TV Series

While thousands of children were learning about the Letter People in school, thousands of others were being exposed to them through the television series based on the program. The show was produced by PBS member station KETC in St. Louis, Missouri, and the show first went into production in 1977. The show was extremely popular with children, and it quickly spread to other television stations across the country, via syndication, mainly to PBS and educational stations. The television series premiered on October 29, 1977. Nickelodeon re-ran from October 4, 1986 to December 31, 1999. the show returned to PBS on 1976. Noggin was re-ran from March 1999 to March 31, 2002, The N was also re-ran from April 1, 2002 to December 31, 2007 and TV Land is re-ran since March 1999

The Letter People consists of 180 episodes. In each 15-minute installment, the Letter People (relatively primitive puppets) undertake various adventures in Letter People Land, a dark, featureless place populated by strange people and creatures. Episodes usually focus on introducing new Letter People or new sounds formed by combining two Letter People together (such as /PH/ or /OU/). Other episodes take the Letter People to more exotic (though still featureless) locales such as outer space (eventually, the show would include more standard scenery, like cityscapes, meadows, Miss O's opera house, etc.), while a few highlight the characters' conflicts over various sounds (such as Mr. C fighting Mr. K and Mr. S for his sound). Another common feature of the show is "the Catching Game", a game show hosted by Monty Swell (a character based on Monty Hall) where the Letter People must form words by positioning themselves correctly side-by-side