, etc., all suggested by viewer contributions. These activities were introduced by such titles as Zoomovie, Zoom Play of the Week, Zoomrap, Zoomgame, Zoomdo, Zoomgoody, Zoomphenomenon, etc. The young Zoomers were only identified by first names, and every six months, half the cast would be replaced, creating a continuous revolving door of hosts. The mail-in request became a pop culture reference for its musical exhortation to "Write Zoom, Z-double-O-M, Box 3-5-0, Boston, Mass 0-2-1-3-4: send it to Zoom!". The lines were mostly spoken, but the ZIP code was sung. The program featured its own language, Ubbi-Dubbi, where the syllable "ub" was added before each vowel sound in each syllable of each word. For the first two seasons, a word game called "Fannee Doolee" was featured, in which a series of statements about the titular character were presented to the audience without further explanation. It was eventually revealed that Fannee Doolee loved all words with double letters and hated all words without them. Each show had one or two Zoomguest sequences, short film documentaries about children with special talents or interesting hobbies or jobs. The premiere episode featured a boy who built a boat by making a ring of sticks and twigs and covering them with a tarpaulin. In the show's first two seasons, Tracy hosted a "Tracy Asks..." sequence in which she asked a question, e.g., "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" or "What is the world's longest word?", and local children were filmed giving their answers. The first season had "quickie" comedy routines modeled after Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. The performers in the original series were known for wearing striped rugby shirts and jeans. In Seasons 1 and 2 the cast performed barefoot but wore shoes from Season 3 on. The first Zoom series lasted six seasons and featured 49 Zoomers. During the second and third seasons, cast members were transitioned with a catchy production number that introduced the new cast members to the continuing cast members. The same song was used for each transition. In the last three seasons, entirely new casts were used. Several episodes were available with captions for the hearing-impaired.
Some PBS stations continued to broadcast reruns of the series until September 12, 1980.
Merchandise
In 1974, A&M Records released an album of songs from the show titled Come on and Zoom, featuring cast members from the second season. The catalogue number of the album was SP-3402. In 1973, the cast members from the first season came out with an album called Playgrounds that was available by mail order. There were two books published for children that were based on the 1970s Zoom series:
The Zoom Catalog, published by Random House in 1972, was a collection of stories, poems, plays, jokes and activities from the show, featuring the second cast.
Do a Zoomdo, published by Little Brown in 1975, featured activities from the show.
In 1997, WGBH released the video and book set Best of the 70s and Zoomers Revisited — Where Are They Now?. In 2008, WGBH released a two-DVD set, Zoom Back to the '70s. The first DVD was a reissue of Best of the 70s, with extras consisting ofbehind the scenes stills set to the theme song and a 10-question quiz asking what a few of the cast members are doing today. The second DVD consisted of four episodes from the 1970s series.
