For babyboomers, did your town have a local kids' show host?

[Rockshasa]

Not really a boomer, but I grew up in Maryland and had 2 (both did double duty)

From Baltimore we had George Lewis, aka "Captain Chesapeake", a sea captain kids show host that ran old cartoons and shows (Speed Racer, Scooby Doo, the Monkees, etc) and had a sea monster named Mondy. He ran from 1971-1990 on local UHF 45. On the weekends he was "Ghost Host" (mostly seen in shadows, kind of made up to look like Lugosi's Ygor in a turtleneck) and ran the old black&white horror films. Ghost Host, if memory serves, played it straight as a horror host.

From DC we got Dick Dyszel, by day he was Bozo and later kids show host Captain 20 (a Spock-like pointy eared alien). By night, he was (and still is...on the internet) Count Gore DeVol hosting the horror films with a comedic slant.

Saturday afternoons were wrestling and kung-fu flicks (can't remember which station ran which though), and for a while Sunday mornings were old comedies (Blondie, Abbott & Costello, Three Stooges, Marx Brothers, etc...)

Ex-Marylander here too!
OMG, I loved Captain Chesapeake. It was standard protocol to watch him after you got home from school, all the way up to dinner time...Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, The Munsters, Speed Racer, Dennis the Menace...can't remember the other shows now. Remember Bruce the Bird? But yeah, I remember the Capt. was also the Ghost Host. What I do remember is that Ghost Host showed alot of horror movies that were so boring. I remember all the movies were mainly old B/W films. As a kid we always tried to stay up late to watch, but inevitably fell asleep before the movie was over.

Sometime around the late 1960's - early 1970's there was a Saturday afternoon horror host on Channel 9 coming out of Washington DC. The show was called Weird Tales, and the horror host was a vampire that told lots of dumb jokes, and there was a point in the show where they showcased  monster drawings that kids had sent in to the station. I have no idea what the host' name was?

[ChristineBCW]

I have forgotten to include those Kung-Fu movies as part of the Sat Afternoon Movie line-up.  I suppose those replaced the Westerns on American TV. 

IF that occurred, was that in the '70s or '80s? 

I guess my next question might be, "When did the dedicated Sat noon-afternoon time-slot movies disappear?  The '70s or '80s?  I assume earlier when Cable TV expansion was prevalent in cities over 100k, which it appears to be "1970s".   This seems to be the beginning of the end of the local TV-Host, too - but it also gave way to the national host - the Elvira's, the Bob's on AMC, and I understand Turner Channel out of Atlanta had a single host - Bill Tush - for many shows - movies, TV wrestling as well as advertising.

I consider MST3K's Joel Hodgson to be a natural spin-off of the Local Host phenomenon.   And Svengoolie on MeTV, the TCM hosts, etc.  I hope networks and cable channels will continue this because I like the intro-outro concept for films, although I know these eat up a whole 2-3 minutes of ad time.  cough cough.  Gee - we can't see Flo of Progressive or Geico commercials 18 times but only 17.  What a massive loss for humanity!

[kordindustries]

I'd say based on my experience that the dedicated Saturday afternoon line-ups faded out in the mid to late 80's, as did most of the local programming in my area. The Saturday wrestling and kung-fu flicks were replaced with infomercials instead.

As I mentioned before Captain Chesapeake was one of our local kids show hosts, and left the air in 1990. He was on a local UHF channel that became a Fox affiliate. After Captain C was gone, they tried briefly doing another show "Fox Kids Club" and the content was all supplied by the Fox network to my knowledge, so gone were the old reruns, instead it was new cartoons like X-Men, Tiny Toons, and Power Rangers.

[Pat]

Yes, in Detroit we had Sir Graves Saturday afternoon and  then at 11:30pm the Ghoul, sort of a hippie mad scientist.

[ChristineBCW]

Kord, your comment about Captain C "ended in 1990" is one of the latest dates for this type of show I've heard.  Thanks for that info. 

Pat, do you have any sense of a time-period or the years that Sir Graves operated out of Detroit?  That area had to have a lot of local TV stations (I assume they would) and I wonder what alternative kids-show hosts were around - if any, I mean.

[Rockshasa]

I'd say based on my experience that the dedicated Saturday afternoon line-ups faded out in the mid to late 80's.....As I mentioned before Captain Chesapeake was one of our local kids show hosts, and left the air in 1990. He was on a local UHF channel that became a Fox affiliate.

