The Archie Show facts for kids

Quick facts for kids The Archie Show
Genre	Sitcom Musical
Created by	John L. Goldwater (comic) Bob Montana (character designs)
Written by	Bob Ogle
Directed by	Hal Sutherland
Starring	Dallas McKennon Howard Morris Jane Webb John Erwin
Composer(s)	Ray Ellis
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	17 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Norm Prescott Lou Scheimer
Running time	20-22 mins. (DVD Release)
Production company(s)	Filmation
Distributor	Vitt Media International NBCUniversal Television Distribution (current, on behalf of DreamWorks Classics)
Release
Original network	CBS
Original release	September 14, 1968 (1968-09-14) – January 4, 1969 (1969-01-04)

The Archie Show (also known as The Archies) is an American musical sitcom television series produced by Filmation for CBS. Based on the Archie Comics, created by Bob Montana in 1941, The Archie Show aired Saturday mornings on CBS from September 1968 to August 1969. The show featured the main characters in the Archie series, including Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones.

In 1969, the show was expanded to an hour and retitled The Archie Comedy Hour, which included a half-hour featuring Sabrina the Teenage Witch. In 1970, the show became Archie's Funhouse, and featured live-action segments.

Filmation continued to produce further Archie television series until 1978, including Archie's TV Funnies (1971-1973), The U.S. of Archie (1974-1976) and The New Archie and Sabrina Hour (1977-1978).

Overview

The show revolves around 17-year-old vocalist/rhythm guitarist Archie Andrews and his teen-age pals from Riverdale High School including: his best friend and food fiend drummer Jughead Jones, wise-cracking bassist Reggie Mantle, beautiful, spoiled-rich girl vocalist/keyboardist Veronica Lodge, and attractive, blonde, girl-next-door tomboy vocalist/lead guitarist/percussionist Betty Cooper. On the show, the friends appeared as a bubblegum pop band featuring Archie on lead guitar. The Archies had a real-life No. 1 hit single in 1969 with their song, "Sugar, Sugar", written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim.

The Archie Show utilized a laugh track, the first such example of the colloquially-titled Saturday morning cartoons. Owing to the success of The Archie Show, most animated series would begin using laugh tracks until the early 1980s. Previous animated series that used laugh tracks, such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons, were broadcast during prime time with the target audience being adults.

A typical episode started with the first Archie story, introduced by Archie and occasionally a different character. Next was a "dance of the week" segment starting with a teaser, then after the commercial break Archie introduced the dance, followed by the song of the week performed by The Archies. After that was a short joke followed by the second Archie story. All 17 episodes of the first show were presented in this format.

Formats

The show was broadcast in different formats and under different titles.

• The Archie Show (1968–69)
• Archie and his New Pals (TV special; 1969): Big Moose and Reggie compete against each other for Class President; Sabrina is introduced as a new Riverdale High student.
• The Archie Comedy Hour (1969–70): all-new material, now in an hour-long format, contained two Sabrina segments, one at the beginning of the show and one at the end, with a new "The Funhouse" joke segment in the middle that was loosely based on Laugh-In, and also contained regular segments such as Sabrina's Magic Trick and Dilton Doily's Inventions. There was a "Side Show" segment of one-liner jokes, followed by an Archies music segment.
• Archie's Funhouse (1970–71): an expanded version of the previous series' "Funhouse" format, now featuring an audience of live action kids and the "Giant Jukebox"; a music-heavy incarnation of the series, originally padded to one hour with repeats of segments from The Archie Show.
• Archie's TV Funnies (1971–73): Archie and the gang run a TV station, presenting a selection of cartoons within the series featuring characters from classic newspaper comic strips.
• Everything's Archie (1973–74): repeats of previously released material.
• The U.S. of Archie (1974–76): Archie and the gang re-interpret various events from American history.
• The New Archie and Sabrina Hour (1977–78): new Archie and Sabrina episodes, plus repeats of earlier material. The series was then divided into two separate 30-minute shows: The Bang-Shang Lollapalooza Show (Archie) and Super Witch (Sabrina).

The New Archie and Sabrina Hour was subsequently divided into The Bang-Shang Lalapalooza Show and Super Witch during its original network run. While the earlier Archie programs were broadcast by CBS, these last two series were on NBC.

Hero High (1981) was planned to be part of The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam! featuring Archie and the gang as superheroes; however, this series was altered at the last minute because Filmation's rights to the "Archie" characters had expired during production and was not renewed.

Spin-offs

• Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies (1970): later repeated as both Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Groovie Goolies.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1970–1974): rebroadcasts of both The Archie Comedy Hours' Sabrina episodes and the previous series' Sabrina episodes, plus new episodes, in its own time slot.
• Groovie Goolies (1970): rebroadcast of the previous series' Goolies episodes in its own time slot.
• The Bang-Shang Lollapalooza Show (1977): originally part of the aforementioned The New Archie and Sabrina Hour.
• Super Witch (1977): also originally part of the aforementioned The New Archie and Sabrina Hour.
• The Groovie Goolies and Friends (1978): syndication package, also featuring episodes from other Filmation series.

The "individual" versions of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Groovie Goolies are currently offered by present owner DreamWorks Classics.

Voice cast

• Dallas McKennon – Archie Andrews, Hot Dog, Mr. Weatherbee, Pop Tate, Mr. Lodge, Coach Kleats
  • Ron Dante – Archie Andrews (singing voice)
• Jane Webb – Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Miss Grundy, Big Ethel
  • Toni Wine – Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge (singing voice)
• John Erwin – Reggie Mantle
• Howard Morris – Moose Mason, Jughead Jones, Dilton Doiley
• Don Messick – Jughead Jones, Hot Dog ("Beauty Is Only Fur Deep")

Episodes

Syndication

The New Archie and Sabrina Hour was later repeated in syndication, and on The Family Channel in a half-hour format as The Archie and Sabrina Surprise Package; this is the version offered by Universal Television, the current rightsholder for most Filmation programs, including the Archies franchise; a previous rightsholder, Entertainment Rights, was acquired by Classic Media in 2009, followed by DreamWorks Animation's purchase of Classic Media in 2012.

Most of the episodes from all of these series were syndicated in 1976 as The Archies (excluding material produced for The New Archie and Sabrina Hour, which did not debut until a year later). The music segments from Comedy Hour were missing in this syndication package, for unknown reasons.

In 2010, the show aired on Retro Television Network.