Vintage WUAB-43 Brass Belt Buckle

Friends, hear me now: under normal circumstances, I do not collect belt buckles. That’s not to say I don’t have any, but as a general rule, belt buckles are something I don’t usually go out of my way for. Actually, I rarely even think about belt buckles. But lest you think I’m dissing on belt buckles right now, rest assured, I’m actually more admitting a fault on my part; old school belt buckles can not only be an artform unto themselves, but cool examples of retro U.S. pop culture as well. And, while you may not initially think of them this way (I sure didn’t/don’t), they also have the potential to be terrific sources of advertising, and that ideal makes my ears figuratively perk up.

Case in point: this vintage WUAB-43 brass belt buckle. When the online sale for it entered my line of vision, it was pretty much a no brainer. It wasn’t particularly cheap, but also not prohibitively expensive. Not that it really mattered, because I couldn’t really recall seeing one before; as such, there was pretty much no hesitation between my discovery of the sale and my slamming on the “buy dis” button. Dig this, mama:

Manufactured by Koleaco of Dallas (I didn’t take a picture of the back; you’ll just have to take my word for it), this is, as you may surmise, a heavy brass belt buckle. And when I say “heavy” I don’t just mean in weight; no no, this thing is also extremely heavy in pure, undiluted coolness. A cursory online search provides a cavalcade of buckles put out by Koleaco back in the day; their output was not inconsiderable. And yet, this is the only one I know of that has a definitive connection to Superhost, and therefore it wins.

WUAB is of course no stranger to this blog. The formerly-independent, Cleveland television station is one of my very favorites, and memorabilia pertaining to it, especially if it’s vintage memorabilia, man, I always want stuff like that in my collection. Hence my lack of hesitation in purchasing when I first saw this; I mean, when will I ever see another? Will I even see another?

I don’t know exactly when this belt buckle hails from. The “Plays Favorites” slogan is no help, because WUAB used that line for years. As it so often does, Logopedia helped me narrow the dates down. According to them, the style of logo seen on the buckle was in usage from 1977 to 1980. So unless Koleaco just kept using an older logo into the 1980s, I think we can safely guesstimate that this hails from the late-1970s. Or 1980, at the latest. Given those rough dates, if this thing was actually used, there’s a real possibility that big lapels were in the vicinity at the same time, and that thought pleases me.

The real question is: how would someone go about obtaining this back in the day? I have a hard time seeing these being passed out at staff personal appearances or what have you like keychains or whatever might be. I mean, maybe they were, I really don’t know, but the buckle seems a bit too, uh, substantial (read: heavy and thus probably comparatively expensive) for that. My guess is these buckles were in-house gifts for staffers and/or other people in the broadcasting business. That’s merely a hypothesis on my part though; if you know/remember, I’ve got a handy comments section right down below, chief!

I have little else to say about this. In summation: it’s neat, it’s vintage, it’s WUAB, and if I belt buckles were something I wore on a regular basis, I wouldn’t mind sporting it in public. I won’t go quite that far yet, but maybe, if I came across another…

Vintage BATMAN Television Slide Promo (WEWS-TV 5, Cleveland)

Listen, you love Adam West Batman, I love Adam West Batman, everybody loves Adam West Batman. Well, unless, they don’t; the campiness may not be suited to everyone’s liking, particularly those raised on newer, darker iterations of the character. Now, you could point out that the character/stories were darker in tone from the onset, but I ask that you don’t. You could also point out that we all have different tastes and just because someone doesn’t enjoy the 1960s television (and movie) incarnation of Bats, hey, that doesn’t necessarily make them a bad or untrustworthy person, but I won’t believe you.

Of course I’m joshin’ (yes I am), but nevertheless, even I must admit that the allure of the campy, goofy 1966-1968 Batman television series starring Adam West (as well as its 1966 big screen adaptation) may well be lost on younger viewers and/or comic book purists. Honestly, I get it; the idea of Batman squaring off against The Riddler in a boxing match or inexplicably facing The Joker in a surfing contest, that kinda stuff may not sit well with everyone, regardless of how delightful the results ultimately were.

For the record, I was introduced to 60s Batman in the wake of Tim Burton’s much, much different take on the character (that is,1989’s big screen Batman), and while even at that young age I was fully cognizant of the monumental differences between the two Batguys, I also didn’t care. I grew up with a healthy fandom for both iterations, something that continues to this very day.

So it stands to reason that I tend to go batty (see what I did there??? HAW HAW HAW!!!) when faced with particularly cool and/or unique pieces of memorabilia pertaining to either version of the superhero. As you may well have surmised by now, our subject today relates to Adam West’s Batman, and boy is it neato. Dig this…

Cool? Unique? Check and check!

What you’re looking at is a vintage television slide promo for an airing of Batman on Cleveland’s WEWS-TV 5. Man that’s not just cool, that’s painfully cool. Also, please enjoy the special guest cameo by my thumb.

What’s a television slide, you ask? Literally, it was a slide that would be shown on TV during a broadcast, obviously as a still, and usually with an accompanying voiceover. You could see these stills as bumpers, tacked on to the end of a ‘real’ commercial, or – as was almost certainly the case here – used specifically as a promo for an upcoming broadcast of whatever. (There were probably exceptions, but when used as a promo, they tended to be shorter spots, 5 or 10 or 15 seconds total.) In my experience, the usage of slides, both nationally and locally, was largely (but not entirely) over by the early 1990s, but in the years prior, they were very, very common on TV, particularly during local broadcasts.

So when exactly does this particular slide hail from? I have no exact date, but probably somewhere in the 1970s. The art style used for Bats here (which, it must be noted, I really, really love) fits with my general understanding of WEWS slides from (at least part of) the decade. I could certainly be wrong though. Finding an old local TV listing for a Sunday 6pm showing of Batman on WEWS would be mighty helpful, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to scour the many, many TV Guides at the downtown library to find out. Besides, where would I start?!

An old TV listing would also settle the question of whether this was a promo for an airing of the TV series or of the movie that came out between the first and second seasons of said series. My initial thought upon picking this up months and months ago was that it was for the show, though that left me a bit puzzled; WEWS was and is Cleveland’s ABC affiliate, ABC being the channel Batman originally aired on first run, but this appears to be for a strictly local airing, and my understanding was that reruns of the show in these parts ran solely on WUAB-43 for quite awhile. Of course, then I remembered the related movie, which then became the more likely candidate to me. (Unless there was a period in which rights to reruns went from WUAB to WEWS before going back to WUAB?)

Though I guess it doesn’t really matter; Adam West Batman is Adam West Batman, i.e. awesome. I will admit I never found the concept to work quite as well on the big screen as it did on the small screen, but as far as this promo slide goes, who really cares? It’s Adam West Batman, man!

I had to buy this online, and while it wasn’t particularly cheap, it also wasn’t terribly unreasonable – especially when you consider this may very well be one of a kind. I mean, how many of these could the station have had? (That’s an actual question: was there generally a set number of identical slides for a given program, or…?) And furthermore, how many could have survived over the years?

Regardless of how many were produced or potentially still out there, I’ve never regretted dropping the coin on this one. It’s a piece of local broadcasting memorabilia, it’s related to Adam West Batman, it’s old, and it’s cool lookin’. Really, how many bullet points does something need to check off in my brain before I slam on the “buy dis” button? Truthfully, probably not even that many, but the fact this one did, that just made ordering not just a necessity, but also a pleasure.

Cleveland Christmas Commercial Collection (1980-1998)

Yes, I’m here, I’m alive. I know, I know, I haven’t posted since late October. But but but, I have an excuse! Simply put, I started a new job a few months back, and the true fact of the matter is I just haven’t had a lot of time to write. Even my thrift trips have taken a hit, though not a dire one; I’ve still managed to being home plenty o’ neato stuff. But yes, as things worked out, I wound up taking November off. Believe it or not, I have something resembling a real life outside of this silly lil’ blog – go figure!

But I’m here for the time being, and tis the season, so why not break the drought with a look back at Northeast Ohio’s advertising past? That’s just what we’re going to do: a quick glimpse into local advertising in which Christmas was the focal point.

A couple ground rules: this won’t be exhaustive, but rather just a handful of selected bits that, I felt, made for both nice seasonal reminders as well as good screencaps. That’s another point: these aren’t videos or links to videos, just screenshots; one per. Consider it a short burst of nostalgia or something like that. While I probably could get away with posting the whole segments in video form, from a legal standpoint, I’m technically not allowed to. Oh I highly doubt any rights holders would complain if I did, at least not strongly, but we’re gonna stay firmly within the grounds of fair use here. Since this is all for review and educational purposes (yes, methinks local broadcasting history counts as educational), well, lets not poke any bears, okay? (‘Course, if the right people gave me the right permission…)

One last rule: I decided that for inclusion here, it had to be local. (And despite the delightful alliteration seen in my topic title, these aren’t all specifically Cleveland; “Northeast Ohio” is a more accurate descriptive term.) So, much as I wanted to, Tim Allen pitching Builders Square and/or Toys-R-Us trying to get people to buy an Atari 7800 for Christmas couldn’t make the cut.

Okay, we good? We can get started? Here we go!

Dick Goddard for Hickory Farms (1980)

Dick Goddard, mega-legendary local weatherman; you know him, you love him. Despite the fact he passed away in 2020, he’s pretty much always going to be the standard by which them hometown weather folks are judged.

In addition to his normative weather-forecastin’, Goddard was plenty visible just in general. Big Chuck & Lil’ John skits, personal appearances (I met him several times; super nice guy) and, as you can see here, as a spokesman. Indeed, at one point he pitched Hickory Farms (they of those cheese ‘n’ sausage packages that are, to be frank, a severe weakness of mine), and for the Christmas season of 1980, well, there he was. Obviously he was there to tell you what fine, fine Christmas gifts Hickory Farms selections made for, and if you weren’t going to listen to DICK GODDARD, who would you listen to?

At one point in the ad, Goddard looks puzzlingly at a cardboard stand-up of himself, evidently something in usage at the time. Honestly, they need to bring that back, apropos of nothing.

“Santa” John Lanigan for Sumwalts (1983)

It may be hard to tell, but underneath that Santa get-up is Cleveland radio/TV legend John Lanigan! Lanigan was a spokesman for the Sumwalts music store, for a time anyway; I know not for how long, when it began or when it ended. I don’t think Sumwalts is even around anymore.

But for Christmas 1983, he was there as “Santa Lanigan,” pitching the mega 36 hour Christmas sale Sumwalts was providing. See that big honkin’ keyboard Lanigan’s holding? You BEST believe you could buy one of them. For how much, I do not know, but for 1983 prices I imagine it was reasonable enough. (‘Course, translated to today’s dollars, it was probably like half a mill or sumpin.)

Season’s Greetings from Cleveland’s WCLQ TV-61 (1983)

I often lament how much of local television has become less overtly, erm, local, and more homogenized. If there’s one case where that DOESN’T still apply however, it’s Christmas. Greetings from on-air staff, silly locally produced commercials, stuff like that, it’s still in evidence to this day. I may not always care for the clean, computerized look some of it can exhibit, but that’s more because I’m inclined to be arbitrary than anything.

Anyway, some of the most fun, ‘genuine’ Christmas greetings back in the day could be seen on the independent stations – they didn’t need to be big productions, just simple, ostensibly-heartfelt seasonal contributions. One of my very favorite local stations is the loooong gone WCLQ TV-61, and as you can see here, they naturally got in on the act too. A series of filmed well-wishes from the staff of 61 were each bookended by this delightful bumper here. Lights, ornaments, and the WCLQ logo – if that doesn’t scream hometown holiday broadcasting to you, well then I just don’t know…

Season’s Greetings from Superhost (1984)

… Or, if that doesn’t, this probably should. One of my other very favorite local stations is WUAB-43, and I probably don’t need to tell you they also went all out with the Christmas greetings from the staff.

