Nickelodeon's "The Wonder Pets!" introduced preschoolers to classical music and opera during its first season. Now it's moving on to the Beatles.

It says something about the Beatles' continuing appeal that TV producers turned to a band that broke up nearly 40 years ago as the best way to introduce children under age 5 to rock 'n' roll.

"They were such brilliant songwriters that just cross over every age group," said series creator Josh Selig.

The "Save the Beetles!" episode premieres tonight at 7. The Wonder Pets travel to Liverpool to rescue four beetles whose yellow submarine is trapped in kelp. Following the rescue, the Beetles perform a concert.

The series features a guinea pig, duckling and turtle who travel the world to save baby animals in distress. Last year the music was recorded by a full orchestra with much of the dialogue sung in operetta style.

Lenie Colacino, a star of Broadway's late-'70s musical "Beatlemania," is the voice of Wingo, Jack and Pete (or Ringo, John and Paul) in the episode. He said he would have been happy to do George's "beetle," too, but producers wanted another voice.

He's continually impressed with how the Beatles' music moves on from generation to generation, and he likes how the story was told on "The Wonder Pets!"

"It wasn't smarmy," Colacino said. "It didn't talk down to children."

(Associated Press)

New data released Wednesday show online views of videos soared 66 percent in the United States in February from a year earlier, with TV networks grabbing just a pittance of those eyeballs.

The numbers from comScore Inc. underscored a problem being discussed by network executives last week at the National Association of Broadcasters annual meeting in Las Vegas, as they search for ways to drive viewers to their Web sites and TV channels.

Some networks said their online strategies involve trying to stay ahead of video pirates who upload broadcast content online just minutes after it hits the airwaves.

The culprits often post the footage on Google Inc.'s YouTube, the dominant video service in the new survey.

YouTube racked up one-third of the estimated 10 billion views of online video in February, up from 15 percent last year, according to comScore.

"We still see our content pop up on YouTube," CNN.com Executive Producer Sandy Malcolm said during the broadcasters meeting. CNN is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

"You deal with it," she said. "You try to work with them on rights and things, but I don't think you can completely stop it. You just try to beat the tide and try to get your content out as fast as you can."

Excluding AOL.com, Time Warner sites including CNN.com grabbed just a 1.3 percent share of video views on the Internet in February, or roughly 133 million views, comScore reported.

Other TV-based entities remained back in the pack, with Walt Disney Co.'s ABC.com attracting 98 million views, or a 1 percent share.

Even as the YouTube juggernaut continued to attract more viewers, comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman said TV networks were fighting back.

He cited last month's launch of Hulu.com, a video Web site that's a joint venture of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and News Corp.

"It seems there's a certain amount of attention and investment going online right now," Lipsman said.

The move was necessary to adapt to "irreversible shifts" in the content delivery business, said Sheau Ng, NBC Universal's vice president of broadcast and consumer technology.

"The point is to make legitimate content easily available," Ng said. "At the same time, you need to tell the local police watch out for this counterfeit stuff."

YouTube said it has made efforts to clamp down on pirated content, and since October has offered content owners the chance to slap ads on even unlicensed video copies and share revenue.

(Ryan Nakashima, AP)

A new episode of ABC's "Samantha Who?" will be pre-empted at 9:30 tonight on WTAE for a locally produced weather special.

"Samantha Who?" will air in late-night at 1:05 a.m. Tuesday.

(Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV editor)

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama is expected to be interviewed via satellite from Pittsburgh tonight on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" (11 p.m., Comedy Central). ... Tomorrow's edition of PBS's "NOVA," "Car of the Future" (8 p.m. Tuesday, WQED), was written and directed by Pittsburgher Joseph Seamans. It features NPR's "Car Talk" hosts Ray and Tom Magliozzi exploring the automobile's future. ... The CW's "Gossip Girl" returns with a new episode tonight at 8 on WPCW, and that may be the only place you'll see it. New episodes will not stream on The CW's Web site as they have in the past. ... Former KDKA-TV news anchor Susan Barnett has been promoted to 6 and 11 p.m. anchor at KYW-TV, the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia. Barnett had been filling in on those newscasts after anchor Alycia Lane was fired in January.

(R.O.)