Editing The Electric Company (section)

==Show numbering==
Comedian, actor and writer [[Paul Dooley]] created the series and served as head writer. A total of 780 episodes were produced in the show's six-season run, 130 per season. As with ''Sesame Street'', each episode of ''The Electric Company'' was numbered on-screen instead of using traditional episode titles. Seasons One through Four were numbered 1–520 (1971–1975). Season five was numbered 1A–130A (1975–1976), while season six was numbered 1B–130B (1976–1977). The last two seasons were designated as such because they were designed as year-long curricula for schools.

Starting with season three, a show's number would be presented in the sketch-of-the-day teaser segment, a parody of soap-opera teasers, which would highlight a particular sketch that would be shown during that episode. The voice of a cast member would say a variant of, "Today on ''The Electric Company'', the so-and so says, '(bleep)'," and the action would freeze as the graphic of the word of the day (or a card with the word of the day printed on it) became visible to viewers. The [[redaction|redacted]] words were replaced by a series of [[Minimoog]]{{fact|date=July 2023}} sounds that roughly mimicked the [[modulation]] of the word or phrase in question so children could guess them. The still action would linger on the screen for several seconds, then fade to black, where the show number would become visible in a [[Scanimate]] animation in a random color. The music for this segment was a repetitive, funky instrumental groove featuring a [[call and response|call-and-response]] between horns and a scratchy [[Wah-wah pedal|wah-wah]] electric guitar.

The next-show teaser, which was introduced in season two without music, worked in the same way, and usually used a different take of the music heard during the sketch-of-the-day teaser, except that the voice said "Tune in next time, when...," and there was no show number shown.

In season one, however, after the title sequence, the sound of a striking match would be heard, and a fade-up from black would reveal a hand holding a lit match and "Show #''x''" handwritten on a piece of paper that was placed in such a way so that it could blend with the surrounding objects in-frame. Instead of the next-show teaser, Ken Roberts's voice could be heard, saying, "And now, the last word," and the trademark light bulb would be shut off by a hand doing whatever the last word was. In season two, after the opening sequence the words "The Electric Company" would disappear from the logo, and the show number would appear in its place through the use of a [[Scanimate]] animation and an electronic whooshing sound.

Notably, some episodes in seasons three through five had serious technical errors with either their sketch-of-the-day teaser segments or their next-show teaser segments, which was probably because of the failure of the [[Linear video editing|linear]] [[analog video]]-editing equipment. Episodes that have these errors in their sketch-of-the-day teasers include 297, 390, 1A, 8A, and 15A—sometimes the music started too late, ended too early, or played too long; sometimes the errors are negligible, with the teaser music only playing a fraction of a second longer than usual.

For season six, because the teaser music was changed to a shorter, self-contained composition, these errors do not occur, with the exception of the teaser of 33B shown at the end of 32B (available on iTunes), where the teaser was accidentally ''cut'' by a fraction of a second.