Of course, the image you’re seeing here is the topper, because it’s, uh, SUPERHOST, duh! (Obligatory link to my interview with him.) Yes indeed, sandwiched amongst well wishes from a number of 43’ers in one particular spot was Supe himself! And if THAT didn’t fill you with holiday cheer, then you just a busta. I mean, they put a wreath on his ticket window!

Christmas Sale at Silverman’s (1984)

Silverman’s was a Northeast Ohio department store chain, the last of which closed in, I believe, 2015. I don’t think I ever visited a location, and that’s just something I’m going to have to live with.

The normative spokesman seen in commercials for the chain was a guy adorned entirely in silver – you know, a silver man. Dude was even the subject of a Big Chuck & Lil’ John skit once.

Here, obviously the low low Christmas sale prices at Silverman’s were being pitched, but really, it’s all about that Santa hat they put on Silverman here; thas festive, yo. They made the right call in not making that silver, too; thas even more festive, yo.

Season’s Greetings from Barnaby (1985)

Same deal as that Superhost greeting but from a year later (and with different background graphics) comes another “well wishes from the staff of WUAB” spot, with the main area of interest here being that Linn Sheldon‘s Barnaby is present. Since his whole shtick was that he was a nice guy and such, it stands to reason he would come along to wish y’all Merry Christmas, too.

For several generations, Barnaby was a children’s programming mainstay in these parts. He was just always there. Funny thing is, I can’t remember specifically watching him back in the day. I mean, I must have, I was the right age (and 43 was pretty ever present for me back then), but, yeah. I wonder if he still thought you were the nicest person in the world if you weren’t actually watching?

Season’s Greetings from the staff of WOAC TV-67 (1990)

For me, there’s WCLQ, there’s WUAB, and then there’s Canton’s WOAC TV-67. These are local channels that I’m always, always after memorabilia from. (WJW TV-8 rounds out my personal “big four.”) So yeah, 67 had to be included here, too.

In the same vein as the other “greetings from the station” bits we’ve seen thus far is WOAC’s contribution from 1990 – but rather than stretching out the concept over more than one spot, 67 instead had the whole staff wish viewers a Merry Christmas all at once, in one fell swoop!

I can’t tell if Son of Ghoul is in attendance here (shoulda put him in costume, if so!); as it stands, sports/news guy Scott Davis (front and center) is the only face I’m recognizing. Also, I want that official WOAC desk, or at least the signage on the front of it. Christmas present, anyone?

Season’s Greetings from WAKC TV-23 (1992)

TV-23 was Akron’s ABC affiliate, and while it tended to exist in the shadow of the big Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS, it has subsequently garnered a fairly large nostalgic following locally. I certainly watched it back then, and while it’s not a TOP favorite of mine now, I still like it plenty. Enough to include it here, anyway.

There’s not much to this one: a brief “Season’s Greetings” bumper. It’s cool, it’s neat, and there’s not much more I can say about it. But hey, look, stereo!

WOIO-19’s “What’s Santa Doing?” (1993)

It became a CBS affiliate when they swapped with WJW in 1994, but in 1993, WOIO-19 was still the original home of Fox in this area. As such, some of the advertising could exhibit the same hip edginess Fox was (is?) known for.

I can only assume this spot was part of a series, peeking in on Santa doing un-Santa-like things during the Christmas season. Here, he’s washing clothes. It’s a very brief spot with little to it, but I guess that was the point.

Look close: Santa’s wearing an official old school Fox/WOIO t-shirt! I want one of those now; Christmas present, anyone?

Talk to Santa live on WAOH TV-29/WAX TV-35 (1998)

Wacky Fact: I originally considered writing solely about this promo alone, until I realized I could fill this article out with additional bits of nostalgia.

While the channel still exists as W27EA-D and still features a handful of local programs, the station formerly known as “The CAT” (I’ve gotten nostalgic about it before) was once a beacon of local programming. While the signal supposedly reached Cleveland, to tune into The CAT was really to tap into some distinctly Akron/Cuyahoga Falls/Stow/Kent vibes. (Makes sense, since it was/is the TV arm of WNIR 100.1 FM, “The Talk of Akron.”)

Anyway, I don’t know how many other years, if any, they did it, but for one night in 1998 at least, callers could call in live to “Santa” to tell him what junk they wanted. (Actually, they must’ve done it more than once, because here, the ad spotlights a supposedly-real call to Santa, some kid asking for a Sega. Since the Dreamcast was a year away, the Genesis was obsolete and I’m not sure any kid still wanted a Saturn by ’98, well…) It’s a solid example of just how big call-in shows were on the channel at the time. (Nowadays, it’s down to just Steve French on Mondays and Jim Isabella on Thursdays.)

And with that, my little Christmas commercial stop-gap post is complete. I tentatively have something else planned, but we’ll see if it actually happens. At least you know I haven’t abandoned you now, though.

Vintage WUAB-43 KidsLand Club Membership Card (Circa-1989)

Perhaps my earliest memories go back to when I was three years old. I can still specifically recall watching Halloween specials with my dad in that year of 1989, for example. Less specific, but rather more general, are the memories of watching cartoons on WUAB-43‘s KidsLand line-up during those formative years. Actually, right now I’m not quite sure if all those memories are completely of my watching ‘live’ or of later watching the VHS recordings my mom made for me. Maybe a bit of both. Either way, I was there, and as such, WUAB’s KidsLand is positively burnt into my memory.

Which is why this find from just yesterday was such a huge deal personally. Whoda thunk that a small piece of paper, roughly (but I don’t think exactly) the size of any ‘regular’ trading card, would have been such a monumental acquisition for me? Actually, I would have thunk it beforehand, had it crossed my mind. I don’t think it ever did, but needless to say, it was.

Dig this:

Good golly, when I came across this, it was one of those lightning bolt “oooh!” reactions (does anyone else get those, or is it just me being weird?), accompanied by a rapid snatching of the object that would have made Bruce Lee proud (maybe). The moment my eyes fell upon that logo, the registration with my brain was instantaneous, and thus there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it was coming home with me. I’m not a man moved to violence, but had competition been afoot, well, I could very possibly be incarcerated right now. (Okay, things probably wouldn’t have gone that far… but hopefully I’ll never be put in a position to where I’ll have to find out.)

We’ll look at the back of the card momentarily, but for now I’ll just say there’s no date anywhere on this thing, which is why you got a “Circa-1989” in the post title above. Why go with ’89? Because I can say with total confidence that that’s when this logo was in usage – because I was there, man! KidsLand was pushed extensively at that time, and that was the logo they used. It’s engraved on my psyche or something like that. I don’t know how long it was used for, though; I want to say it was around at least as early as 1988, but that’s a statement I can’t make with certainty. At any rate, it had changed by some point in 1990 to a more updated, 90s-appropriate look. Same name, same club, different logo. Savvy?

So what was WUAB’s KidsLand Club? KidsLand was the branding for 43’s morning/afternoon kid shows – you know, a KidsLand. Hosted by “Liz,” in-studio or on-location host segments, contests and the like could appear during the commercial breaks, which, while maybe not too atypical of local children’s programming blocks found across the U.S., certainly added a nice local flavor to both the hot syndicated programming of the time (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Real Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe) as well as some of the old favorites (Tom & Jerry, etc.) running on the station.

Liz was cool, like a big sister that didn’t torture you (a statement I make despite never having had a big sister, or sister of any kind for that matter.)

As for the specific KidsLand Club though? Sad to say, I was never actually a member, so first-hand accounts of the benefits of joining are not something I can give. I’m guessing it was free to become a member, but maybe parents had to shell out a few bucks, I dunno. Besides the card, maybe kids periodically received updates or activities or whatnot in the mail? Perhaps they could be invited to special KidsLand events held about town? Or maybe it was all honorary, just something for kids to hang their figurative hats on, so to speak?

It kinda stands to reason that there’d be ‘more’ to joining than just owning an admittedly-spiffy membership card, but look, while I absolutely remember the graphics and branding and programming of KidsLand, I’m not claiming to be any sort of authority on the subject. Which of course doesn’t change the fact that I’m certainly nostalgic for my time with it and, needless to say, paraphernalia pertaining to it.

Some kid’s name is still written on the back of the card; evidently he didn’t feel the need to hold on to it some 30+ years later, so to a thrift store it went – his trash was my treasure! Obviously I’m not going to flash his name or (just to be on the safe side) membership card number across the web for all to see. Hence the big black bars you’re seeing above, provided by my advanced usage of technology. (AKA my computer’s paint program.)

Actually, the kid wrote his name in pencil; I suppose I could erase it and put my own moniker there, should I be interested in being a disingenuous piece of human garbage. As previously stated, I was never actually a member of the club, and therefore writing my name here would be hurtful and fraudulent. And superfluous; this is a terrific piece of local television memorabilia as well as a link to undeniable childhood memories on my part, but where practicality is concerned, there’s not much I can really do with it. I mean, the KidsLand Club hasn’t existed in decades; I’m just speculatin’ here, but I imagine it was bye-bye by the mid-90s. Maybe, at least, when 43 affiliated with UPN and started running their cartoons? I don’t know.

‘Course, should I scrawl my name on the back here (and, fun fact, my penmanship is generally sloppy enough to be mistaken for a kid’s handwriting), I then might be tempted to keep the card in my wallet as if it were a valid form of state I.D. I mean, it should be, but it isn’t. (Is it?) The main problem there is that I’d be threatening extra wear on the card, which could not only hurt whatever collectability this thing may have, but also prove problematic if/when I hand the card to the tattoo artist and ask them to put that logo on my face.

ANYWAY, taking a closer look at the back of the card here, you’ll notice that a member was entitled to club privileges. What were they? Like I said a bit ago, I couldn’t say. Coulda just been bragging rights, for all I know. Also evident: a KidsLand secret code key, though again, I have no idea what it pertains to. Both things definitely point towards there being more than a kid just being a “mere member” of the club, if that makes any sense.

I admit, I figured out what my first name would translate to in secret KidsLand code. You never know when information like this will come in handy, he said as if he hadn’t already forgotten the series of numbers.

You know what’s additionally cool about this card to me? The time period in kid’s TV it signifies. Remember, I was there, and in my eyes, it really was a murderers’ row of cartoons: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, C.O.P.S., The Real Ghostbusters, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, G.I. Joe, probably more I’m forgetting. And that’s not even counting standbys like Scooby-Doo, Tom & Jerry, Popeye and the like; stuff that, you know, never goes out of style. Or at least shouldn’t ever go out of style. And don’t forget the local programming like Barnaby or, even though I don’t think he was officially part of KidsLand beyond being advertised during it, Superhost.

Add a healthy dose of fantastic late-80s/early-90s advertising and of course those KidsLand host segments with Liz, and it should be no wonder why I’m so nostalgic for the time period. Certainly I’m biased, but as far as I’m concerned, it was a wonderful time to be alive. The late-80s and early/mid-90s, before the internet took over everything everywhere, it was a great time to be a kid.

Oh, and the icing on the cake here? WUAB is one of the top local stations I always, ALWAYS love collecting memorabilia from. No joshin’, it’s one of my personal “big four” stations. So the fact that there’s a nostalgic connection for yours truly here only adds to the enamor.

So there you have it: an old school WUAB-43 KidsLand Club membership card. Maybe some former (?) members can chime in with their experiences being part of it. But whether they do or don’t, it’s still a fantastic representative of a bygone era in local television, and THAT, my friends, makes it invaluable.

RIP, Marty “Superhost” Sullivan

Oh no. No no no.

