Locally produced TV shows of days gone by.

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xjwmx

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There's a thread concerning Asheville, NC. at the moment and it reminded me that we used to get TV station WLOS, Asheville with some excellent or at least very interesting locally produced shows, when I was a child. We also got WBIR in Knoxville, WCYB, and others. All with locally produced shows, usually musical. From Asheville we got the Arthur Smith show, a talented guy who I remember claimed that Dueling Banjos was ripped off from him.

In the tiny isolated town in SE KY that I grew up in there was what must have been an electronics genius there who put an antenna tower high on a mountain and provided the town with a cable system, which was probably one of the first cable systems in the U.S., allowing us to receive stations from many hundreds of miles away. I think his name was Dwight Brown. I remember going into the back of his business as a child and seeing my first oscilloscope traces...

Any recollections about locally produced shows in your part of the country? I'm wondering if it was a regional thing or if it was nation-wide. The good ol' days!
 
"Lum and Abner", lol. I listen to Radio Classics all day at work and driving. Well, that and NPR. But I gotta say, "Lum and Abner" not my favorite. A little "eh" for me.

We had Capt Kangaroo in Maryland.
 
xjwmx said:
There's a thread concerning Asheville, NC. at the moment and it reminded me that we used to get TV station WLOS, Asheville with some excellent or at least very interesting locally produced shows, when I was a child. We also got WBIR in Knoxville, WCYB, and others. All with locally produced shows, usually musical. From Asheville we got the Arthur Smith show, a talented guy who I remember claimed that Dueling Banjos was ripped off from him.

In the tiny isolated town in SE KY that I grew up in there was what must have been an electronics genius there who put an antenna tower high on a mountain and provided the town with a cable system, which was probably one of the first cable systems in the U.S., allowing us to receive stations from many hundreds of miles away. I think his name was Dwight Brown. I remember going into the back of his business as a child and seeing my first oscilloscope traces...

Any recollections about locally produced shows in your part of the country? I'm wondering if it was a regional thing or if it was nation-wide. The good ol' days!
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We got our first TV in 1950. There were no local stations, so you had to this enormous tower with antenna and rotator. On good days we could watch 2 stations out of Cincinnati and 1 out of Louisville, on bad days mostly snow and blurry images. The local show out of Cincinnati was the "Midwestern Hayride". An early version of HeHaw.
 
Purplezinger said:
"Lum & Abner" at the "Jot-em-down" store. That's when there were network radio shows.
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I still answer the phone sometimes, "Jot-em down store, Lum Edwards speaking" The Kentucky folks get it, Texas, not so much. Lum & Abner was easy humor for simple folks that don't laugh out loud a lot. I found it to be much like my grandparent's anecdotal humor. Tame, by all modern measures, but entertaining when the only option was "the swap shop" (WSIP Radio).

The Hazard, Ky Country station had "The Adventures of the Rampaging River Rat" in the mornings. TV up in the hills wouldn't always too good with an antenna in an Oak tree 800 feet up the side of the hill!:laugh: Nothing like trying to tie a boosted line together in a snowstorm with dad yelling up the hill telling ya if ya got it good enough to watch football!:laugh: The best reception sometimes was when the electricity for the booster was going through your hands instead of the corroded wires between the plastic pegs.:laugh:
 
as a kid growing up in ashville in the 50s I remember my GrandPa put an antenna up on the top of the mountian running a cable down to his house. We got a station from charlotte I think I do remember wrestling GrandPa loved his wrestling
 
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Yes jd750ace it was a show for "hill folks". But the time (1936-54) was alot tamer.
We had the Foreman Scotty show produced locally by WKY in OKC.
Seating in the studio for 30-40 kids. Usually consisted of a b-day party group (the bday person got special attention) and individuals.
Of course Captian Kangaroo and the lady with the sock puppets(lambchops?).

I've got an e-mail with radio shows links, listed by show if anyone wants I can e-mail to them.
pm your e-addie.
 
Cowboy Eddy

and this.






Mr. Mephisto. If you are at least 30 years old and lived in Madison between 1966 and 1982, this name is familiar to you -- especially if you were a horror-movie buff, insomniac or impressionable boy during those years. Mephisto was the host of Ferdie's Inferno and, later, Lenny's Inferno, during its run late Fridays on WMTV.


The Milwaukee weather show featured this duo

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Yup I remember hand drawn weather maps. And being really excited about going to grampa's because HE had a color TV.

Our local radio station here in Baraboo would often feature 15 minutes of the owner/DJ snoring on mike til someone could get upstairs and wake him up.
 
We had Mr. Knozit on WIS here in Columbia. The guy who did it is still alive, his name is Joe Pinner. I was on the show one afternoon with my Cub Scout troop. Screen shot circa 1980 or so:

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There was also Abusa Ya Ya. Can't turn up anything on him with teh Googles, though.
 
Reading these has reminded me of two more locally produced genres that I'd forgotten about - wrestling and Saturday night horror movies. Wresting might have been a Southern phenomenon, not sure. I remember the audiences were about two rows of screaming old hags and children and the wrestlers were mostly lard. Shock Theatre was the name of one Saturday night horror show I remember. There were two or three but I can't remember all the names. One of them came on with smoke rising out of the ground to really freaky music. And the end of the show they would run it backward and the smoke would go back into the ground. And I remember when the news sets in Lexington TV looked homemade out of cardboard boxes. It was embarrassing at the time, but now I realize it was creativity of a sort. Now it's all the same,
 
There was a kid show in the early '70s that was produced by a tiny TV station, CHCH out of Hamilton Ontario called The Hilarious House of Frightenstien . The show had Vincent Price doing the opening theme , then the rest of the show was one guy doing 7 or 8 different parts , like Frankenstein , Dracula , the Wolfman . That show went into syndication and was all over the world.
 
But don't forget "The Inner Sanctum" for weird.

Behind the creaking door,

Radio shows let you see it how you want to see it. You are not forced to watch what a director wants you to.

Radio had a wonderful feel to it and a power to grab listeners and suck them in for a time.
For example, Orson Wells scared the crap out of an entire nation in 1938 with "War of the Worlds". Orson Wells was also one of the voices of "The Shadow" from '37 to '38. Funny thing is that he was 22 years old when he voiced "The Shadow".
 
There was a locally produced 'fright night' show late on Saturday nights when I was a kid. They showed the B&W horror and sci fi flicks from the 50's and 60's, it was the last thing broadcast. It then went to the National Anthem, then a test pattern (for you kids, here's a test pattern :laugh: ):

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then there was snow until 6AM when they started broadcasting again.
 
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