The Flintstone Comedy Hour

The Flintstone Comedy Hour is an American animated television series and a spin-off of The Flintstones and The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, produced by Hanna-Barbera, which aired on CBS from September 9, 1972, to September 1, 1973. It was re-titled The Flintstone Comedy Show for a second season of reruns as a half-hour show from September 8, 1973, to January 26, 1974.

Overview
The show's first half-hour featured two shorts with Fred and Barney, one short with the cast of The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, short jokes, horoscopes, and two songs performed by the new Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm band called The Bedrock Rockers; the second half-hour featured four new episodes and reruns of The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show. The show also featured Moonrock, Penny, Wiggy, "Bad-luck" Schleprock, Cindy and Fabian, and the Bronto Bunch (Bronto, Noodles, Stub and Zonk) from The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.

Mikki Stevens replaced Sally Struthers as the voice of Pebbles in four new episodes of The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show and in brief in-between segments, Struthers at the time being fully committed to her role as Gloria Stivic on the sitcom All in the Family. This was the final spin-off to feature Alan Reed as the voice of Fred Flintstone before Reed's death in 1977.

For the 1973–74 television season, CBS dropped The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show episodes and repackaged the first half-hour segments of The Flintstone Comedy Hour for a second season of reruns under the new title The Flintstone Comedy Show from September 8, 1973, to January 26, 1974. The "Fred & Barney" shorts and "The Bedrock Rockers" segments were later featured on the syndicated weekday series Fred Flintstone and Friends in 1977–78. The program continued to air in rebroadcasts under The Flintstone Comedy Show title on USA Cartoon Express, Cartoon Network and Boomerang.

Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a laugh track created by the studio.

The Bedrock Rockers
The Bedrock Rockers were Pebbles Flintstone (keyboard), Bamm-Bamm Rubble (bass), Moonrock Crater (drums), Penny Pillar (tambourine) and Wiggy Rockstone (flute). They performed two songs per episode which included:


 * 1) "Sunshine Man"
 * 2) "Summertime Girl"
 * 3) "Oh, How I Love You"
 * 4) "Keep in Time"
 * 5) "It Should Always Be Saturday"
 * 6) "Hop, Skip and a Jump"
 * 7) "Flying So High"
 * 8) "Yabba Dabba Doozie"
 * 9) "Shadow, Shadow"
 * 10) "Being With You"
 * 11) "Singing Song"
 * 12) "Song of the Season"
 * 13) "What's Your Sign?"
 * 14) "Sunny Sun Day"
 * 15) "Rock N Roll Circus"
 * 16) "And I Love You"

The music was written by various Screen Gems staffers which, at the time, included David Gates (of Bread) penning the popular "Summertime Girl" and Tony Dancy (of Tony's Tygers) writing "Being With You" with Craig Fairchild & Jackie Mills. Mills also wrote "Sunshine Man" with Leonard Pettit and "Yabba Dabba Doozie" with Tom Jenkins. The actual group on the recordings were known as The Ron Hicklin Singers, featuring Tom Bahler on lead (he later penned the classic Michael Jackson song "She's Out of My Life"), John Bahler, Jackie Ward and Stan Farber. This lineup recorded on hundreds of commercials, TV themes and The Partridge Family recordings. Bahler's lead vocals are also prominent in The Love Generation, who issued a few LPs in the late 1960s.

Episodes
Each episode contained two shorts featuring the traditional antics and adventures of Fred and Barney and one short featuring Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm with their friends Moonrock, Penny, Wiggy, Schleprock, Cindy and Fabian, and the Bronto Bunch (Bronto, Noodles, Stub and Zonk).

Voice cast

 * Alan Reed as Fred Flintstone
 * Mel Blanc as Barney Rubble, Dino, Zonk, Stub
 * Carl Esser as Fabian Fabquartz
 * Gay Hartwig as Betty Rubble, Wiggy Rockstone, Cindy Curbstone
 * Don Messick as Schleprock
 * Mitzi McCall as Penny Pillar
 * Jay North as Bamm-Bamm Rubble
 * John Stephenson as Mr. Slate, Noodles
 * Mickey Stevens as Pebbles Flintstone
 * Jean Vander Pyl as Wilma Flintstone
 * Lennie Weinrib as Moonrock Crater, Bronto