| FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman | |
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FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman logo |
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| Genre | Children's game show |
| Created by | Kate Taylor |
| Developed by | WGBH Boston |
| Written by | Glen Berger Jim Conroy |
| Directed by | Clifford Saito Adam Dalley Joe Truesdell Peter Lyons Wayne Simpson Dean Raymond Robert V. Lange Chris Whitbeck |
| Starring | Jim Conroy (Contestants) |
| Voices of | Jim Conroy |
| Narrated by | Jim Conroy |
| Theme music composer | Terry Tompkins, Rocco Gagliese, Steve D'Angelo for Eggplant LLC |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 5 |
| No. of episodes | 100 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Kate Taylor |
| Producer(s) | Paul Serafini Marcy Gunther Eric Handler |
| Editor(s) | Arnie Harchik Jessica Rueter Andrews Lisa Wolf Kathyrn Farrelly Alan Grazioso Jennifer Lorenz Joe Headrick Arnie Harchik John Warren Mark Geffen Maureen Barillaro Karen Silverstein |
| Location(s) | Boston, Massachusetts and other parts of the USA |
| Camera setup | Mark C. Helton Dan Lang Stephen McCarthy Multi-camera (For Studio Segaments) |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | WGBH-TV |
| Distributor | WGBH-TV |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | PBS |
| Picture format | Closed-Captioned, Color, High Definition |
| First shown in | United States |
| Original run | May 29, 2006 – November 4, 2010 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman, sometimes shortened as FETCH!, is a children's television series for children ages 6–12 on PBS during the PBS Kids GO! block of educational programming. It is a game show/reality show that is hosted by an animated anthropomorphic dog who dispenses challenges to the show's real-life contestants. The series ran for five seasons and 100 episodes from May 29, 2006 to November 4, 2010 on PBS. It was announced in June 2010 by WGBH that due to lack of funding that the series would end. In June 2008, the series received its first Emmy for Best Original Song for its theme.
Contents |
Fetch was produced at WGBH Studios in Boston. Seasons are filmed about a year before they air. Season four was the first season to be filmed in High Definition (HD) in 2009. However, WGBH announced that while casting has already been completed, due to a lack of funding, Fetch! will be canceled at the end of its fifth season.
The challenges are filmed mostly in Boston and various other parts of the USA, depending on the challenges. The challenges are filmed in the summer time when the children are out of school. The challenges which are shot out on the field are cut documentary-style, very similar to network reality TV shows.
After the FETCHers finish filming the challenges, contestants are acting with the voice of Ruff. Jim Conroy travels to Boston from New York for the two weeks they spend shooting in the studio. The fourth camera simply captures Conroy doing his lines as Ruff in the audio booth. The kids hear him in the studio and he hear their lines/reactions in his headphones. Ruff's lines are the only lines that are scripted out, though depending on the situation he will sometimes ad-lib an answer to a question or comment from a FETCHer. Once all that is done the show goes into editing. First the editors go in and pick out their challenge clips and put them in order of the show. Then they are sent to Jim Conroy in NY to voice the episodes where the animation needs to go. Once that is complete, it is sent back to WGBH where they take the audio clips of the animated characters and place them where they go. Once all of this is done, the episode is sent to global mechanic to animate the show. One out of the four editors have an off-set four-week system in place where one of them is ready to send a cut of a new episode to Vancouver every Friday. This processes takes about 6 months to complete one season of the show.[1]
Studio G is the studio for FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman. There are 3 parts to the show that take place in the studio. The parts are the intro to the show, halftime quiz show and the Triumph Tally take place in the studio. Over the years the set has changed a few times. For season 1 and 2 the studio stayed the same, but in season 3 is when the set started to change big time. In season 3 the TV on which the contestants view Ruff was changed to a more current blue flat screen TV. Also Ruff's owner parked her car in the studio. A flamingo and trees were added around the logo of the studio in season 2. A Studio G sign was also added in Season 2. In Season 4 a brand new remote control Mailbox in place on the blue flat TV Screen which pops out when a challenge is in the mailbox. The wall of fame in the studio was introduced in Season 2 and in Season 3 the Anna and Mike pictures in the wall of fame are smaller, but the question mark picture stayed the same size. Season 5's major renovation is during the season finale. It is taken literally after entering the no trespassing door at the waterpark, but the Go Get It! studio (Studio P) is a remodeled version of the Studio G with new carpeting and various furniture painted pink.
With the exception of Blossom and Chet, who don't speak, all character voices are provided by Jim Conroy. The contestants are not professional actors, but are real children who actually do the activities.
FETCH! is a reality-based game show where young contestants take on various challenges to gain points. During these challenges, the contestants must complete a variety of tasks assigned to them ahead of time (and on the fly) by Ruff and surrogates, depending on the situation. There is also an educational component, as contestants often must learn something (i.e. Astronomy, Carpentry, Food Science, Biology, etc.) in order to complete the task.
