It Never Was The Same Again, Was It?
On November 8, 2012
- TV History
It Never Was The Same Again, Was It?
If you were ever on a kids show, you know that after the visit, you never saw the show the same way again. Got a story to share about your visit?
One addendum, when we moved to St. Petersburg in 1956, I made a TV camera out of a cardboard box, tin cans for lenses as I remember, a viewfinder from a small box and put it on a small stepladder we had. On the side of the camera I put WFLA-TV, NBC 8. Funny I ended up at WTVT Channel 13 years later. I took a photo of it and somehow lost it over the years, but no one enjoyed “playing” television any more than I did. The only photo I have is of a TV camera, a TK42, made out of soft drink bottle caps.
I think I was 6 (1969) and Bozo the Clown was being taped at a tent in our neighborhood shopping center. My mother took my brother and I and we got selected to be in the “studio audience” that day. Bozo turned out to be a long haired freaky hippie that hit on my mom and mortified me. I have been scared of clowns ever since…
I don’t remember the name of the show, but it was on KLTV in Tyler, Texas. I was about 10 or so, visiting my Aunt, Uncle and Grandmother in East Texas. A family friend worked at the station and arranged for me to be on TV. The lady who hosted it asked every kid what they wanted to be when they grew up. I said I wanted to be an engineer. The little girl sitting next to me said, “I want to work in a beer joint.” I nearly fell over….
was on WTVT’s “Mary Ellen Show” in August, 1962. Just like Richard Bozeman described, I was fascinated by the cameras and behind-the-scenes shuffle. I vowed that day to get into TV and work at WTVT. Ten years later, to the week, I walked into WTVT as a part-time employee.
We had a kids show in Tucson, on the only indepedent station (actually licensed out of Nogales at the time, I think, but the studio was in tucson.) called the Uncle Bob show. My cub scout pack went in 1968. I was more fascinated by the behind the scenes action. I’m pretty sure the cameras were Norelcos. I think they had the sides up for cooling. We had to sit in the back of the audience because our dark blue uniforms might key out on the chroma key shot. And I was amazed at how crummy the set looked in real life, just unfinished plywood, roughly cut, and painted. I believe the call letters then were KZAZ, and a dim, probably incorrect memory that Danny Thomas and Monty Hall owned the station.
In 1954 my brother and I were on “Western Theater” on WCOV-TV Montgomery Alabama. I was 9 years old and already interested in television and was fascinated by what was going on in the studio; I paid absolutely no attention to the film they showed that day. That visit just made me more than ever fascinated by television and cameras and studio stuff.
Purely because I was interested in television and not necessarily in The Popeye Club, I visited WSB-TV in 1964 and appeared on the show as part of the ‘Gang” of 7 year-olds. Of course, I was 13 at the time so you could imagine how much taller I was than all the others. This was my last appearance on the show; I had previously been a “Gang” member at an earlier, more appropriate age. 😉