I truly miss the local UHF channels and their programming. Can't stand cable TV anymore (or Dish or any of them). It was cool when it first became big, but there is so much garbage being programmed anymore on cable channels. Can't stand reality TV or any of the American Idol/Ninja shows as well. TV entertainment has become so dumbed down anymore. I'll take the old sitcoms of the 1960's, 1970's or 1980's any day over anything offered nowadays.

[Frankenmummy]

I live 100 miles from Pittsburgh so we also watched Chiller Theatre with Chilly Billy Cardille on TV when I was young...
That's where I learned all about Monster Movies... I live in a small town without a TV Station or movie theater...

http://chillertheatermemories.com/

[horrorhunter]

I truly miss the local UHF channels and their programming. Can't stand cable TV anymore (or Dish or any of them). It was cool when it first became big, but there is so much garbage being programmed anymore on cable channels. Can't stand reality TV or any of the American Idol/Ninja shows as well. TV entertainment has become so dumbed down anymore. I'll take the old sitcoms of the 1960's, 1970's or 1980's any day over anything offered nowadays.

Infomercials and padded-to-hell news killed local programming. Except for a few syndicated hosts, if you want hosted monster movies now you watch Kreepy Kastle Television and The Vortexx on the internet. I don't even subscribe to TV anymore. Except for a handful of shows, it's a thousand channels of pablum. Even when they rerun good shows from the past they get butchered to squeeze in more commercials. Cable already charges out the wazoo, then we get inundated with countless annoying commercials. No, thanks.

[Pat]

Don't know the exact dates but I watched from mid 70s to early 80s. I'd guess 69 - 84, 85. I don'don't remember any other kids host. There were two other movie host- a gal named Rita Bell hosted the morning movie and a guy named Bill Kennedy did the afternoon movie.

[ChristineBCW]

Thanks, Pat.

I found out that Prince George, BC had a local station with a kids' host for 2 decades from the later '50s into the late '70s.  PG was about 30k at the time, and is a crossroads "highway town/rail hub" between Canada into Alaska, down to Vancouver and the USA. 

This local show-host did it all, and had two sidekicks over the years that lasted 7 or 10 years each.  These switched costumes and roles for monster-movie hosts on weekend evenings, and may have hosted Saturday afternoon movies as well.  Then they were fill-in on-camera personalities as needed.

Our neighbors there, natives to the area, say the reception was better in those days with rabbit ears than current 'digital over the air' stuff, but that entire road is optic-fibre'd since the mid 1990s so they don't waste much time experimenting with antennnas.   They're just under 3 meters of snow this year - not enough - but that still makes standing on a roof, holding clothes-hangers at various wishful angles, pretty difficult.  And no, that's not too dangerous - most folks can hop out of their 3rd floor balconies and ski down that slope to the rest of the yard.

[ChrisW]

In the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, PA area we had "Hatchy Milatchy" with Miss Judy in the morning (Google her to see a clip with the second hostess) that was for young children. While we had afternoon shows with Stooges, cartoon and the like, I don't remember the host.
For horror host, our local was Uncle Ted with "Uncle Ted's Ghoul School" on WNEP (same channel as Hatchy Milatchy), which then became Uncle Ted's Monstermania on our local PBS station, WVIA.
But, back in the '60s we were the first location in the U.S. to have cable, so we got to watch Dr. Shock on Channel 17 out of Philadelphia

[Hepcat]

For kids growing up in the '40s, '50s and into the '60s - did your local TV station have a kids' show host?

The CBC affiliate CFPL-TV in London, Ontario with a population of about 155,000 had a show for pre-schoolers called Romper Room hosted by Miss Dorothy.

An after-school program that had a mix of cartoons, maybe a studio set of puppets, farmer-characters in bib overalls, or cowboys?

The CTV affiliate CKCO-TV in Kitchener with a population of about 120,000 about sixty miles east of London had a cowboy type calling himself Big Al as a kids' show host.



Now I knew a fellow named Alan who as a kid absolutely idolized Big Al who ostensibly loved all kids. So Big Al was at a Kitchener area fall fair. I guess it was a long, hot thirsty day and Big Al was resorting to a series of cold ones to make it through the ordeal. So inevitably he had to retreat to the washroom to take a leak. Now Alan had seized upon the chance to meet his idol at the fair that day and followed Big Al to the washroom. So Alan sidled up to Big Al at the next urinal over and said "Hi Big Al! They call me Little Al." But by this time Big Al was pretty tanked up. Three sheets to the wind you might say. He accordingly looked over at this annoying little twerp beside him and said "Ahhhhhhh, f.... off kid."