The news dropped online tonight: Martin Sullivan, aka Superhost, has passed away. This is just a terrible, awful thing to hear, for so many reasons. A Northeast Ohio television icon and a horror hosting legend, he was absolutely both of those things. But more importantly, he was one of the nicest, most genuine people anyone could ever hope to talk to.

Me with Marty “Superhost” Sullivan at Akron Comic Con 2019

Supe has long had a presence on this blog. There were several older posts that have long since been taken down, but the most important articles are still up: just over six years ago now, I had the great fortune and honor to interview Marty for this site, which can be read here. And of course, just this past November I had the opportunity to meet him in person at Akron Comic Con, which was commemorated here. I mean, it was like I just met him; how can he be gone?!

When I say Martin Sullivan was beyond gracious, informative and kind, trust me, that’s coming from personal experience. Not once during our phone conversations back in 2014 was he anything less than wonderful. Indeed, even after the interview was published and I gave him the heads up, he took the time to read it through and send me the correct spellings of some of the names of people he used to work with. I mean, he cared.

That same care was evident this past November at Akron Comic Con. Not only was he an absolute pleasure to meet and speak with in person, but I saw him devote his full time and attention to everyone in line; there was no rush, everybody got their chance to talk with Supe and let them know just how much he’d meant to them over the years.

My earliest memories of the Cleveland horror hosting tradition are of Superhost. WUAB would air the promos for his show during their KidsLand programming, and from an early age, Supe dancing around to “The Curly Shuffle” was ingrained in my psyche.

This is heartbreaking news, and frankly, I just don’t know what else I can really say right now. I’ll leave you with this though: prior to Akron Comic Con, the last time I had spoken with Marty was via email in August 2017, asking him some questions regarding when he premiered as Supe back in 1969. In typical fashion, he went above and beyond, did more research than necessary and got back to me with the info of Queen of Outer Space being his debut movie on November 8, 1969 at 3:30 PM. He then asked “Good enough?”

Yeah Supe, good enough.

RIP, Marty.

Vintage WUAB-TV 43 & WAKR TV-23 Golf Ball Markers (Circa 1984)

I went Christmas shopping this past Saturday. Well, ostensibly; I did find one thing to check off my list, but came up empty for everyone else. Well, except for me. I did find a few things for me.

I wasn’t trying to – really! This was a mission to get Christmas shopping done, and since I don’t have that many people to buy for, theoretically it could have been completed during this one outing. Several locations were visited over the course of several hours, and where I myself was concerned, I dutifully passed up on some things I considered merely “neato,” because unless something practically jumped out and punched me in the face with awesomeness, I wasn’t going to get anything for my personal collection. It wasn’t an issue of cost either; this was about principle. I was on a specific mission, man!

I made it safely through the day – until the last place I visited. There, as I perused small display boxes made up of compartments filled with various knick knacks, my eyes fell upon the baggie you’re seeing right here. This was one of those cases where I got so immediately excited, so incredibly stoked, that I dropped what I was doing and instantly began extricating it. I knew, I knew, that as long as the price wasn’t prohibitive (and it wasn’t in the slightest), it was coming home with me. And so it did.

I hadn’t been to this antique store in several months (as it has been operating on reduced hours lately), so this must have been a fairly new addition to their wares, because I’d really hate to think my normally-fairly-astute eyes passed over this time and time again. Dig this: two pairs of vintage Northeast Ohio television-branded golf markers, WUAB-43 and WAKR TV-23! Cool winnins!

And Golf markers! If there’s one thing my collection lacks, it’s golf stuff. Not that I have anything against the sport; it’s just that aside from some old school video games and Happy Gilmore, I have little experience with it. Heck, I wouldn’t have even known what these markers were if not for the handy sticker affixed to the baggie notating the contents. This was an entirely unexpected find, but this was also exactly the sort of random TV-related thing I’m always hoping to come across.

(Also picked up for myself at the same time? I rarely drink alcohol, but a vintage Bud Man patch for only a buck was just too cool to pass up.)

It was the old WUAB logo here that first caught my eye, and because I have such an ongoing-affinity for the station, those markers were the ‘biggies’ for me. As you can see, one is pink and one is white, but otherwise they’re identical with the black “half-moon” 43 logo. (“Half-moon” is how *I* refer to this particular iteration of the station I.D., but as far as I know, I’m the only one to do so. Maybe that is the ‘official’ term for it though, I dunno.)

The WAKR markers are less logos and more mere station identifications. Unlike the two WUAB markers, they’re both completely identical to each other. Besides WAKR, WAEZ is also featured; I can only guess that this refers to what later became WONE 97.5 FM, which was WAEZ prior and WAKR-FM before that. There was some kind of connection there, is what I’m sayin’.

I have no idea what the actual age of these markers are. I’m assuming both pair hail from the same general era, but they could have just as easily been, erm, paired up later. WUAB only used that style of logo from, roughly, 1980 to 1986, before going to a full-circular version. WAKR TV-23 became WAKC TV-23 in 1986, and WAEZ became WONE on January 1, 1985. So yeah, I’m sticking with what I used in the title of this update: “circa 1984.” That seems to be a safe guess. At any rate, the WUAB ones have to hail from 1986 or earlier, and the WAKR/WAEZ ones from before January 1, 1985.

Regardless of the actual date(s) that brought these markers forth, they both demonstrate a terrific time in Northeast Ohio television, when quirky local programming and an eclectic line-up of movies and shows was the order of the day. I love that!

Hey, know what I discovered when it came time for a picture-taking session of these earlier today? Golf ball markers aren’t the easiest things in the world to photograph! Not these ones, anyway. Because they’re rounded, they tend to roll ll over when I don’t want them to. Indeed, I had to poke them through a disposable styrofoam plate for the main shots, and to your left here is the best I could come up with as far as a side-view goes. See, they done got lil’ pegs, perfect for plunkin’ down into the ground! These aren’t especially big markers, they’re all the same size, which is roughly that of a regular shirt button (a bit bigger actually, but not by much). They seem to be bright enough to show up on the ground during a golf outing, but I’d have thought they’d be a bit bigger for easier visibility. But then, I’m not a golfer; far be it for me to go tellin’ ’em their business.

The last remaining question for me is: how did someone go about acquiring these originally? They almost seem too niche to be widely-spread promotional items. I have seen golf balls with station logos/I.D, emblazoned on them, so this sort of thing was (is?) not unheard of. Perhaps they were from some industry event? A friendly game between the staffs of 43 and 23? These are things I do not know, and perhaps the finer details of which have become lost to time. (If you’ve got some additional information on them, by all means share it in the comments!)

So, as it stands right now, I’ve still got some Christmas shopping to do, but when I come home with cool promo items such as these to add to the ever-growing collection, well, how can that ever be considered a wasted trip? Like I said earlier, TV-related things like this are what I always hope to come across during my travels; sadly, it doesn’t happen often enough for my liking, but when it does, it’s usually worth the dry spells. Given the last update, I seem to be on some kind of streak right now – hopefully it lasts a bit longer!

WBNX TV-55 – The Ghoul’s Presentation of 1940’s “The Devil Bat” (January 28, 2000)

A promise fulfilled!

Remember a bit over a month ago, when I babbled about my super cool budget Bela Lugosi DVD collection? You dont?! Well, that hurts me deep. Anyway, in that article, I mentioned my desire to review some locally-hosted Bela Lugosi, my attempt at a post regarding Invisible Ghost on The Ghoul, and my eventual termination of the whole project. I also mentioned my initial choice of Invisible Ghost over The Ghoul’s presentation The Devil Bat, which I soon came to regret. (The Invisible Ghost episode just didn’t give me enough to work with, y’see.)

Well, it’s rectification time! I dug out the VHS recording I made of The Devil Bat via WBNX TV-55’s revived The Ghoul Show way back in January of 2000, and needless to say, that’s our subject for today.

Even better, this is our first real episode of The Ghoul seen here at the blog! Oh sure, we saw 1982’s Poltergeist on the program, but that wasn’t really a Ghoul show, not the way it was meant to be, anyway. And yes, we did take a brief look at his 1998 Santa Claus episode, but that article wasn’t dedicated solely to him. Nope, this is our first real foray into the show that made up many, many of my Friday nights.

And no kidding, as soon as that opening montage above popped up on-screen (“IT’S THE GHOUL SHOWWWOW,” as performed by local band Destination), I was right back to almost-14-year-old me, relaxing on the couch on a Friday night at 11:30 PM. Powerful nostalgia, this one is.

Unlike Invisible Ghost, which had a lot of content but not much I could adequately write about, this episode is an example of The Ghoul Show as I prefer to remember it. There’s a few skits, but most of the host segments are just studio-based screwing around, which, in my opinion, was when The Ghoul was at his best. This is laid-back, fun, Friday-night entertainment, courtesy of Ron Sweed’s legendary horror host.

You know what’s funny? I recall watching this episode as it aired (and as this recorded, obviously), but prior to pulling this tape out, I couldn’t remember nearly anything about it. And to be frank, I am 99.999% positive I never watched it again afterwards. This means that when I sat down to finally convert my VHS recording to DVD for posterity (a conversion that came out beautifully, thanks to my cute lil’ 6-head VCR), all of it was essentially new to me. This is about as close to recreating those Friday nights of my teen years as I can manage in this day and age.

I’m serious. That sense of anticipation for the weekly dose of Ghoul Power, it all came flooding back as I watched this, a feeling I wasn’t expecting to be nearly as powerful as it was. Everything just clicked this episode, making it a terrific example of just what I loved so much about those Friday nights over a decade ago. This isn’t high-art, nor was it supposed to be; this was (is) legit kick-off-the-weekend entertainment, Cleveland-style!

One thing I really liked right off the bat: there was a proper introductory host segment. Y’see, for many episodes, there’d be the opening montage, and then typically, a silly skit, apropos of nothing in particular but fun nonetheless. Why are there streamers and confetti all over The Ghoul in the screenshot above? Because it was his birthday weekend! Needless to say, that sets the tone for the rest of the episode. The show was always fun (well, maybe not always, when you take the “Sunday era” into account), but there’s a real “party” mood permeating this one, for obvious reasons.

We’ll get to all of that in due time, but first, the movie…

1940’s The Devil Bat, one from Bela Lugosi’s poverty row output, in which he produces giant killer bats to attack his enemies. Less than a decade removed from the release of Dracula, and Bela was (mostly) relegated to doing films like this. On paper, it sounds downright insulting. And yes, it’s the kind of movie that should be so far beneath Bela, the script wouldn’t have been offered to him in the first place. Things didn’t work out that way though; Bela was typecast as Dracula somethin’ awful, and his heavy Hungarian accent didn’t help matters, either. So, as the 1940s dawned, he was increasingly forced to take projects like this one. Befitting a man of his stature? Not really. But, films like this kept his name visible to the public and money in his pockets.

Saying all of that kinda does a disservice to the film and Bela’s acting, however. No, it’s not the most highly-regarded thing he ever put out, but it IS immensely entertaining, and to Bela’s credit, he gave the role his all (he always did, no matter how weak the material). I can’t say this movie wouldn’t have been fun without him, but with him, it is undeniably a blast. But then, anything with Lugosi is worth at least a cursory glance, just because it’s Bela.

This exact broadcast was without a doubt my first time seeing The Devil Bat. The Ghoul had a wide-range of horror and sci-fi films during the “Friday era” of the show. Stuff as old (or older) as this or as recent as the 1990s could and would be shown. Because I was always a “classic movie” buff, flicks like this one were the most up my alley. And yet, as I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog, The Devil Bat didn’t really do it for me then. As a result, it left a sour taste in my mouth that lasted for years; it’s only in more recent times that I’ve fallen in love with it. Maybe it just didn’t hit me in the right mood that night. Or maybe it had to do with a couple factors regarding the version aired during this broadcast, which I’ll explain momentarily. I don’t know, but the fact is I didn’t care much about the film then. Luckily, I do now. Better late than never!

