The Alvin Show

Syndication

CBS reran the series on Saturday mornings after the show's prime time run ended in 1962.

In the mid to late 1960s, the individual show segments were culled together and sold as a syndication package under the title Alvin and the Chipmunks. The original episodes began airing under the Alvin and the Chipmunks title on NBC Saturday mornings in 1979 for a short period.

Ross Bagdasarian Sr. died of a heart attack on January 16, 1972, seemingly bringing to an end any further Chipmunk productions. Years later, his son, Ross Jr., picked up on a disc jockey's joke and produced the album Chipmunk Punk in 1980. The success of Chipmunk Punk spurred renewed interest in a new animated series by Ruby-Spears, which launched in September 1983 on NBC and was titled Alvin and the Chipmunks, with Ross Jr. taking over for his father as the voices of Alvin, Simon, and Dave Seville. His wife, Janice Karman, voiced Theodore, as well as The Chipettes, who are the Chipmunks' female counterparts. The show ran until 1990, with episodes after 1988 produced by DIC Entertainment (eleven episodes were produced by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson in association with DIC; these were strictly for a syndication package that included all of the Ruby-Spears produced by episodes).

To coincide with the new series, Viacom Enterprises distributed reruns of The Alvin Show to local (mostly independent and future Fox) stations; the rerun package was also carried nationally over superstations WGN and WTBS at various times beginning in September 1983 and ran for mostly a few years on half of the markets. However, some stations continue to run the show at various times as late as 1993. Prior to its superstation runs, The Alvin Show was picked up in a few markets such as Detroit, New York, Cleveland, and in international markets such as in Australia and Brazil among others. The show made its way to Europe in the United Kingdom when the BBC (now BBC One) began broadcasting the program as well.

In 1981, Clyde Crashcup made an appearance during a dream sequence in A Chipmunk Christmas. During recent network airings of the special, the sequence has been cut out, due to network time constraints concerning commercial ad time.

In 1990, The Alvin Show versions of the Chipmunks and Clyde Crashcup reappeared in an episode of The Chipmunks Go To the Movies titled "Back to Alvin's Future" (a spoof of the 1985 movie, Back to the Future).

A majority of the songs and clips from The Alvin Show were featured in the Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing Along Songs VHS releases that were released in the mid-1990s. The songs, however, were slightly remixed to sound more modern. The only song that kept its original broadcast soundtrack was "Alvin's Orchestra" in the 1993 Sing-Along video Ragtime Cowboy Joe. The Bagdasarian closing logo from the show was also remixed in the 1994 Sing-Along video, Working on the Railroad.

Nickelodeon picked up US broadcast rights to The Alvin Show on March 7, 1994, after the last of a few independent stations pulled the show. The prints from the syndicated reruns were digitized and the Nickelodeon logo was added to several spots in the opening theme. The show aired as part of Nickelodeon's morning lineup for most of the next year.

During this time, as well as for some time after the full episodes stopped airing, the individual Chipmunk and Clyde Crashcup cartoons and musical segments were inserted into episodes of Weinerville. In 1996, Nickelodeon stopped showing The Alvin Show segments altogether and no television station has aired them since then.

Voice cast

• Ross Bagdasarian Sr. - Alvin Seville, Simon Seville, Theodore Seville, David Seville, Sam Valiant, Gondaliero; additional voices
• Shepard Menken - Clyde Crashcup, Neighbor; additional voices
• June Foray - Daisy Bell, Mrs. Frumpington (provides singing voice in "Squares"); additional voices
• Bill Lee - Additional voices
• Johnny Mann - Additional voices
• Lee Patrick - Mrs. Frumpington; additional voices
• Daws Butler - Additional voices
• Larry Storch - Additional voices
• Paul Frees - Additional voices
• Mort Marshall - Additional voices

Episodes (1961–1962)

26 episodes each were produced for the Alvin and the Chipmunks and Clyde Crashcup segments, along with 52 musical segments.

