contemporarily known, occurred on January 10, 1987, by circumstance when the primary guest for that night's performance of Almost Live! called in to cancel their appearance; with no backup guest planned to fill the resulting empty time, the show's writers elected to have Nye demonstrate the household uses of liquid nitrogen. During the demonstration, Nye submerged an onion in liquid nitrogen and proceeded to shatter it, receiving acclaim from the studio audience. As Nye produced more demonstrations for Almost Live!, he began to develop the idea of a show featuring his "Science Guy" persona; KING-TV declined his proposal, though he eventually received assistance from station alumni James McKenna and Erren Gottlieb. Together, the group pitched the show as Watch Mr. Wizard meets Pee-wee's Playhouse, though the latter part was later replaced with MTV after the arrest of actor Paul Reubens for indecent exposure in 1991. Their pitch lasted for four years, being declined by Fox and other networks over various concerns, until they convinced Elizabeth Brock of local PBS member station KCTS-TV to take a chance on the idea. KCTS-TV commissioned a pilot for Bill Nye the Science Guy, which aired on April 14, 1993, on the station itself before airing on PBS stations nationwide for the rest of the month. Nye successfully obtained underwriting from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Nye's program became part of a package of syndicated series that local stations could schedule to fulfill Children's Television Act requirements; because of this, Bill Nye the Science Guy became the first program to run concurrently on both public and commercial stations. Theme song The Bill Nye the Science Guy theme song was written by songwriter (and former math teacher) Mike Greene. It was inspired by Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo, when composing the theme, and used his voice for singing the "Bill Nye the Science Guy" refrain. It consisted of Pat Cashman saying the show's title in a distorted male voice, and the word "Bill" is repeated throughout as a percussive shout. An electric guitar was used during the theme song, followed by a female voice saying "Science rules!" (with Bill lip-syncing), "Inertia is a property of matter", and "T-minus seven seconds". When Greene was enlisted to write the theme song, the show's producers requested that the song "not sound like a kid's show"; the final result was accordingly uncommon for the time.