Bela plays Dr. Paul Carruthers (given Bela’s accent, he doesn’t seem like much of a “Carruthers,” but whatever), who is not only the town doctor, but also a chemist for the local cosmetics company (“Heath Cosmetics”). Sounds like a plush gig? Not for Carruthers. Turns out the cosmetic company has made a fortune from Carruthers’ products, and Carruthers, uh, hasn’t. Carruthers himself is really to blame for the situation; when the company was first getting started, he asked for money up front for his concoction(s), rather than a buying a share of stock. This, needless to say, turned out to be a huge mistake, and he’s been salty ever since.

(However, while Carruthers is at fault for the initial decision, the company owners, Heath and Morton, tend to needlessly rub it in – even when they give him a $5000 bonus, it’s a pittance compared to what the company is actually earning.)

Just like any rational person with a grievance against their employers would do, Carruthers has decided the best course of action is revenge, and since he doesn’t seem like the witty-limerick-on-the-bathroom-wall kinda guy, that means the only logical choice left is to create giant killer bats to carry out his revenge. I mean, duh!

Using electronic impulses or something like that, he enlarges one to big honkin’ size, which is in addition to training it to attack upon smelling a certain aftershave lotion, of Carruthers’ own design naturally. A killer bat prepared to tear you up is one thing, but it’s so much worse when it’s the size of a large dog.

You see where this is going, don’t you? Carruthers tricks members of the Heath and Morton families into wearing his special aftershave lotion (ostensibly as a test before marketing), and then releases the titular creature from his own personal belfry (every mad scientist should have one), which then exacts Carruthers revenge for him.

Naturally, you can’t have a big giant bat flying around killing people for very long before the press starts nosing around. And sure enough, two big city reporters soon waltz in for a scoop, and eventually put a stop to the whole thing. Well, one of them does; the other is basically comic relief.

Before the ordeal is over, you’ll be treated to shots of a rubber bat attacking people, a silly fake photo shoot, a couple of prerequisite love interests, a wildly ineffective (but surprisingly friendly towards the press) police chief, a stereotypically-grumbly newspaper editor, and enough outdated 1940s jargon to make you feel better about life. Plus, you know, Bela Lugosi.

With only a bit over an hour in running time, there’s not much time to screw around, and thus, The Devil Bat moves at a pretty brisk pace. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s charmingly cheap, and it comes highly recommended by your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter. And as we all know, my recommendation is of tantamount importance.

“W-w-what am I lookin’ at?!”

The Ghoul did not have access to the greatest print of The Devil Bat in the world. Not so hard to understand; nowadays we’ve got a couple really fantastic “official” versions on DVD/Blu-ray, but back then, you were limited to whatever had been making the rounds for decades. The Devil Bat is in the public domain, which means I could project it on the side of my garage while figuratively (literally?) thumbing my nose at Hollywood cause there ain’t no copyright on the film no more.

Beyond the expected scratchy, splicey nature of the print, the picture-quality was also pretty fuzzy – it almost looks like it was sourced from VHS. Which, fine, whatever, public domain and all that. More distressingly, however, is the fact that the picture is often incomprehensibly dark. (See: above.) No joke, there are long stretches of the film that, had I not already been familiar with it, would have left me utterly lost upon this latest viewing. Back in January 2000, this was perhaps one of the reasons the film didn’t endear itself to me.

Also, editing. You didn’t really tune into The Ghoul to watch a movie; the movie was just kinda fodder for humorous sound effects and whatnot. The Ghoul would pack so much into his host segments, that the film often felt like an afterthought, and the editing to make it fit into the timeslot sometimes made that abundantly clear. More often than not, a movie would be so chopped up, following it was all but impossible. The longer the movie, the less it would make sense on the show. Mind you, that’s not a complaint either; that was actually part of the fun.

At only about 68 minutes, The Devil Bat should have fit into the 2-hour timeslot allotted to this episode fairly unscathed. As it turned out, it’s easier to follow than a lot of movies shown by The Ghoul, but there are noticeable chunks missing, and some of them are pretty important. That fake photo shoot I mentioned a bit ago? Yeah, that’s not actually present in this broadcast, which thus renders some of the later actions (that are present in this broadcast) as pretty head-scratching to a first-time viewer. This probably didn’t help endear the film to me back then, either. Or maybe I just didn’t like it, I don’t remember.

What I don’t get is why there needed to be any movie-editing at all. Y’see, this episode runs just under 1 hour 50 minutes (not so unusual; The Ghoul always started on time, but when an episode ended wasn’t always set in stone). They couldn’t have filled out that unused 10 minutes with the rest, or at least more, of the movie? I don’t get it.

But like I said, when watching The Ghoul, the movie was usually there strictly as fodder. That is, the various video audio drop-ins, the stuff Ghoulardi was doing way back in 1963 basically.

For The Devil Bat, there’s some funny audio bits; the Froggy “hi ya gang! Hi ya hi ya!” used whenever a close-up of a real bat is shown is great, as are the expected burps whenever someone takes a drink, incessant groaning whenever someone is killed, etc. On the video front, during a typical newspaper-headlines montage, clips of Cleveland Browns-related articles are inserted.

My favorite bit of movie-mockery here is something that The Ghoul was fond of using during his WBNX run: the fake-factoid bubbles. Remember Pop-Up Video? It was like that. Two examples of the phenomenon are, needless to say, pictured above. I loved these things back then, and I love them even more now; I had no idea who Dick Feagler was back in 2000, but I sure do now, which of course helps me actually get the gag. These bubbles aren’t as rampant during The Devil Bat as they were in other movies shown on the program, but I did love what was here.

So, back to the show as a whole. (Well, the bits I feel like pointing out.) As previously mentioned, it was The Ghoul’s birthday weekend, and even though it wasn’t stated during the episode itself, Ron “The Ghoul” Sweed was turning 50 51. The big 5-0 5-1! Of course there was celebration afoot!

This was demonstrated at the end of the introductory host segment; the crew threw The Ghoul a surprise birthday party! (Hence, the streamers and whatnot all over him throughout the show.) I have no idea if this was a real surprise party, or just something cooked up for the cameras, and there’s not a whole lot to the bit other general frivolity. But again, it sets the tone for the rest of the episode.

(I want that 60th anniversary King Kong poster in the background above, by the way.)

A very funny segment in which, as response to a viewer email stating “Big Chuck sucks,” The Ghoul claims he and Big Chuck are tight, and then pays “tribute” by showing the same two pictures of Chuck over and over while “Wind Beneath My Wings” plays and shots of The Ghoul sobbing uncontrollably are inserted between it all. This all goes on for just a bit too long.

On paper, it’s a bit that may confuse first-time or otherwise not-in-the-know viewers, especially if they happened to tune in while it was already in progress. Some may even claim it to be “stupid.” There’s no doubt it’s of only the thinnest premise. So why can’t I stop laughing at it?

(It’s important to note that The Ghoul and The Big Chuck & Lil’ John Show were scheduled against each other at that time. In the hype leading up to his television return in the Summer of 1998, I recall The Ghoul stating he hoped people would use their VCRs to watch both shows.)

A “Soul of Ghoul” skit. The premise of these, and there were quite a few of them, was that the Soul of Ghoul, a black guy, was the polar opposite of The Ghoul in every way (“Yo Yo Yo” instead of “Hey Hey Hey,” white beard and mustache, black wig, etc.), and would constantly harass him in a Froggy-like style. In this installment, it’s the classic “shoe polish” trick, in which Soul of Ghoul places the substance on a telephone receiver (remember those?), and gets The Ghoul to answer it, with the expected results.

Somehow, I *think* the real meaning behind these skits went RIGHT over my head back then, though I of course get it now: these were a shot at Son of Ghoul. If the initials didn’t make it clear, The Ghoul’s declaration at the start of each sketch of “Now the brothers are rippin’ me off!” makes the message doubly-obvious. (Nowadays, he’d probably have to word that differently, too.)

At the time, I don’t think I knew about the legal troubles between the two in the years prior. At least, I don’t remember knowing about them then. I’d catch little shots from one against the other on their respective shows, but as I recall it, I never took those as anything more than a friendly rivalry kind of thing. I’d learn the truth later.

My stance on the matter? I grew up as a fan of both hosts, I liked the different comedic styles both brought to the table, and I remain a fan of both today. I wish things had played out differently between them, but that’s all I’m going to (or really, can) say about the situation. At the end of the day, it wasn’t and isn’t my battle to jump into.

Not so much a segment as a returning-from-commercials bumper, but nevertheless, with Groundhog Day right around the corner, this is a very funny, holiday-appropriate goof on Big Chuck & Lil’ John. Hey, let the screenshot above speak for itself…

For this host segment, before heading into the real purpose behind it, a quick demonstration of the then-new Ghoul travel mug and Turn Blue Ghoul Brew is given. See, it can hold liquid! (And if it don’t make you burp, “You got a bad one!”)

Turn Blue Ghoul Brew hasn’t been around since, I guess, the early-2000s? Mid-2000s? I sure miss it though. It was blue root beer that turned your tongue the appropriate color upon imbibing. (There was a green, lemon-lime variant called “Froggy Squeezin’s” as well.)

I only tried the Froggy variety once (the nearby DeVitis Italian Foods carried Ghoul drinks), and it was good, but I loved the Ghoul Brew. Very tasty – and it really turned your tongue blue! I’ve still got an unopened bottle (maybe two) floating around here somewhere.

Immediately following that, it’s time for “Frankenstein Online,” later deemed “Frank-On-Line.” I remember the character, but I had totally forgotten about the early iteration of him. Lemme explain…

The gag was that the Frankenstein monster was real, and his body had been located, reanimated, and kept at the “Brownberry Institute” in Maryland. The torso remained there, but the head was on loan to The Ghoul. Contrary to popular opinion, Frank didn’t get a bad brain, he was just “nurtured badly.” (The Ghoul muses that if political correctness had been around back then, it could have been a whole different scenario.) Turns out, Frank’s very intelligent! And to prove that, viewers were invited to email him from the Ghoul’s website and ask for his advice!

The version of the bit I remembered was Sick Eddie, in green face paint, bolts, the whole deal, his head sticking up out of a table, dispensing advice is a mock-Frankenstein voice that to this day I find gaspingly funny. What I had forgotten, however, is that the character started out as a fake plastic head, and The Ghoul ‘voiced’ him off-screen. As The Ghoul’s intro makes clear, this was a very new addition to the show; it’s funny, but I’m glad they fleshed (Get it? FLESHED! HAW HAW H…aw never mind) the concept out a bit more.

For this installment in the soon-to-be long running segment, a viewer asks what he’s gotta do before asking a girl out on a date. Frank’s response? A series of incomprehensible grunts and yells! It’s not a segment that would have worked for very long doing the same thing every time, but here, it’s very funny.

The Ghoul had a long-running, good natured “feud” with legendary local anchorwoman Denise Dufala. It was obviously all in jest, but hardly a week went by where a shot (sometimes literally) at her then-recent CD (I’ve got a copy!) wasn’t taken.

This bit was filmed during the holidays (hence the Santa Ghoul sleeves), and repeated endlessly, which was and is fine with me, because I love it. Simply put, The Ghoul was inside the WOIO offices (?), and as a final prank before leaving, he placed his fake beard and mustache on Dufala’s official picture. The screen then froze on the image, while “She’s a Bad Mama Jama” played longer than necessary. Good stuff!

A short, random segment (I guess a good many of Ghoul segments could be considered random!) in which Froggy shows up without being implored to “plunk his magic twanger.” This clearly displeases The Ghoul, who then tosses some lady fingers at the amphibian, causing him to be duly carted off by some “paramedics.”

