Well, not exactly. If you've been following Oobi for a long time like me, or if you just happen to watch the Noggin Network a lot, you might notice that the first episodes of Oobi were just shorts. The shorts are wonky and weird, and they just have this loose, energetic quality to them. Thanks to this interview with Josh Selig (creator of Oobi), now we know why Oobi started out with these shorts and not just a regular pilot!
The story: Noggin was looking for new shows, and Josh Selig pitched them the idea of Oobi in 1999. He was a good friend and longtime employee of Sesame Workshop, which co-owned Noggin. As a proof of concept, Noggin asked his studio to make a series of interstitial shorts with the Oobi characters. They wanted to have some content to play during commercial breaks, and the Oobi shorts fit the bill perfectly. If the shorts were popular with kids, Noggin told Selig, they would greenlight it for a half-hour series. And that's exactly what happened a few years later in 2003. And the rest is history!
