We all know of famous children shows such as “Sesame Street” and “Dora the Explorer”, but another one is becoming more popular.
A new local show called “Yolotales” is about a few puppet friends having adventures, while also trying to educate the audience.
With five main characters in the show and a whole crew needed to write, shoot and edit the episodes, it may come as surprising that the entire show is done by just two people, with no other help.
Art and Angie Davis never thought their show could reach the success level it has, and have come far away from their original jobs.
Art was running a small record company in Boston, Mass. His now wife Angie was a worker in the store. They wrote books and comic strips independently. The books were going to include a cartoon, which led to an epiphany of creating a children’s show.
Angie sewed the puppets from socks, one of which was based on a sock monkey she found in a market. The puppets were tied to ‘50s television characters, a theme Art wanted to connect the show to.
“We wanted any one of any age to watch it,” Angie said.
Last October they came out with the first of what ended up being five episodes of Yolotales Express, which were 15 minute segmented shows.
The name of the show is based on how they fell in love with Yolo County, according to Angie.
“We had a vision and honestly we followed our gut,” Art said. “As we followed our hearts and the more we created, the more success we had.”
They had a hard time believing how successful the show was becoming, with increasingly more channels on public television picking up the show.
“We thought we were crazy,” Angie said.
Recently a full episode of “Yolotales” was released, which is 21 minutes long, opposed to the 15 minute long episodes of Yolotales Express.
Every two weeks a new episode will come out. There are already over 100 cities across the country playing their show.
However, according to Art and Angie it is a tough schedule having only two people create every aspect of the show by themselves. They made the puppets, provide voices, do all the camera work and edit themselves. Art composes and plays the music and writes the script himself. They do admit that it might soon be time to get a larger staff, especially as the show reaches more success.
The current viewership coverage of the show is now almost two million households and the show can be found all cross the internet, including their website, yolotales.com. They also have been distributing DVD’s for the show and their books throughout Yolo County.
Art and Angie do not plan on getting the show to the major networks, due to many regulations and copyright issues. They do not want networks to censure the show. However, they still hope to increase the number of channels it appears on throughout the country.
Being an independent business, the show depends heavily on sponsorship and has local sponsors as well as an opportunity for anyone to donate who wishes to.
The couple only hopes the show continues to grow as more episodes come out, and they hope to stick with similar themes throughout the episodes connecting them in a better way.
For now they can only continue being amazed at how much success they have reached and how they have come a long way to making their very own children’s television show.
“I’ve always been the weird creative kid,” Angie said. “You just put the puppet on and a character is created.”
ZANDER WOLD can be reached at city@theaggie.org.