When Froggy explains that it’s been awhile since he’s been by (hence the showing up unprovoked), The Ghoul’s almost nonchalant response of “I don’t care!” cracks me up.

For me, one of the biggest highlights in any episode was “The Ghoul’s Vault of Golden Garbage,” in which a vintage Ghoul skit would be presented. The chance to see material from the 1970s or 1980s, waaaaaaay before my time, it was fantastic.

That’s not quite what this installment was, though. It was an older bit presented, but not a vintage one. Rather, it’s a clip from 1999, and was actually the intro to one of my very favorite episodes (Attack of the Mushroom People). It’s definitely fun, and funny, and a good example of those non sequitur, apropos of nothing intros I mentioned earlier, but still, it wasn’t some new-to-me 1970s sketch, and that was (is) a little disappointing.

One of the crew must have found a busted “self-service” greeting card maker on the curb or something, gutted it, and brought it to the studio for a skit. Here, The Ghoul throws his money in the machine (“$3.95?!”), but when he attempts to make his own card, all he gets is a note stating “Wait a Second.” He soon discovers Froggy is in the back of the machine, which then causes Ghoul to rock the machine back and forth, throw it to the ground, and then tie a chain around it and drag it, via truck, around the parking lot until it falls to pieces!

Random? For sure. But, you know, I really do love it. I guess I can overlook it being of a then-recent vintage…

Jungle Bob time! JB! My buddy! Years before he began appearing on The Son of Ghoul Show, this was how I was introduced to Jung, by his appearances on The Ghoul Show. I learned some great stuff from JB on those shows, including some facts I’ve managed to retain in my memory banks all these years. (At a convention once, JB confirmed my recollection that if I were to drop a tarantula, it’s abdomen would straight-up ‘splode!)

For his appearance here, JB brought some shrimp (one of which The Ghoul accidentally dropped – it was fine), one of those cool fighting fish PetsMart is always shilling (I taunted one once; it slammed a fist through the glass jar at me*), and some tadpoles, which naturally prompted a return visit by Froggy; The Ghoul proceeded to swing him around, which resulted in his arm accidentally ripping off! (Froggy’s arm I mean, not The Ghoul’s.)

And that was pretty much it for the episode. (There was an obligatory model car blown up; I didn’t bother grabbing screenshots of that one. Besides, we all know what the best Ghoul blow-up ever** was!)

Before bouncing on out, The Ghoul presents a gift given to him by the crew: a talking Robbie the Robot doll! And then, after a final mention of it being his big birthday weekend (he won’t be able to make the Saturday WNCX 98.5 FM radio show he co-hosted with Mr. Classic at the time because of it), that was it, the last Ghoul Power for a week. It was always bittersweet seeing him bounce out of the studio at the end of each show, because it was over. Until next week, anyway.

I had a LOT of fun revisiting this episode. As I said before, this was basically all new stuff to me; I hadn’t seen this since it initially aired, so not only was it full of constant surprises, but it was just an all-around funny, entertaining show, to boot. Plus, it definitely gave me much more to work with than Invisible Ghost did.

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Commercials! Commercials? Yes, commercials! 2000 is still just a bit too new for there to be a whole lot of vested interest in them for me. I mean, they’re a huge nostalgia boost personally when seeing them in action, but as far as writing about them goes, well, I’m not so sure.

Nevertheless, here’s a few (but just a few) I can kinda sorta babble about…

WBNX TV-55 The Lost World Promo

WBNX excelled in hour-long, syndicated shows. It was like a constant stream of lazy Saturday afternoon fare, but almost all the time (‘cept prime time, that is; that was the WB’s turf). The Lost World was one such series, and despite loving the 1925 silent film, I don’t think I ever took more than a cursory glance at the syndicated series. Good? Bad? The hell if I know. I assume it was about people stuck in a dinosaur-inhabited territory. (Gee, what a guess!)

In all seriousness, nowadays, I probably would give this one more of a shot – maybe.

WBNX TV-55 Total Recall 2070 Promo

Take everything I said about The Lost World above, ignore the dinosaur reference, and think of Arnold Schwarzenegger but not really. Do that…and you probably still wouldn’t have a clue about Total Recall 2070. I probably watched less of this show than I did The Lost World – and that’s saying something!

You know, I referenced the “Sunday era” of The Ghoul earlier. Some of these shows (Total Recall 2070 and The Lost World) were run after The Ghoul at certain points during that period. In fact, because I let my tapes keep recording loooong after The Ghoul was supposed to be over, I’ve captured examples of both, and probably more. I suppose if I were feeling adventurous enough, I could dig the tapes out and give ’em a try, but, meh.

Ody’s Tailors & Clothiers Ad

ODY’S! Now this one, I just love it.

Ody’s Tailors was located very, very close to me at the time. Indeed, it was thanks to his commercials during The Ghoul that when it came time for my 8th grade graduation, I insisted, insisted that I get my suit from Ody. And I did, too.

This ad is ostensibly for Ody’s retirement sale, 25% off everything in the store, etc. But truthfully, these “retirement” ads ran for quite awhile; I’m pretty sure I recently saw one on an old tape of mine from 2002 or 2003. That was actually a good thing, since I didn’t graduate until the Spring of 2001 – I’m glad Ody was still around. He was ridiculously friendly. I’m glad we could throw some bidness his way, even if it was just that one time.

The WB Zoe…Promo

I think I can count on one hand the number of WB shows I regularly watched. I’m not sure there were any, to be honest with you. Well, maybe one or two, tops.

And yet, thanks to promos aired during The Ghoul, I can certainly remember a good number of them. Zoe… is a good example of that. This promo is for the second season premiere of what was originally titled Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane. Obviously, they shortened the name to, officially, Zoe… (It’s pronounced, literally, Zoe Dot Dot Dot in the promo). I never watched either iteration, though for whatever reason, the original title made the show strike me as a ‘unique’ sitcom.

Lex Luthor from Smallville was in it, as was Selma Blair. That’s her in the left screenshot above, and it’s only now that I truly realize she was cute as a button.

WBNX TV-55 Unhappily Ever After Promo

I realize this promo is from after the show ended and was thus in syndicated reruns by that point. Even so, it still counts as a WB series, and one that, even though I didn’t watch it very often, I actually kinda liked whenever I did happen to tune in. I don’t know if it holds up for me; it tends to be compared or related in some way or something to Married…With Children, which I know hasn’t held up for me. Nevertheless, I had more experience with Unhappily than I did poor Zoe… above.

The actual episode this promo is for? Something about each family member having fantasies or living out their dreams or something like that. Look, I’m at over 5000 words for this article now, I’m tired.

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What a huge, huge shot of nostalgia this recording is! It’s like a nearly-perfect summation of just what I loved staying up late Friday nights to watch The Ghoul. Almost everything about it clicks, from the skits to the movie to even the commercials (yeah, I kinda gave those short-shrift here, I know; they’re fun in action, but there weren’t all that many writable ones – ‘cept Ody, anyway).

The Ghoul wouldn’t remain like this a whole lot longer; that coming fall, he’d be moved to Sunday nights, his movie selections ruined, his skits, host segments and movie drop-ins scaled waaaaay back. The entire show that had been building up since the Summer of 1998 would more or less be totally destroyed in one fell swoop. ‘Course, I didn’t know any of that was ahead. I’d suspect neither The Ghoul nor his crew knew, either.

I can’t really say this Devil Bat episode is my favorite, though I do think I’d put it in my top 10, if I were ever bored enough to make a list such as that (and rest assured, I taped so many Ghoul shows over the years, I could if I wanted). Even though I hadn’t watched it since the initial airing over 16 years ago, boy, I enjoyed nearly every second of it. Consistently entertaining, and a hugely nostalgic presentation; I wish every old recording of mine met those criteria!

*Aw, you know it didn’t, I was just kidding, chill out.

**In my humble yet-totally-biased opinion, of course!

Son of Ghoul 30th Anniversary Tribute!

That screenshot above was taken nearly five years ago, during Son of Ghoul’s 25th anniversary special. (Has it really been five years? I refuse to believe five years passed that quickly!) A momentous occasion for sure, and a marvelously entertaining episode to boot. Interviews with past crew members, historic clips and bits, and an honest-to-goodness movie (The Most Dangerous Game), it was a fantastic show that stayed on my DVR for, no joke, around 6 or 7 months. It was like the perfect summation of what made Son of Ghoul, well, Son of Ghoul.

However, something SOG said, not during that episode but during a later show, has stuck in the back of my mind ever since it was uttered: when describing his 20th and 25th anniversaries, he made an off-hand comment about a potential 30th, essentially stating he had no idea if he’d even make it to 30. It was something along the lines of “Can I make it that long?” It was a throwaway line, not even really a joke, but it did bring up an interesting question: in this day and age of waning local television, where horror hosts in particular are an increasingly endangered species, could SOG hold in there for the big 3-0? How long can a good thing last?

I don’t know where today falls in the ultimate larger picture of The Son of Ghoul Show, but I do know that Keven “Son of Ghoul” Scarpino has accomplished the nearly impossible: a horror hosted movie showcase that has continuously run weekly since June 13, 1986 – 30 years ago today!

Make no mistake, this is a monumental achievement. Any television personality doing what they do for an uninterrupted 30 years is something to be celebrated, but a horror host? It’s not unheard of for one to run for a number of years, leave the airwaves (for one reason or another), and then come back some time later. But, to stay on for three decades, simply by doing what they do best? All while facing station changes, shifting television landscapes, and the decline of horror hosts on over-the-air TV stations nationwide? Just how does that happen?!

In fact, he is easily one of the longest continually-running horror hosts in the nation! Indeed, it seems he is THE longest running! That just makes this achievement all the more amazing!

It’s times like this that I count myself especially fortunate to be a Northeast Ohioan, or at least a TV-watchin’ Northeast Ohioan. It seems like if a local television personality has had an impact on us, they never really go away. I mean, Ghoulardi was only on from 1963 to 1966, and yet, Ernie Anderson’s iconic host is still instantly recognizable around here. And Big Chuck & Lil’ John? Even when they ‘retired’ back in 2007, they were still all over the place, and then they came back to TV in 2011. My point is, if you can make it around here, there will always be a place for you, somehow, somewhere.

Throughout all the changes in television in general, never mind locally, over the last 30 years, SOG has been there, doing what he does best: hosting a movie, performing in some skits, interacting with the viewers. It’s perfect “sit back and chill” weekend entertainment, and SOG has it down to a science. I simply can’t imagine a weekend without his show, a fact that made his uncertainty in regards to reaching 30 years a bit unsettling. Northeast Ohioans have long memories, but I suppose nothing and no one is immune to the sands of time.

But for now, SOG is still here, still plugging away, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I go way back with the show. Indeed, quite a few of my weekends have featured The Son of Ghoul Show, starting all the way back to the fall of 1997. In many ways, my love of local broadcasting can be traced back to The Son of Ghoul Show. That’s not a small statement I make, either.

The man himself, via an exclusive shot taken at his 1997 personal appearance at JC Comics & Cards. Check out the SOG cake to the right!

Anyone taking even a cursory glance at this blog has undoubtedly seen the presence SOG has had; I’m blatantly and unabashedly a longtime fan. We’ve looked at an episode or two, he’s gotten specific shout-outs during all three of my Ghoulardifest write-ups, and heck, I even took the time to post an update when his time slot was shifted back in February 2015. ‘Course, it was the big extensive interview with the man himself nearly two years ago (as of this writing) that was the ultimate example of SOG on this BLOG. (See what I did there?)

