Pinwheel is an American children's television show and the first to air on Nickelodeon, as well as the first to appear on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block. The show was aimed at preschoolers aged 3–5. It was created by Vivian Horner, an educator who spent her earlier career at the Children's Television Workshop, the company behind Sesame Street. The show was geared to the "short attention span of preschoolers," with each episode divided into short, self-contained segments including songs, skits, and animations. The series is set in a boarding house called Pinwheel House, which is powered by a pinwheel on the roof. The house's residents are a mix of live-action humans and puppets. Most of the show's songs are set to music in the style of a wind-up music box. Pinwheel premiered on December 1, 1977, on Channel C-3 of QUBE's local cable system in Columbus, Ohio. In April 1979, Channel C-3 expanded into a national television network, now called Nickelodeon. Pinwheel continued to air on the network until 1990. From 1988 to 1990, Pinwheel was aired exclusively during the then-new Nick Jr. block. It was gradually phased out in favor of another preschool series, Eureeka's Castle. The Los Angeles Times called Eureeka's Castle a successor series to Pinwheel. History Pinwheel was created by Vivian Horner and produced by Sandy Kavanaugh, two educators who had previously worked at the Children's Television Workshop. The show was created for QUBE, a local cable system tested in Columbus, Ohio. QUBE's developers wanted to offer a series for preschoolers, so they hired Horner and Kavanaugh based on their previous experience in preschool television. Beginning on December 1, 1977, Pinwheel was shown on Channel C-3, one of the experimental channels offered to QUBE subscribers. The channel was cited as "the world's first TV channel geared strictly to preschoolers." In 1979, Channel C-3 was expanded into a national network called Nickelodeon. Pinwheel was reformatted as a series of hour-long episodes shown in three- to five-hour blocks, a format which eventually became the model for Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block. There were a total of 260 Pinwheel episodes recorded from 1977 to 1984. For international distribution, Nickelodeon edited Pinwheel into a package of half-hour episodes. It aired in Canada on Superchannel (from 1983 to 1988) and TVOntario (from 1990 to 1993). The series was also broadcast in the United Kingdom whereas it aired on the defunct children's cable and