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

[ChristineBCW]

This "springboard to go national" was probably a natural process since Radio did that.  Many of these after-school hours were basically a host introducing syndicated programs (LONE RANGER) and cartoons.  They might have sidekicks and puppets.  It seems the amount of on-air varied - but after-school programming ran from 3 to 5, maybe 6. 

Now, American TV offers Divorce Judges and Dr. Feels, Springers, etc. 

Hardly a fair trade-off.

[drmark7]

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.

I'm from Lancaster, Ohio and we saw all the Columbus shows. On LUCI'S TOYSHOP, just after Thanksgiving, they would introduce Santa Claus and his huge machine with a CONVEYER BELT that would pump out all the toys you could conveniently buy at the local LAZARUS department stores!

You can now get MANY dvds of FRITZ THE NIGHTOWL original shows after he inherited them from the WBNS-TV studios.

And lets not forget FLIPPO THE CLOWN... host of a much beloved 4pm daily movie, THE EARLY SHOW. With co-host/ straight man, Dan Imel. This is where I first saw ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN!!!

Jerry Beck hosted SCHOENLING ALL NIGHT THEATER. The first place I ever saw KING KONG, CITIZEN KANE and my beloved THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN. And MR. CHICKEN was always the 3rd movie shown from 4am to 6am. This was back in the day when if a movie was on at 4am- you had to stay up from 4am to 6am to view it. Then had bragging rights on Monday morning at school. I also recorded the theme and organ music from the tv speaker. Remember doing that!?

I never saw it, but there was a much talked about ALL NIGHT THEATER showing of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, where Jerry heckled it all the way during commercial breaks as the worst movie he'd ever had to show. in retrospect, this must have been a pretty historical, early showing of CHERBOURG on local TV in the early to mid 1970s.

Can't remember MONAS PLACE at all- but if it was FOX TV- that must have been in the mid to late 80s.

[ChristineBCW]

DrMark, what time frame were these experiences?  Before 1965?  You mentioned "the 80s" for one programme and I'm not finding 'local' shows after that.  Every media group accepted national homogenization as their goal although every programme remains 'local'.  Somewhere.  They just ignore those locals.

[Mike Scott]

I also recorded the theme and organ music from the tv speaker.

In pre home video days, I had a whole collection of audio tapes of movies recorded from TV. 

[ChristineBCW]

As a corrective addendum, when I said "shows ignored locals", I meant that shows ARE all produced locally - somewhere - but those shows don't invite local kids in for viewing, say, on their birthdays. 

This seems to be a fairly common gimmick for the local shows of the '50s, '60s and into the '70s - invited youngsters in for their 5th or 8th birthday to be part of a bleacher crew or some small gathering - in the few dozen - compared to a "studio audience" in a theater-setting.  Local studios apparently wheeled out bleacheres for these shows, every afternoon, five days a week for years, for decades.  What a special birthday for those kids, I bet.  Somewhere, studios and media execs decided catering to children wasn't sufficiently profitable - now, after-school programming has the Psycho Divorce Judges on Springer's TV-Cat Fights.  What a difference.  A sad sad difference.