Pinwheel premiered on December 1, 1977, on Channel C-3 of QUBE's local cable system in Columbus, Ohio. The show was created by Vivian Horner and produced by Sandy Kavanaugh, two educators who had previously worked at the Children's Television Workshop. 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.
The show takes place in and around a large Victorian-style boarding house powered by a pinwheel on one of the peaks. The Ohio episodes relied heavily on songs mostly performed by Jake.