So yes, SOG reaching 30 years on the air is a big deal in general, but especially for me. Why? Because I’ve been around for 19 of those 30 years. I had seen Big Chuck & Lil’ John first, and was aware of Superhost in my formative years, but truthfully, it was SOG that introduced me to this whole Northeast Ohio horror host deal. And therein lies some nostalgia…

(I know I’ve related some, or all, of this before, so please, bear with me…)

I first discovered the show in the fall of 1997. At the time, I was looking for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 surrogate. I had become (and remain to this day) a die-hard fan of MST3K, but at the end of summer ’97, it was too expensive to keep the premium cable box needed to access the Sci-Fi Channel, and thus, MST3K (the network later became part of our basic cable package, but that was a few years away). Being only 11 years old, I didn’t have much say in the matter, and so, as summer came to a close, it became increasingly obvious I needed something to satisfy my bad movie-mocking needs.

Also during that same summer, I had become aware of “The Cat,” TV-29 in Akron, TV-35 in Cleveland. While I was primarily a horror and sci-fi fan (albeit a still-burgeoning one), The Cat introduced me to a wider range of older, sometimes wildly obscure, flicks. B-westerns, silents, foreign films and so on, I quickly found a growing interest in all of them.

By the time fall came around, I was jonesing for MST3K, or something similar, and I was jonesing bad. In retrospect, it’s a bit odd that it took me several months to actually discover The Son of Ghoul Show, but the fact is that some idle channel-surfing one Saturday night landed me upon SOG’s annual Halloween show. He was on Friday and Saturday at that point, same episode both nights, so I guess this would have been November 1, 1997 (since an online calendar tells me Friday was October 31st).

The movie was the original Night of the Living Dead, a flick he runs each Halloween. My brother Luke was watching with me, and as I recall it, we turned the channel on just as SOG’s introductory segment was coming to a close. The movie started shortly thereafter, and man, that was all it took. Before long, I was hooked. It took me a minute to realize that SOG was dropping in sound effects and music into the movie, but I loved it. I loved the film too, which was my first time seeing it.

But it was the host segments and skits that really got me. SOG was something entirely new to me. A genuine horror host, a concept I only had a vague notion of prior (I never thought of Chuck & John as horror hosts until later, and besides, it took me a few more years to really appreciate them). He was witty, he was acerbic, he was silly, he read mail. In short, it was everything I had been craving. In that single two-hour block that Saturday night, an entire new world of television, of comedy, was opened to me. Baby, I was done.

And he was ours! This was all local! SOG is the kind of entertainer anyone from anywhere can enjoy, but his program takes on a whole new dimension if you’re from the area. I doubt I was cognizant of all that when I watched for the first time (in fact, I’m sure I wasn’t), but it’s a factor that became increasingly important to me the more I watched and the bigger a fan I became.

Another exclusive shot taken at JC Comics & Cards. Here SOG autographs a promotional picture, for either my brother or myself. We both still have our signed pictures to this day, either way.

Even though it was only until the following week, it was a long, long wait for the next episode. I was in 5th grade, and while (as I recall it), the other kids were into wrestling and/or MTV and whatnot, I personally could not wait to see more of this new thing I found.

Finally it was there; the movie was The Vampire Bat, and I knew I had made the right decision in jumping on this bandwagon. (I also learned it was the same movie, same episode both Friday and Saturday nights, but this wound up being beyond helpful. If I particularly liked a movie or bit, or one of the letters I later started sending in was on, I could sample Friday night and record Saturday night.)

From there on out, it was a constant sense of discovery. Nearly every single week, I was seeing a movie completely new to me. Okay, sure, they weren’t good movies, but they weren’t supposed to be! I can’t say this is where my love of watching bad movies because they’re so awful began, but the selections SOG ran certainly helped fuel the ongoing desire for a good baddie. The Hoodlum, The Corpse Vanishes, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, Colossus and the Amazon Queen, all of those (and many more!) were introduced to me via SOG. I can’t say I ‘love’ the films, but they hold a nostalgic place in my heart nevertheless, simply because of how and where they fall in my lifetime.

And it was all so funny! I loved the mail segments, where SOG’s acerbic, sarcastic wit was on full-display. He had no problem goofing on the letter writers, and really, that was part of the fun, even if you were the one who had written in! And the skits! Barfaby, Mr. Banjo, Fatman and Rotten, Zero, Eat At Joe’s, and even the one-offs, so much of it had a hip, edgy, oftentimes “warped” tone that made the whole experience irresistible. I mean, “Genie of the John,” in which SOG played the titular character, one who emerges from a toilet? Stuff like that appealed (and appeals) endlessly to me.

‘Course, when I began watching, I didn’t really know about the first home of the show (Canton’s WOAC TV-67, from 1986 to 1995), and thus what bits were new and what bits old. Nor did I have a full understanding of the Ghoulardi lineage, only a vague knowledge of the tradition. (Ah, the days before the internet presented every last drop of information at the touch of a button!) This was almost all totally new to me, but I loved it.

Within just a few weeks of my becoming an instant mega-fan, SOG announced on the air that he was going to be making a personal appearance at JC Comics & Cards on State Road in Cuyahoga Falls. JCs?! I knew right where that was! It was practically just down the street from me! Dare I go and meet my newfound hero? Of course! (By the way, JC Comics & Cards is still at the same location; you’d be well-advised to stop in and buy some stuff – there’s a lot of great things there!)

That’s my brother Luke on the left. I’m the one on the right. A rare shot of me not being a total badass? I think I’ve aged for the better.

Looking back, his personal appearance at JC Comics & Cards was probably my first real celebrity meeting. Okay, my school had a Cleveland Indian (don’t remember his name) appear and sign autographs once, and I had gotten baseballs autographed outside of (then) Jacob’s Field before, but as far as being a fan and specifically seeking out a meet-and-greet, SOG was the pretty much the first.

There was only one hindrance: I was a fairly shy 11 year old. It’s something I’ve long since grown out of, and nowadays I have no qualms with walking right up to a celebrity and bugging meeting them. But back then? It was totally uncharted territory for me. I didn’t quite know what to expect.

So, the big day arrived. My brother, mom and I waltzed into JCs, and there he was: Son of Ghoul, in person! I was excited and insanely nervous at the same time. I needn’t have worried though; as has been proven time and time again over the years, SOG is absolutely fantastic with his fans. He was personable, he was funny, he answered all questions posed to him, he took pictures, he signed autographs. Even if I did lock-up once after asking him a question (shy and all, remember), it was a great experience.

In fact, here’s something about the visit that I’ll never forget: after we had met him, got our pictures and so on, I was browsing the comics, and I found that 1988 reprint issue of Action Comics #1, for $3. Without prompting, SOG came up and actually looked at it with me, marveling at the price and the 1938 date in the corner. I thought (and think) that was just the coolest. When a personality goes that extra mile to interact with a fan, it shows how genuine they are. In the years since, talking with SOG or watching him talk with other fans, I know my impression of him back in ’97 at JCs was spot-on.

It really is hard to put in words the influence SOG had on me growing up. His show helped shape how I look at movies, at comedy, at broadcasting, everything. And I’m not the only one; There were other kids my age that were just as enthralled with it as I was.

In fact, this blog has introduced me to one: Brett Van Wagner. He discovered this site due to the SOG content, he messaged me, and we’ve been chatting ever since. Even though he lives out-of-state and we’ve never met in person, I’m proud to call him friend. We’ve even had shockingly similar experiences with The Son of Ghoul Show, and we’ve both been fans for nearly the same amount of time. I’m going to turn things over to him for a moment here; I’ve known for awhile now how important his recollections of “SOG history” are, and when I came up with the idea for this post, he was the first one I asked to contribute. Here he is now in his own words…

Brett:

Where to start? First off, a huge thank you to the Northeast Ohio Video Hunter for letting me be a part of an article about such a historic moment in Northeast Ohio television! Although we have never met, I have enjoyed emailing the author of this blog and sharing memories and stories of Son of Ghoul for probably close to a year now. Our SOG stories are actually quite similar, and it makes me wonder how many other kids our age were watching the show at that time. While I live in Florida now, I make it home to NE Ohio from time to time and perhaps one day we will meet up at a convention or SOG appearance. But, thank you for allowing me to be a part of this!

I was first introduced to the Son of Ghoul Show sometime in 1997. My dad would occasionally have the show on, although it seems like my mom would always make him turn it off. My dad grew up watching both Ghoulardi and The Ghoul, and would talk about watching those shows when he was young. After months of catching a few minutes here or there, I remember the first episode I ever watched from start to finish. It was Friday, August 29, 1997 and it was the first week of 6th grade for me. After a week of realizing that middle school was now my life, I realized I needed something to take the edge off. The movie that night was Godzilla vs. Megalon and I only recently realized it was actually a rerun of the very first show to ever air on the CAT. Going back and watching that episode again, it makes quite a bit of sense, as SOG refers to the fact that we are now seeing him in prime time and actually in Cleveland quite a bit. A great episode to officially start watching. The episode also featured what would quickly become, and still is, my favorite SOG sketch, Mr. Banjo. I’m not quite sure what it was about that green-screened dog, but no matter how many times I hear the opening rifts of that song and hear SOG start to talk in that ridiculous accent, I truly laugh out loud every time.

This is the Mr. Banjo character Brett is referring to. Coincidentally (as you’re about to read), this is from a promo for The Brain That Wouldn’t Die!

In all of the years, my favorite SOG movie is The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. Fittingly, my very first fan letter was read during a show that featured this movie on October 10, 1997. Honorable mentions for other movies that I have a soft spot for go to favorites such as The Giant Gila Monster, Alice Sweet Alice (the only SOG movie that actually scared me as a kid – love it now though) Phantom from Space, Plan Nine from Outer Space, Killers from Space, (I’m noticing a space theme here) White Zombie, and the lost but still survives on VHS collections somewhere, Lethal Justice.

Despite the dungeon and skulls the faux scary vibe of the show, what I took away from the show more than anything was a love of comedy. From all of the drops in the movies (yeah, I know Bill Cosby has kind of fallen out of grace in society in the last year, and rightfully so.. but those old comedy albums of his are pure gold and the way SOG would incorporate drop pieces from those albums into the movies and show were fantastic) to the incredibly dry and witty sense of humor SOG would posses during mail breaks and show segments, the show for me was comedy first and foremost. SOG never fails to make me laugh with one of his one liners or observations during a skit or mail break. In addition to helping me with my love and appreciation for comedy, SOG always reinforced my love of The Beatles. While most kids grew up listening to their sing-a-long tapes, I remember listening to our old Beatles LP’s as young as 3 or 4, and my love for the band is still just as strong all these years later. Knowing SOG shared that love and appreciation for the band and incorporated them so heavily on his show was the icing on the cake.

Another exclusive shot of SOG at that fateful JC Comics & Cards appearance!

Just like the Northeast Ohio Video Hunter, the first time I ventured out to meet SOG at a personal appearance was in December 1997 at JC Comics and Cards in Cuyahoga Falls. Heck, maybe I have met him after all. What I do remember is how friendly and kind SOG has always been to his fans. He remembered me from letters I had written, talked to my dad and I, and was just such a nice guy. I would again go to many personal appearances, including the 1999 FrightVision where I would spent lots of time talking to my horror host idol and also had the chance to meet, according to the headshot, the one…the only…Fidge! Fidge was also the nicest guy in the world, and the years he and SOG spent together are the best years of the show for me. The last time I saw SOG (and Fidge) in person was in October 2002 when they had the stage show during Fright Fest at what was then Six Flags Worlds of Adventure amusement park. (Sidenote, I am also a HUGE amusement park and roller coaster buff. Geauga Lake Amusement Park, which was a Northeast Ohio institution that spent a few years as a Six Flags park before becoming Geauga Lake again under the same owners of Cedar Point, Cedar Fair, is a place that I miss more than anything and am super sad about losing) Back on track, even though I haven’t seen SOG in person since 2002, I have stayed in touch with him via e-mail and he is nothing but kind and helpful to his fans. Questions I have had regarding episodes, etc, always are answered and he is just the nicest guy in the world, despite what he may want us to think from his on air persona.

