Phred on Your Head Show facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Phred on Your Head Show
Genre	Variety show
Written by	Michael Pecoriello
Starring	Doug Preis
Theme music composer	Michael Ungar
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
Production
Executive producer(s)	Amy Friedman
Producer(s)	Michael Pecoriello Sally Anne Syberg Lissette Decos
Running time	30–120 minutes
Production company(s)	Nickelodeon Noggin LLC MTV Animation Possible Worlds
Release
Original network	Noggin Nickelodeon
Picture format	NTSC 480i
Audio format	Stereo
Original release	June 6, 1999 (1999-06-06) – September 9, 2001 (2001-09-09)
Chronology
Followed by	The URL with Phred Show

Phred on Your Head Show is an American children's television series produced by Nickelodeon for its sister channel Noggin. The first episode aired on Nickelodeon as a sneak peek on June 6, 1999. Noggin aired encore showings of the first episode throughout June and started airing the show regularly on July 26, 1999. The show stars a small green character named Phred, voiced by Doug Preis, who has his own variety show. In each episode, Phred hops across different people's heads to find a host, who then chooses a selection of Noggin programs to play.

Phred was animated by two studios: MTV Animation and Possible Worlds. The show was linked with Noggin's website, Noggin.com, and Phred's home was said to be inside the "dot" of Noggin.com. The episodes encouraged viewers to visit Noggin.com and send in their own ideas, comments, and questions for future episodes. These were integrated into the show as part of a segment called "Phred's Got Mail." Other segments called "We Show It" and "Out of Your Mind" featured short films that were created by Noggin viewers.

Phred on Your Head Show debuted to successful ratings, posting a 2.2 Nielsen score in 1999. Multichannel News reported that the show drew record traffic to Noggin's website. The show ran for two seasons and aired its last new episode on September 9, 2001, with a spin-off series called The URL with Phred Show later premiering in its place. The spin-off was formatted as an online art showcase hosted by Phred, and it had more emphasis on viewers' submissions to Noggin.com. Both shows aired in reruns until March 31, 2002.

Format

Opening

Phred during the "Pickles to Pluto" game

The show opens with a prologue explaining Phred's backstory. He was a mascot for a pickle company called Phantastic Pickles and lived on a pickle jar. One day, Phred's pickle jar rolled off of a supermarket shelf and set him free. He was curious about the outside world and looked for a good place to think, which led him to the dot of Noggin.com. There, he became Noggin's spokesperson and went from "pickle jar to TV star."

The rest of the show centers on Phred presenting his own variety show from the head of a child. An unseen character named Big Voice gives Phred the name of the upcoming episode's host. Phred hops from head to head of different people, and when he finds the host, a stop-motion theme song plays. It has replaceable lyrics that change to fit in the host's name. Once the host has been introduced, Phred tells the Noggin crew to "pickle" the host. This teleports the host and Phred into Noggin.com, where they choose different Noggin programs to show.

Segments

• Featured content - Each episode usually includes clips from certain Noggin programs while Phred is "searching" for the host. These include Doug, Nick News, Dirk Niblick of the Math Brigade, The Further Adventures of Zook & Alison, Sesame Street Unpaved, Mathnet, and The Electric Company. Occasionally, a short from "Snick Snack" or Short Films by Short People was also shown.
• Cecile and Her Very Own Universe - A series of animated shorts, specially created for the show.
• Phred's Got Mail - Big Voice gives Phred a piece of fan mail to read aloud. The fan mail letters were submitted by viewers on Noggin.com.
• Pickles to Pluto - A game segment where Phred asks a player to connect two things that seem like they have nothing in common.
• Tête à Tête with Phred - Phred hops onto the head of different historical figures and interviews them.
• We Show It - A user-submitted segment where Phred plays a home video submitted by a viewer.

Episodes

The show has two seasons. The first season was made in 1999, and the second season was made in 2000. The runtime of the episodes varied: there were half-hour, one-hour, and two-hour episodes.

Half-hour episodes

Nickelodeon's website featured an episode guide for Phred on Your Head Show, which listed only the half-hour episodes (21 episodes in all). This episode guide was also featured on the website Excite TV. Each episode's title is the name of the host. The hosts are only called by their first names on the show, but some of Nickelodeon's episode titles feature their last names. The one-hour and two-hour episodes were never listed on Nickelodeon's guide, so the titles are unknown.

Hour-long episodes

The show's first-ever episode was an hour-long episode hosted by a boy named Chad. Hour-long episodes hosted by Mary and Anthony existed as well, and these same episodes were also trimmed down and aired as half-hour episodes.

Two-hour episodes

From July 26 until November 22, 1999, the show had two-hour episodes. They aired twice daily on Noggin, from 5-7 p.m. and from 8-10 p.m. The first two-hour episode on July 26 involved Phred returning home after being stranded on Pluto. After November 22, the two-hour episodes were discontinued, but the half-hour and hour-long episodes still aired regularly.

The URL with Phred Show

A spin-off based on Phred on Your Head Show premiered in 2001, called The URL with Phred Show. It focuses on user-generated content submitted to Noggin.com.