Anyone remember local TV shows?

[KevinAK]

In Cincinnati we had an afternoon cartoon show with filler segments done by Larry Smith and his puppets.

We also had a local talk show hosted by Nick Clooney. Some of you may be familiar with his son George.

And then there was this low point in local television:

youtube.com/watch?v=dlJV0EZfB1Q

 

[pete_29]

You’re right, I did. And along with “Song of Bernadette” there was “Tobor” the movie about the robot, that was annual.

Well, when you live someplace where at least 70% of the population is baptized Catholic…movies like “Bernadette” pop up. I always used to get angry at the Mother Superior of the convent, until the part of the movie where she repents.

My husband remembers a klids’ program in the Bay Area called Mayor Art.

The show with Tobor was called Eighth Man. Afew years ago I bought 4 vhs tapes with 6 episodes each. Cheesy Japanese cartoon. I love it.

There were a couple of local shows I watched as a kid. One was Captain Elevens Showboat, and the other was called Cookie and the Captain. Cookie was played by Jim Bolen who was a weatherman in St. Louis for years. There was another show called Corky the Clown that starred Cliff St. James who was a longtime St. Louis newscaster.

 

[First_of_9]

Also, in the 1960s, TV was not on 24 hours a day. There was a wonderful closing sequence showing a Starfighter jet which ended with the words: “and touched the face of God.”

That is the poem “High Flight”:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

You all must be from big cities. In smaller markets (20,000 in my home town in 50s) the local stations ran cartoons, but usually couldn’t aford live hosts–unless it was a relative–usually a no-talent relative–of the station owner:wink:

 

[Phemie]

I remember a local Romper Room and it seems every local studio had its own dance show - ours was Top Ten Plus, sponsored by Teem with Gerald McBoing Boing in the ad.

Those of us who could pick up the signal from Bangor Maine will never forget WVII’s “Stacey’s Country Jamboree”.

 

[bluerose]

I almost got to be on the local “Dialing for Dollars” show (El Paso, TX, circa 1979-1980) when I almost won “Safety Patrol of the Year” from our Catholic school. Another girl and I had to draw straws to determine the winner. I lost. The host was a gentleman by the name of Ted Bender who also did the weather on our local news show. He was a local celebrity, always hosting everything the TV station had that was local (the Jerry Lewis telethons, the annual Thanksgiving Day parade) and famous for his bow ties, which he said he took to wearing when his car broke down and when he raised the hood to see what was wrong, his regular tie got caught in the fan belt! Bow ties ever since. Mr. Bender passed away several years ago, but I’ll always remember him (especially in his weatherman capacity, before radar and computer drawn maps, when the weatherman stood in front of a map drawn on a chalkboard and drew in the high pressure fronts, the low pressure fronts and the temperatures!)

The other local shows I remember were “Studio 14”, a dance show hosted by Steve Crosno (anyone from the El Paso/Las Cruces area from the late 50s to the early 90s will remember Steve Crosno!) Some friends and I went a few times when we were in high school. Then our high school religion teacher used to host a half-hour program on Sunday nights called “Nuestra Santa Fe” (“Our Holy Faith”) and it talked about the Church, her mission, her teachings, the resources available through the Church (it was aimed primarily at the Hispanic population so it was in Spanish).

That’s all I remember, but I wasn’t much of a TV watcher even back then (and even less now!)

 

[marytk]

Wow how well I remember those Rita Bell movies and the four o’clock movies during lent how they would all have to do with Christ. I remember being on the Bozo show watching the Flintstones, the Brady Bunch, or Happy Days and having popcorn and townclub pop on a Friday night. Those were the days!

OK who remembers Milky the Clown and the magic words…TWIN PINES! There was a Pop Eye show on in the early evening that had what might have been a local host showing the cartoons (this is 50 years ago) My brother had to watch it. I hated it.
We had a local Bozo who later became Upsy Daisy or something. I guess there was a copy right issue
There were local talk shows in the 70’s Kelly &Co.

 

[PoliSciProf]

Local TV seems to be a thing of the past, save for the local news. It’s apparently fallen victim to cost cutting.

But it wasn’t always that way. There were cartoon shows for kids with local hosts in my area like Captain Chesapeake (“Ahoy, crew members!”) and Captain 20 (“May you be happy and win lots of prizes!”). Other kidvid included “Professor Kool’s Fun Skool” (the guy who played Professor Kool often performed for our Cub Scout troop) and local versions of “Bozo” and “Romper Room.”

Late at night, you could get frightened by Count Gore deVol’s “Creature Feature” or by your Ghost Host (played by the same guy who was Captain Chesapeake). In fact, many of the movies that were shown throughout the day were hosted by someone, such as one broadcaster who was also a lector at a church not too far from me.

What were the local TV shows that you remember? How did they capture the flavor of your area?

I think the fellow that played many of these roles on Baltimore tv was Stu Kerr. I think I remember a show called Pete the Pirate.

 

[Dwyer]

It sounds like the heyday of local TV was prior to the 1970s, but I can remember the remains.

If you were from the Detroit (and also the Toledo, and Cleveland) area, there was some wacky guy called “The Ghoul” who was a late night horror movie host (and what movies, probably some of the worst films ever made).

This guy would blow up things with fireworks (it was on TV late at night) and make jokes talking to his camera people, and to a lesser extent through skits; I sort of caught the second edition of this show in the early 1980s, but I vaguely remembered the early 1970s version of it.

This guy still makes appearances occassionally in costume; well, I guess it beats working at a real job.

I don’t know why I watched this (I guess because my older brothers watched it in the 70s); it really was just trash TV.

There were occasional funny moments throughout the shows’ history, even a hint of comic genius from time to time; but it was really very few and far between, and episode after episode The Ghoul wasn’t funny at all, just boring, and showing tasteless insipid “horror” “films.”

There were a few more “family friendly” horror movie hosts who were on during the daytime or primetime: Sir Graves Ghastly (who drove every weekend to do a show in Cleveland; the final local Detroit area host was also from the early 1980s, a guy named “Count Scary” who also did radio stints on the Canadian talk radio station CKLW from Windsor (if you live in Michigan, you’re blocked from calling into the radio station:shrug .

Born too late to remember Soupy Sales; they had Milkey The Clown in Detroit, but I only remember his image which was marketed on someone’s brand of milk around here.

There were some locally produced cartoons: Hot Fudge, Josh (I think this was sort of a Protestant religious cartoon); another Live Clown / cartoon show called Oopsy-Daisy with Daisy the Clown (a male clown), but these were always on real early on Sunday mornings or I was at Mass, so I didn’t watch them.

Well, I guess a lot of you have fond memories of this stuff, and that’s fine; honestly though, I kind of wish I never watched any of this junk (including dumb shows like Gilligan’s Island and MAS*H); but my parents didn’t read books or take us to the library, so, what else are you going to do?

TV is about marketing products and services to consumers.

Really, I think YouTube has, for the moment (until they start cracking the whip through enforcing the copyright laws maybe with the next merger) liberated man from the TV set and being at the mercy of TV station program schedulers.

Yeah, there’s evil stuff on YouTube, but I use it to learn about the world and different countries. If I want to see Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London or Paris, . . . voila, I can watch someone’s travel video footage or even documentaries on it.

There’s also a lot of history documentaries from the BBC, and music (classical or folk), and yes, even old TV shows .

 

[Katie1723]

I remember watching Captain Kangaroo on Sundays. Along with Bertie The Bunyip

Kathy