It was so sad to hear of the passing of Fidge, especially because of the circumstances, in 2003, and SOG handled it with such class and respect in the tribute episode. Between that at the recent Colonel Klink tribute episodes, SOG has proven that even in the worst situations, he is the ultimate professional and is able to bring the audience together to celebrate the lives of two great men who were so influential on the show.

As the years went on, I went off to college and then moved to Florida eight years ago. I’ve experienced several jobs, a few serious girlfriends, and the usual ups and downs of life. Still, I always caught SOG any time I was home in Ohio on a Saturday night. In the more recent years, I have purchased over 20 episodes of the show from the SOG website and as time continues to go on, I’m sure I will purchase 20 more. Any time I am feeling a bit homesick, or just at the end of a long week, the excitement and comfort of popping in a Son of Ghoul DVD is just as strong as when I first discovered the show nearly 19 years ago. There have been countless horror hosts that have come and gone, but for one host to be on for 30 consecutive years is truly an amazing feat, especially in today’s constantly changing broadcast world. Hats off to the Son of Ghoul. I can only hope he appreciates not only the accomplishment of 30 years on the air, but how influential he was for kids like me who didn’t really have a place to fit in. Thanks for everything, SOG. Here’s to a happy 30th anniversary, and hope for many, many more.

Brett Van Wagner

It really is wild how close our experiences with the show are. I think we would have become fast friends back in the day, and I’m certainly happy to know him now. His contribution is invaluable to this article and I can’t thank him enough for providing it. You is good people, Brett!

Brett also touched on a great point: it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the show. The fact that it has continued to survive though every seemingly-insurmountable obstacle shows not only how durable the show is, but how good SOG is at what he does.

The Son of Ghoul Show has survived a nasty lawsuit in the late-1980s, time changes, station changes, the switch to digital TV in ’09, the eroding of local TV in general and the presence of horror hosts in particular, even actual deaths…

The passing of Ron “Fidge” Huffman in 2003 was an absolute shocker. Fidge was SOG’s sidekick, and in the late-90s/early-2000s, he was ever present. He took a lot of abuse on the show, but I think he knew it was all in fun; his presence gave the program something of a “warped” Big Chuck & Lil’ John quality.

I had the fortune to meet Fidge at FrightVision ’99, where that autographed picture above comes from. He couldn’t have been any nicer; it truly seemed like he got a kick out of the whole thing, and it showed when meeting his fans. I’m truly sorry that he passed; I’m glad I got to meet him when I did.

Something else Brett mentioned was the more-recent death of Jim “The Colonel” Klink. Klink went way back with our local horror hosts, sending tons of his artwork to Superhost and later SOG. Not only that, but at least as far as SOG went, he’d send in packages of random items, always decorated with a variety of stickers on the outside (as SOG said once, he couldn’t believe the post office accepted them!). Needless to say, SOG ragged on Klink quite a bit too, but again, it was all in fun.

I never met Klink, though I did see him walking around at Ghoulardifest once or twice. I wish I would have went up and spoken to him now. Still, he did leave this nice comment on my interview with SOG page, and it’s worth sharing here:

The outpouring of grief online for Klink was quite large, and reading that comment, it’s easy to see why. He was a genuinely nice, enthusiastic fan, as his note above makes abundantly clear.

As Brett mentioned, SOG’s tribute shows to both Fidge and Klink are fantastic. Genuine, honest, funny, they were perfect in honoring both guys.

Their passing was tragic, and the unfortunate fact of the matter is when a show reaches such longevity, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll run into something like that. It comes with the territory of being on for so many years, I suppose.

Indeed, when something like that happens, it only serves to remind you of how far back this all goes, and how quickly it can all go away. By this point, SOG has become a veritable staple of Northeast Ohio television. It’s simply impossible to imagine a time when he’s not on the air in some fashion. But obviously, all good things come to an end, which makes treasuring them while they’re here all the more important. I’ve made that mistake with some other shows, but luckily, I won’t make it here. I’m grateful for each week SOG is on the air.

So, that’s my history with SOG, but it’s not a finished history by any means; it continues to this very day. His current shows, of course I’m there, and just like when I was 11, I still get a sense of anticipation in hearing what movie will be shown on a given night, or seeing if some letter or package I sent in is going to be presented. Stuff like that I don’t think will ever change.

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So, my thoughts, and Brett’s up above obviously, on this big 30th anniversary are now known. But, I also reached out online for some other contributions to this big ol’ tribute, to help show what an impact SOG has had on other viewers and collaborators. Some wonderful additions were gathered, which I’d like to share now.

From famous fellow horror host “Wolfman Mac” Kelly (who for years shared Saturday nights with SOG on our local RTV affiliate; SOG 7 PM-9PM, Mac 10 PM-12 AM):

Son of Ghoul with Wolfman Mac, as they appeared together during an episode of Wolfman Mac’s Chiller Drive-In.

Hey Son Of Ghoul, happy 30th anniversary to you my fellow horror host! You have such an awesome talent and your fans are truly fortunate to have YOU keeping the genre alive. Er…undead…

I had the honor of meeting you a few years ago at Wasteland. You’re not only a great horror host, you’re also a really good guy. All the best to you. Stay Creepy!! – Wolfman Mac

Mac, like SOG, is one of the coolest, nicest guys you could ever hope to talk to, which is not something that can be said for every television personality.

From longtime SOG-friend and genuine good guy Jungle Bob Tuma (check out his official website!) comes this hilarious recollection:

Jungle Bob, longtime buddy of Son of Ghoul and all-around good egg. Photo used with permission.

I remember the time that the Son of Ghoul & I went out to eat after Cinema Wasteland at an all you can eat Chinese Restaurant (his favorite place to eat). He had been there the week before & ” spoke up” when somebody tried to leave without paying their bill. This made him a hero to the girls who worked there…while we were there, we noticed them smiling, they even brought over a plate of crab legs for him.

He went to go wash his hands & I took my pen & drew a heart & wrote “I love you” on his napkin & when he returned I told him that the Chinese waitress wrote it…I had no idea that SOG would call the waitress over & ask her name & flirt with her…I even tried to stop him but when she came over she let him know that it was not her who wrote that …she also told him that she actually saw me write it while he was away from the table…

He looked at me & said..”OMG Jung, what is wrong with you…I am so embarrassed!” I thought about it & said to myself…”See, we even have fun when we are not on TV…Whether we are on & off the air, Keven (SOG) & I always seem to have a good time & that’s why we have been friends for so long… Happy 30th buddy & looking forward to our next Chinese dinner, LOL.

Anyone that has seen Jung on SOG’s show or watched them interact together in-person knows they have an incredible rapport that is absolutely hilarious, as his story demonstrates!

JB is not only ridiculously friendly, but he knows pretty much everything about every animal ever. You’d be well-advised to book him for any event.

From my buddy Matt Brassfield over at Rotten Ink:

Son of Ghoul with Dayton’s Baron Von Porkchop. Photo used with permission.

Hometown Horror Hosts mean a lot to viewers, and Cleveland has had their share of iconic hosts from Ghoulardi to Superhost in the golden age of broadcast TV hosting to modern late night ghoulies…but for over 30 years The Son Of Ghoul has entertained viewers with his silly antics and zany sidekicks like the Fidge (R.I.P.) and has truly became a staple for the Cleveland area.

I have had the honor to have met and chatted with Son Of Ghoul many times during his convention appearances and he has always taken the time to shoot the breeze and even was the first to introduce me to footage of Superhost as well as Woodrow The Woodsman! Son Of Ghoul is a Horror Host Hall Of Famer, a Musician, a Comedian and from Rotten Ink as well as from the cast of Baron Von Porkchop’s Terrifying Tales Of The Macabre, we want to wish Son Of Ghoul a Happy 30th Anniversary and wish him many more years of TV goodness.

Matt’s also the producer of Baron Von Porkchop’s Terrifying Tales of the Macabre; check it out!

My Facebook pal John Walch had this photo of SOG with his son Lil’ Kong to share, along with the following comment:

Photo courtesy John Walch.

The highlight of April’s Cinema Wasteland show was when my son met Kevin. Such a great guy.

Yes he is!

From another Facebook pal, Danny Harasyn:

I live in Lake County and Time Warner won’t give me the station SOG is on …..so I had a friend I worked with who lived in the area Time Warner carried the show record it for me each week…

I know what he means; there was a time in the earlier-2000s in which we were using rabbit ears, and you could NOT pick up SOG’s show to save your life.

From Facebook’s Gary Smith:

Photo courtesy Gary Smith.

Several years ago. it seemed like every week, I would see him at Jamie’s Flea Market in Amherst. On top of that, getting a chance to see and chat with him at Ghoulardifest and Monster Bash conventions the past few years. Looking forward to seeing him again at this year’s fests and congratulations on his 30 year milestone.

Thanks Gary!

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One final personal story before I close this tribute out. This one means as much to me as the nostalgia of discovering and watching SOG back in the late-90s does.

Back in November of 2011, I had a serious hand injury at where I then-worked. This was my first (and thus far only) real injury. Sure, I had sprained my ankle before, pinched a nerve in my neck, relatively little things like that, but this was a biggie. I eventually clocked three separate surgeries, a five-day hospital stay, several weeks of a home IV, and a whole lotta physical therapy. It was a mess.

I was blessed with some legitimately great doctors and nurses that helped me through the ordeal. I am thankful every day for that. Today, while there is some remaining evidence that a severe accident occurred, you probably wouldn’t notice unless I pointed it out to you. It could have been much, much worse, so yes, I’m most definitely grateful to those that made sure it wasn’t.

But anyway, back in December 2011, much of what I eventually had to go through was still ahead of me. All I knew was that I was injured, I was off work until after the new year, and I was severely bummed.

Meanwhile, prior to all that, after being a regular writer-in’r to the show in the late-90s, I had begun sending packages to SOG again in 2010 or so. Shortly before my injury, I had mocked up a SOG-album cover in a parody of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run cover, titled Born To Be Awesome. (See above.)

So, Saturday, December 24, 2011, it was SOG’s annual Christmas showing, appropriately airing on Christmas Eve. At a time when I was in critical need of a morale boost, SOG presented the album cover on the air. Not only that, but he really seemed to get a kick out of it! And that was in addition to all the older holiday-themed bits and cartoons, which all made for a wonderfully entertaining episode.

Obviously, SOG didn’t know what I had been going through at the time, this was all business-as-usual for him, but this was absolutely the pick-me-up I needed at that moment. I’ll always be grateful for that.

I think that points to an often-unrecognized aspect of not only The Son of Ghoul Show but any program people may turn to during those times when they just need to escape: they become more than just a television series to us, something deeper, though perhaps indefinable. And when they reach a historic milestone, like SOG has today, you feel, in some small way, a part of it, even if it was just by tuning in for so many years. And by now, I think it’s safe to say I’ll hang in there with him till the very end.

Your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter hangin’ with the man himself! Ghoulardifest 2013.

There’s no better way to finish this article than with some words from the man himself, Keven Scarpino, aka Son of Ghoul. I reached out to him for a closing comment, and in true SOG-fashion, he first gave me “Yeah, I would give a comment if I thought anybody actually reads your posts. LOL” Of course he was kidding (?), and immediately followed that up with this statement, directed towards all his fans:

Thanks for hanging with me all these 30 years. The viewers are the reason I’m still here – plus nobody else is willing to work as cheap as I do. Stay Sick! SOG.