Well Little Alan was just shattered! Here he'd gotten the proverbial back of the hand from his idol!

So years later Alan became a city cop in London. One day he pulled a woman over for some picayune traffic offence. It turned out to be Miss Dorothy, the hostess of CFPL-TV's Romper Room. What, one of those good-for-nothing kids' TV hosts?! Well Alan threw the book at her. Got her for everything he could think of and more. That'll teach those kid hating hypocrites from those TV shows!

Did that station also have a Saturday lunch movie-time showing Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, westerns, etc?

No.

Then, a Friday and/or Saturday night monster-movie, probably after evening news?

No. But whoever had a really good quality rooftop antenna or cable television service in London could tune into Shock Theater with horror host Ghoulardi at WJW from across Lake Erie in Cleveland. 



We didn't start subscribing to TV cable until 1966 by which time I was fourteen and substantially less impressionable.

They might have had nationally syndicated shows like CAPTAIN KANGAROO and COWBOY BOB, maybe BOZO, too.

At 5:30 PM on weekdays between 2 October 1961 and 1 July 1966 a CBC network half hour kids' show called Razzle Dazzle was shown on CFPL.



One of the co-hosts of Razzle Dazzle was Alan Hamel who went on to wed Suzanne Somers in 1977.

[Hepcat]

For kids growing up in the '40s, '50s and into the '60s - did your local TV station have a kids' show host? 

Should this thread not be in the Television forum though?

[CultofPersonality]

Ex-Marylander here too!
OMG, I loved Captain Chesapeake. It was standard protocol to watch him after you got home from school, all the way up to dinner time...Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, The Munsters, Speed Racer, Dennis the Menace...can't remember the other shows now. Remember Bruce the Bird? But yeah, I remember the Capt. was also the Ghost Host. What I do remember is that Ghost Host showed alot of horror movies that were so boring. I remember all the movies were mainly old B/W films. As a kid we always tried to stay up late to watch, but inevitably fell asleep before the movie was over.

Sometime around the late 1960's - early 1970's there was a Saturday afternoon horror host on Channel 9 coming out of Washington DC. The show was called Weird Tales, and the horror host was a vampire that told lots of dumb jokes, and there was a point in the show where they showcased  monster drawings that kids had sent in to the station. I have no idea what the host' name was?

I grew up (and still live) about 20 miles north of Baltimore. I remember "Sir Graves Ghastly" being on 11:30 on Friday nights on Channel 9 in DC, then a SECOND show on Saturday afternoon.  I do not recall if it was a DIFFERENT film than was shown the night before or not. I just assumed he was actually IN DC; I remember going to see him at a shopping center opening or some such down in Annapolis , MD which is maybe 15 or so miles from DC. Maybe the show was shot in Detroit and syndicated, maybe he did a couple years in Detroit and relocated, I think maybe there was a brief biography /vintage interview a few years back in "Scary Monsters". I don't remember the details. As for the "Ghost Host" , he was not really much of a host at all; you NEVER saw much of his face, so it seemed to me they shot ONE episode of him standing on a VERY poorly lit set, and all he did was state the title of the movie with some over the top "evil" laughter. MAYBE he would mention the actor's names, but I know there was NEVER any discussion or sketch type material. LOTS of sound effects, thunder and lightning and that "BWAAAH HA HA HA!" laughter. And like Chris, I remember when we got cable around '75 or '76 and catching Dr Shock on Channel 17. And I think Seymour out of LA might have been syndicated on Channel 29 out of Philly for maybe a year or so. I seem to remember him hosting "The Incredible Two Headed Transplant" and interacting with HIMSELF in the movie, but it is possible I caught that in a compilation video after the fact.  Gore DeVol was fun, but when we got cable we lost channel 20 so I did not really catch him again until I went to the University of Maryland and it became a local channel. But at that point, 11:30 on a Saturday night was NOT when I was watching TV, LOL.
      GREAT thread!
           Tom
         Tom

[classicscreams]

In the Columbus, Ohio area we had of course Captain Kangaroo followed by the local show Lucy's Toyshop (later replaced by Friendly Junction).  What I really remember and would love to find was the ones at Christmas where had Santa in his toyshop and he would read local letters.

At night we would have Fritz The Night Owl with Saturday being Double Chiller Theater with Fritz The Night Owl.  On Saturdays in the 70's it was Mona's Place (for a short while I think that was the New Fox Channel) and the Local NBC was Jerry Beck late Saturday Nights.