Production history
In 1992, Jay Rayvid and Donna Mitroff of WQED in Pittsburgh (the PBS member station known for producing Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ) entered into an agreement with Film Australia to attempt to get Johnson and Friends onto television in the United States, specifically PBS. Unfortunately, they were not able to secure funding from PBS to produce a pilot due to the sheer traffic and number of submissions, despite their interest. In 1994, though, FOX began to show interest in Johnson and Friends. At this stage, 26 episodes (the first two series) had been produced and the latter 26 episodes (series three) were in post-production - all 52 episodes were available to WQED for distribution. FOX Children's Network committed to Johnson and Friends, thus The Fox Cubhouse was created.
WQED and Fox teamed up and implemented Johnson and Friends, Rimba's Island, and Jim Henson's Animal Show into this concept. The latter two series were specifically produced for the Cubhouse, but were also shown independently in many other countries. In addition, the Fox Cubhouse itself was shot at WQED.
The series featured a woman named Rosie (played by Nancy Mura), who with several puppet animal characters, introduced and served as the exit for the programs within.
Johnson and Friends was heavily revised for the Cubhouse series, the voices were redubbed for the most part, but Peter Browne was retained as Alfred's voice actor; due to master recording issues, however, all of his dialogue had to be rerecorded. Several additional songs and music tracks were written by Chris Neal and his son Braedy, who had previously composed all of the music for the original version of Johnson and Friends, as FOX felt that some of the earlier episodes were "too quiet" and did not fit the atmosphere they wanted for the series. Instrumental versions of pre-existing Johnson songs were also used. As the series was broadcast as a segment rather than a standalone program, the credits were featured at the end of the Cubhouse itself, and each Johnson episode ended with the final chorus of "Toys, Toys, Wonderful Toys" from the Johnson album, re-recorded by the US cast. Minor cuts were also occasionally made, along with adjustments to John Patterson's scripts, by WQED executive Casey Brown, to remove Australian terminology and slang. These changes are generally frowned upon by many of the original Johnson and Cubhouse crew, as well as people who grew up with the series.
The Fox Cubhouse became a short-lived success, and FOX commissioned an additional season of 26 episodes of Johnson and Friends for the Cubhouse's second season. Series director Ian Munro maintained a level of creative control over the American version of the program and was involved with voice direction for this run of episodes. These episodes were also shown in Australia, dubbed by the original voice cast and marketed as the fourth series of the program, two years after production, in 1997. David Flick, who had provided the American voice of Diesel, was replaced by Doug Scroope, Diesel's original voice, and several episodes of the first season of Cubhouse were also revised with Doug Scroope as Diesel, this change was actually present in late reruns of the first season of Cubhouse. New episodes of Jim Henson's Animal Show and Rimba's Island were also present in this second season, as well as repeats of the old episodes. However, the second season was a complete revamp and the characters, setting, and the entire premise were changed. Only the programs within the Cubhouse remained the same. Two new shows, Magic Adventures of Mumfie and Budgie the Little Helicopter were also added to the series. While previous Cubhouse episodes featured two episodes of Johnson and Friends, the second season sometimes paired a single episode with an episode of Budgie the Little Helicopter or Magic Adventures of Mumfie (because all three programs had a running time of 10 minutes). Some episodes, however, still featured two Johnson episodes.
Shortly after the broadcast of the final second-season episodes in 1996, The Fox Cubhouse was taken off the air, and the American localisation has not been seen since. Many of the master tapes of the US version are thought to have been wiped, but several master copies are known to exist.
The Fox Cubhouse was also shown in the US overseas territory Guam on KTGM.
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Johnson and Friends is an Australian children’s television program that originally aired on ABC from 3 September 1990 to 10 July 1997. It was produced by Film Australia and was created by Ron Saunders, John Patterson and Ian Munro. In the UK it was shown on TCC, CBBC, and then on UK Living's Tiny Living strand for under-fives. It was later aired in the United States with dubbed American voices as a part of The Fox Cubhouse, an educational children's anthology series on Fox Kids, between 1994 and early 1996. The series was last repeated on ABC1, with this run ending on 19 March 2002. The fourth series was produced in 1995 for Fox and was not aired in Australia until 1997.
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