Not all contestants leave the studio each episode to complete tasks. As determined usually by the Fetch 3000, the contestants who remain behind in the studio participate in the "Half-Time Quiz Show", in which Ruff asks them questions based on the activities of the contestants out on challenges. Out on challenges, contestants have the potential to earn up to 100 points. The contestants in the studio have a chance to win a maximum of 50 points in the "Half-Time Quiz Show" in which they have to answer 10 questions about events during the challenges. Each question is worth 5 points. They have a total of 60 seconds (for Season 1 and 2 it was 90 seconds but it usually varies by wide amounts of time) to answer all the questions. They can pass on the question and return to it if extra time is left. Usually, there is also a Fetch Fairness Guarantee, which states that every contestant will have had an equal number of challenges (usually 13) and quiz shows (usually 6) before the final episode. Additionally, there are between 5 and 10 "Bone-us" points (sometimes 15 or 20 points) available for one or two (sometimes even three or four) stand-out contestants. On rare occasions, there is the possibility to earn more than 100 points (outside of any bonuses). The record for most points earned in one episode was 125, by Brian, Noah and Khalil in episode 5, season 1. In Season 4 contestants are able to have 1/2 points (i.e. 515½ points). A prize is awarded to the contestant with the most points at the end of the show. At the end of the season, a final point tally is conducted, with the winner of the tally being declared winner of that season and wins the "Grand Prize".
Prizes are not always desirable, and sometimes the prize holder winds up with a "booby prize"; for example, in Good Dancing and Bad Teeth, Anna and Brian had to dance a waltz in the studio. During the first season the contestant had the choice of keeping the prize, or giving it to a fellow contestant. From (Season 2-5) there are two unknown prizes from which the winner chooses one; season 4 usually puts the unknown prizes in a vault. Usually, the chosen prize is "mailed" to the mailbox in Studio G, although occasionally large prizes are hidden elsewhere on the set. In one season two episode Rosario gave his prize to Nina, and in another Rosario gave his to Madi. In a season 4 episode, Sterling returned his prize to the mailbox.
Go Get It! with Tom and Trixie was a major part of the plot in Season 5. It was a copycat show that was Ruff's competition. Grandma Ruffman was the first to find out and watch the show. After Ruff finds out of this, he does his best to win more viewers as the rival show is top-rated. It airs on FELINE NETWORK in the show (FETCH! apparently is aired on CANINE NETWORK).
In Episode 18, Ruff questions his parents and Go Get It!, which leads to a climax in the season. The challenge of the episode consisted of FETCHers meeting a private investigation team to find out more about his parents. The FETCHers find out the date of the parents' disappearance and find out that PURRS (Pussycat Underground Rather Rotten Society) is behind this. They also realize they produce the show, Go Get It! The FETCHers built a robot and used sleuthing skills to attract a new FETCHer that would be most likely a contestant from Go Get It! as a prime suspect. Proving to be successful, they follow the suspect to a mysterious office of the company, and the robot grabbed a package surrounded by hidden lasers. A revelation is that PURRS is planning for a world domination.
Ruff is closer to the answer of his parents' disappearance, and in Episode 19, the FETCHers take more insight of this matter. After Ruff's nephew Glen accidentally gets in the server of PURRS via the website, they find a map leading to a mysterious Golden Fetchie. Ruff sends the FETCHers to this mysterious island located on the map so they can get the Golden Fetchie before PURRS does.Unknown until the FETCHers arrival,the FETCHers realized they are back to Game Show Island (the coordinates from Grandma's Parrot took them there in Episode 1). They located the Golden Fetchie by finding the right telephone and number to call and play a hot/cold game to find the Golden Fetchie. After finding the Golden Fetchie, they head back to the docks and take a picture with the triumphant achievement. However, a cat snuck in and got the Golden Fetchie back in PURRS' keeping. Sadly, the FETCHers go back to Studio G empty handed. At the end, Grandma Ruffman reveals that the Golden Fetchie was really not just a trophy, but a brainwashing device that will make the country think they're all cats. Ruff also comes to the conclusion that PURRS is responsible for his parents' disappearance.
Ruff realizes it is the season five finale. One way only, he was forced to do the finale on Episode 20 by his boss Henry even though he still wanted to find his parents. He sends the FETCHers to the waterpark to locate the headquarters of PURRS to stop them from world domination. Two elimination challenges took place in the waterpark and they used two of the "Fabulous Four" game show relics from Episode 2 for the challenges. Jay and Marc were eliminated in their respective order. The FETCHers find the headquarters at the waterpark saying "No Trespassing". They use the buzzer to unlock the door. The door leads them to Studio P (Go Get It!'s Studio which is really Studio G renovated). By surprise, the hosts of Go Get It!, Tom and Trixie, show up at Ruff's doghouse and want to inform that they want to help stop the world domination. At the third elimination challenge, the FETCHers built a way to deactivate the button on the ceiling before Go Get It!'s finale started. They were successful, but Ruff is still mad at Tom and Trixie. The biggest revelation is revealed. Tom and Trixie were really Ruff's parents. They became spies for PURRS, but they came back for Ruff at the end. Emmie and Marco competed at the Go Get It's Grand Grilling (in other terms FETCH's Final Face-Off). At the end, Marco, who at first was from sixth place won triumphantly with first place and got the Golden Fetchie as the grand prize and a hot air balloon ride for all the FETCHers.
Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman contains a sizable amount of direct cultural references for a PBS Kids show. In the season 2 premiere, when Nina does a rather sloppy job at making chocolate candy, Ruff remarks that it is the "Jackson Pollock candy." In the following episode, Ruff mentions that he likes REO Speedwagon. In Season 3, Episode 13, when Sam and Harsha throw sacks in a pail, Ruff makes a comment saying, "I feel like Shaq in the free throw line", making a reference to Shaquille O' Neal. In season 4, Episode 14, when Talia found a horseshoe crab while working on a shrimp boat, a horrified Ruff exclaimed, "That looks like Darth Vader's head with a million legs coming out of it!" In Episode 17 of the same season, Talia was starstruck when she discovered that she was holding Roger Federer's tennis racket. In Episode 15 of Season 2, when the scuba instructors arrived at the beach, Ruff claimed that they were "faster than Batman" and that he "hoped he was watching the show".
The show also had some guest stars. In season 1, Aaron Carter, and the contestants all appeared in his new music video. In season 2, episode 2, Ruff sends Madi and Willie to meet the Blue Man Group, and although he intended for them to meet a "blues" band, Ruff was genuinely impressed. In season 3, episode 4, Sam meets Senator Edward Kennedy. In season 5, episode 4, Crush the sea turtle from the movie Finding Nemo makes an appearance via Ruff's FETCH 3000. In episode 2 of season 4 the host of Design Squad Nation appeared in pole vault challenge.[3] When Rubye and Marc in Season 5, learned skydiving signs, Ruff remarked that one of the signs looked like "one of Beyonce's dance moves"
As of 22 September 2011[update], 100 episodes have aired over 5 seasons.
| Season | Episodes | Season premiere | Season finale | Year filmed | Winner | Season DVD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 20 | May 29, 2006 | June 29, 2006 | 2005 | Anna | ||
| 2 | 20 | May 28, 2007 | June 28, 2007 | 2006 | Mike | ||
| 3 | 20 | September 29, 2008 | October 30, 2008 | 2007 | Jay | ||
| 4 | 20 | September 14, 2009[4] | October 15, 2009 | 2008 | Liza | ||
| 5 | 20 | October 4, 2010[5] | November 4, 2010[6] | 2009 | Marco | ||
The show had auditions for their sixth season in January 2010, but on June 14, 2010, WGBH Boston announced that Season 5 will be the final season due to lack of funding. On June 27, 2010, Jim Conroy (the voice of Ruff) made the official announcement at the Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony. On his Facebook page he said, "It's such an impossible task going up against Sesame Street, Cyberchase, and The Electric Company. So you have to consider the nomination as a win. Can't complain. PBS gave us 100 episodes and 5 seasons. Many good shows never saw that kind of time." FETCH! aired its fifth and final season from October 4, 2010 to November 4, 2010.[7]
To audition for the program, potential contestants were required to be between the ages of 10 and 14[8] and be able to live in the greater Boston area over the summer, during school vacations, and a few weekends during the school year. FETCHers needed to be able to be filmed without missing school. Auditions were handled by Maura Tighe Casting.
In seasons 1–3, Ruff would announce the funding through the FETCH 3000. In season 4 and 5 he would do it on a projector.
"FETCH!" was known for being one of the only PBS Kids shows that showed the sponsors after the intro instead of before the show even starts, like other shows on the network.
Grand Award for The Ruff Guide to Science
"Certificate for Creative Excellence" in the Children's Programming category
Outstanding Children's Series Outstanding Writing in a Children's Series Outstanding Achievement in Main Title and Graphic Design
Winner – Television "2009 Best Products"
Silver Honor Winner: TV show
Gold Remi Award "TV Series – Family/Children"
Platinum Remi Award "TV Series – Family/Children"
Winner – Best Kids, 'Tweens and Teens site
Outstanding Original Song – Children's And Animation – FETCH! Theme Song
Outstanding Writing in a Children's Series Outstanding Original Song – Children's And Animation – FETCH Theme Song Outstanding Achievement in Single Camera Editing
First Place "Gold Camera Award" in the Children's Programming category
Winner – Television Special Audience Program
Silver Honor Winner: Web site Recommended Award Winner: TV show
Gold Remi Award for "TV Series – Family/Children"
Winner – Television "2008 Best Products"
Runner-Up Fourth Place – Ages 7–11 Non-Fiction
Bronze World Medal in Youth programs
Performer in an Animated Series Original Song – FETCH Theme Song
Second Place "Silver Screen Award" in the Children's Programming category
Winner – Television Special Audience Program
2007 Gold Award Winner
Bronze Remi Award for "TV Series – Family/Children"[13]
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