Electric Phenom Returns to TV

The Electric Company is coming back to juice a new generation of early elementary-school kids into mastering reading skills. Executives at Sesame Workshop in New York City are hoping to relaunch the landmark literacy series in the fall of 2007, after a near 30-year absence from public television. Karen Gruenberg, the Workshop's executive vice president for content, promises a series that will call upon "today's artists and the best in pop culture" to lure at-risk kids to the screen. Just as the original series featured Bill Cosby and bits of sketch comedy, Gruenberg says humor will be an essential part of the new series. "If we don't [have humor], we will have completely missed the mark," she says. Equally electrifying is news that DVD sets of the 1971-77 Electric Company — featuring Rita Moreno, Cosby and a pre-stardom Morgan Freeman — will be released later this year. As many parents will recall, before there was