General Foods was the show's main sponsor; as such, Dave Seville and The Chipmunks appeared in several humorous half-minute commercials for Jell-O and Post Cereals.

Home media

In 1993-94, Buena Vista Home Video released the home video series Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing Alongs, featuring musical segments from The Alvin Show. Both videos in this series have never been released to DVD.

However, on September 8, 2009, Paramount Home Entertainment released the first episode of the show, along with two "modern" specials. In 2014, "The Brave Chipmunks" musical sequence was released as a bonus feature on The Chipmunk Adventure Blu-ray and DVD combo pack. In 2015, three complete episodes (#01, #04, and #10) were released together as The Alvin Show on Blu-ray and DVD.

International broadcast

• Australia
  • Network Ten (1973 & 1997-2001)
  • Nickelodeon (2002-2004)
• Canada
  • CBMT (1966)
• Chile
  • TVN (1969–1973 & 1975–1979)
• Russia
  • Channel One Russia (1992–1996)
  • Russia-1 (1996–1998)
• United Kingdom
  • BBC (1962)
  • Nickelodeon (1995–1997)
  • Cartoon Network (1997–2000)
  • Toon Disney (2000–2004)
• Italy
  • Hiro (1980)
  • Italia 7 (1980)
• Brazil (Unconfirmed)
  • TV Rio (1968)
  • Record TV (1969)
  • TV Piratini (1970)

Syndicated stations

• WTBS-TV - Atlanta, Georgia
• WGN-TV - Chicago, Illinois
• WNEW-TV - New York City (first station to run the show as a syndicated series on weekday afternoons in 1965, shortly before CBS cancelled its run as a Saturday Morning program)
• KTVU-TV - San Francisco, California
• WSFL-TV - Miami, Florida
• WXIX-TV - Cincinnati, Ohio
• KXTX-TV - Dallas, Texas
• WVTV-TV - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• WGBS-TV - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• WXNE-TV - Boston, Massachusetts
• WTXX-TV - Hartford, Connecticut
• WTOP-TV - Washington, District of Columbia (aired on Sunday mornings from January until September 1970)
• WFTY-TV - Washington, District of Columbia
• WPTT-TV - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• WTTE-TV - Columbus, Ohio
• WKBF-TV - Cleveland, Ohio
• WOIO-TV - Cleveland, Ohio (aired weekday mornings in the mid-1980s)
• WKBD-TV - Detroit, Michigan
• WPTF-TV - Raleigh, North Carolina (aired on Sundays in the mid-1980s)
• KZKC-TV - Kansas City, Missouri
• WISH-TV - Indianapolis, Indiana (ran as a syndicated program before CBS's Saturday Morning block in the early 1990s)
• WFTS-TV - Tampa, Florida
• WTZA-TV - Kingston, New York
• WOLF-TV - Scranton, Pennsylvania
• WSAZ-TV - Huntington, West Virginia (ran as a syndicated program before NBC's Saturday Morning block in the early-1980s)

References

References

1. (2018). "The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows". Rowman & Littlefield.
2. (1983). "Children's Television: The First Thirty-Five Years, 1946-1981". Scarecrow Press.
3. (1994). "Animals on Screen and Radio: An Annotated Sourcebook". Scarecrow Press.
4. (2005). "Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003". McFarland & Co.
5. (18 November 2021). "Story: Alvin Show Pilot Board".
6. (2009). "Iwao Takamoto : my life with a thousand characters". [[University Press of Mississippi]].
7. "The Alvin Show - 20 WTXX TV Reruns".
8. (2018). "A Celebration of Animation: The 100 Greatest Cartoon Characters in Television History". Lyons Press.
9. "Television Programs". The Daily News.
10. (1983). "Chipmunks Off The Old Block". [[Observer-Dispatch]].
11. "The Alvin Show DVD news: Update about the Alvin Show | TVShowsOnDVD.com".