Kinda says it all, doesn’t it?

Happy 30th anniversary Son of Ghoul! Here’s to the next 30!

An Interview With Marty “Superhost” Sullivan.

[EDIT: Marty Sullivan passed away at the age of 87 on February 21, 2020. Not only was Marty beloved on-camera, but he was also one of the nicest, most genuine guys anyone could ever hope to speak with, absolutely. He will be missed. Let this interview be an ongoing tribute to him and his television legacy. RIP, Supe.]

Ah, Superhost. Portrayed by Marty Sullivan, he was a bonafide institution on Northeast Ohio television for 20 years. From 1969 to 1989, Mr. Sullivan hosted Saturday afternoons on WUAB Channel 43. Through his program, untold numbers of kids were introduced to The Three Stooges, as well as classic (and maybe some not-so-classic) horror and sci-fi movies. Even those viewers already familiar with the films found an additional reason to watch in Superhost himself. Indeed, my very first glimpse of the Northeast Ohio movie-hosting tradition was through Superhost, specifically the promos featuring him doing “The Curly Shuffle” that aired during the kids’ programming on WUAB. Even if I was a bit too young to “get it” then, the memories of Supe stayed with me, and found a natural place in my heart when I was old enough to “get it.” And the show has really held up. Unlike some similar programs that show their age or are otherwise “had to be there” viewing, I find myself constantly and consistently laughing out loud at Supe.

I recently had the honor and privilege of interviewing Mr. Sullivan for this blog. He couldn’t have been more gracious with his time or more forthcoming with his stories. A true class-act all the way (it’s obvious why he was and is so beloved by Northeast Ohioans). Here, now, is my interview with Marty “Superhost” Sullivan.

********************

Me: First off, thanks again for allowing me to talk with you.

Marty Sullivan: No problem!

Me: It is a huge, huge thrill for me.

MS: Well I’m glad! Thank you!

Me: When did you first become interested in becoming a broadcaster?

MS: Oh, that’s a question! I was always interested in radio as a youngster. It was the year of The Lone Ranger and all those dramatic radio shows. Inner Sanctum and Lights Out and all those radio shows. And I used to listen to those as a child, and the interest just kept on. I don’t know when I actually wanted to become an announcer, but I think it was not until I was in college. I worked in a little theater group in college, and I didn’t have a lot of nerve to get up in front of people! So…

Me: [Laughs] So, who would you say were your early influences that sort of pushed you into becoming a broadcaster?

MS: I took some psychological tests when I graduated from high school, and they indicated I was not really sure of myself. I was kind of a quiet kid, and they advised taking some public speaking courses to build-up my self-confidence. So, I did. I took a course that was run in Detroit by two local broadcasters, two big time announcers in Detroit. I went to their school and I learned about radio broadcasting from them. So that’s how that happened.

Me: When did you first actually go into broadcasting?

MS: Actually, I finished the broadcasting course, and I was going, also at the same time, to the Meinzinger School Of Commercial Art in Detroit. I had some ability as a draftsman, so I was taking a course in commercial art. And the commercial arts school went belly-up! I had only been there through the latter part of the summer, and one day I went in to attend class, and there was a note on the board that said “Don’t bother coming in anymore!” So, then I didn’t know what to do, so I figured I’d finish the broadcasting course, “maybe there’s somebody that needs a pronouncer!” Somebody at the school told me that this little station down in Indiana might be needing a disc jockey or announcer or something. So, I sent them a tape, and they said “Come on down! You’re hired!” And that’s actually how I got started in broadcasting, it was a little station in Peru, Indiana, WARU, a little AM station. But it was just a daytime station. At night they had to go off the air, because radio waves traveled further at night. So they went off the air at local sunset.

Me: So how did it end up that you came to Northeast Ohio?

MS: I went back and got into Detroit radio, and had a couple stints there. I was working for WJR, the Goodwill station in Detroit at that point in time. And, I got myself fired at WJR! Then one of the chaps I used to work with at WJR, one of the newsmen, had moved to Cleveland as a newsman. And he called me up and asked me if I wanted to be a newsman down in Cleveland. So, I figured “Well, sure, why not!”

Me: Was that WUAB?

MS: WGAR in Cleveland was where I first started as a newsman. Then George left, the guy who hired me in, was news director. He was unhappy there, so he moved to New York, got a job in New York as a newsman. I think it was WNEW New York. And I thought since he left, he was the one who hired me in, I’d be thrown out! Then, I was hired into an advertising agency in Cleveland. It was Ritchie and Sattler, and they specialized in industrial advertising. One of their clients was RicWil, it was a pipe making company down in Akron, I think it was. I stayed with them about a year, but then that’s when WUAB opened up. Somebody told me it was open. So, again, I was canned at the advertising agency, because they knew of a chap who had a client, a big electronics company, that they wanted to get in the office. So they moved me out to move him in, along with his client. That’s when I got in touch with WUAB, the program manager; sent him a tape and he told me to come on in. Put me to work!

Me: You started there as a newsman?

MS: Announcer, newsman, audio man, camera man…

Me: [Laughs] So pretty much everything!

MS: And nighttime switchboard operator!

Me: So how did it come about that they wanted you to host a Saturday afternoon show? What were the origins of Superhost?

MS: This one I know! I’ve recited it several times! I was doing what they call floor directing. That’s where I was wearing a headset, and was talking to the director in the control room. I was out in the studio to impart those directions to people out there. It was kind of like a Dick Clark Show, called Big Beat Dance Party, and they were taping it on a Saturday. I was floor directing, and The Four Lads were coming in to sing “Standing On a Corner.” So, naturally we had a ‘corner’ set there. And they asked me to stand in four different places so they could adjust the lighting, since the Lads weren’t there yet, we were just getting ready. So I’m standing there and the director is shouting at me over the headsets that I’m unzipped! I must have looked very uncomfortable trying to cover up THAT! So Ted Bays, the program manager, happened to be in the control room when all this is going on, and everybody in the control room is laughing uproariously; I can hear them on the headset! After the show was over, Ted Bays came up and asked me if I wanted to come up with an idea for a show for a character to host a movie. And, that’s what I came up with!

Me: Was it a runaway hit? Did you know what early reactions were or how popular it was at the start?

MS: [Laughs] Yeah, it wasn’t popular at all! It took quite awhile for people to discover – back in those days there weren’t any UHF television stations, very few of them. It was TransAmerica that put it on the air, they were taking a big chance with the new technology, the ultra high-frequency television station. Their signal was a little tricky to get around, it didn’t have the coverage that the VHF stations had. So it took awhile for people to discover UHF. And when they did, they discovered the show! A lot of kids liked watching the old science fiction movies on Saturdays.

Me: You said it wasn’t very popular at first. Did WUAB give you any static? Were they complaining?

MS: No, they were selling commercials, so they were relatively happy with it. They were always after me for more ratings, but I did the best I could. But, it just took awhile for people to discover where it was and the fact they liked these old movies!

Me: Did you ever hear from viewers that just didn’t “get it” or that were complaining?

MS: I was doing a public appearance at a store in Cleveland, at that time called Uncle Bill’s. It was like a Home Depot kind of store. So I did a public appearance there signing autographs, and I’m all dressed up in my little super suit, and I’m in the middle of the store. Kids are coming up, signing autographs, and a couple young-ish men, like in their 20’s or so, were walking by. The one guy pokes the other guy, points to me and says “Oh look, there’s the guy that’s on the TV!” and the other guy looked back and said to his friend “Oh, that a-hole!” So that put everything in perspective!

Me: [Laughing] Did you say anything? I don’t know if I’d know what to say in a situation like that!

MS: Well they weren’t talking to me, I just overheard them!

Me: I’d assume that sort of thing was kept to a minimum?

MS: Yeah, that was the only time I ever heard anybody overtly describe me that way!

Me: You showed a lot of the science fiction and horror movies, did you have a favorite? I know the station probably controlled what you played, but…?

MS: They did, the program manager picked all the movies – usually on the basis of how cheap they were! Let me see, there were a lot of good movies. Forbidden Planet, I liked, where The Krell were the monsters. Who was in that? I can’t think of the name of the man now. The comic actor, did a lot of comedy. Anne Francis was the girl in that, I remember her name! Walter Pidgeon was her father in that movie. It was a good movie.

Me: Are there any other films that you particularly like?

MS: There’s been several new ones that I like. One was called The Red Planet. I like Alien and all the modern films, I like them a lot. In fact, I signed up for Netflix so I could watch them without all the commercials!

Me: How about skits? Everyone knows you’ve done some pretty famous skits like “Convoy” and “The Moronic Woman.” Are there any favorite skits you have?

MS: Well, I remember a little background story: I decided to do a little take-off on The Bionic Woman, and I was talking about it to some of the people at the station at night, and one of the cleaning ladies came up with the idea of the long arms. That was the first one, where The Moronic Woman grabbed the bumper and the guy took off in the car and stretched her arms out 20 feet! That was thought up by one of the cleaning ladies!

Me: Would you say that’s your favorite?

MS: I think my favorite bit was The Moronic Woman where she kicked the football and her leg went up over the goal posts!

Me: I was watching the “Convoy” skit not too long ago, and the part I found funniest the last time I watched it was the three guys kicking their feet during the chorus.

MS: [Those guys] all became directors, ultimately. Where they wound up, I have no idea, but they all became directors. The guy that directed the pilot show I did, the station wanted to see a pilot show before they decided whether to put me on the air or not. So we got together one Sunday night and taped it, and the guy was a man named Harry Kooperstein. Harry went on to Hollywood and became one of the biggest directors out there. He directed a lot of the Los Angeles symphony broadcasts and also directed all the Christmas parades out there. So, Harry became a big deal in Hollywood.

Me: Is his name where you got the alter-ego name [Henry Brookerstein] for Superhost?

MS: Well, we had three directors at channel 43: Henry Briggs was one, Harry Kooperstein was the other, and Brooke Spectorsky was the third.

Me: So you just put them all together?

MS: Mashed ‘em all together!

Me: I know you did a couple Big Chuck & Hoolihan/Lil’ John skits. Were you guys friends off-camera?

MS: Oh yeah, they were good guys. We weren’t direct-competition, anyway. They were on Friday night and I wasn’t on till Saturday, so we weren’t at loggerheads. And they’re nice guys; they came over to the station once to do a commercial for their show because it was too busy there at [WJW] 8. And they stole my phone booth as a gag!

Me: [Laughing]

MS: And I think it’s probably still over at channel 8!

Me: Did you ever do commercials for companies/products?

MS: I did one for some boat company in Cleveland. They sold fishing boats and pleasure boats, and I did a few for that guy, but I don’t remember what the name of the outfit was.

Me: Were you in costume?

MS: I’m not sure now. It’s been so long ago! I think I was, but I don’t have a clear memory of it.

Me: Okay, maybe not necessarily a “favorite” moment, but do you have a most-memorable moment from the whole 20 year run?

MS: Well, probably when I finished the last show. Taping the last show, I thought I’d get emotional, and I was doing pretty good. And then we were breaking down the set and I’m walking out and one of the crew members said “How you doing?” and that kinda got to me. Then it all came to me in a rush: this was the end.

Me: I came around sort of at the end of Superhost, I was just a little guy at the end. And actually, the most endearing memory for me, because they would play the commercial during all the cartoons I’d watch, it’s the promo of you doing “The Curly Shuffle.”

MS: Oh, yeah!

Me: I still have it on my old tapes from when I was little, but I guess that was really my introduction to the whole Northeast Ohio movie hosting thing.

MS: Well that’s great, I’m glad you liked it! We always had fun doing the commercials. I remember right in the middle of that I had to go and have triple bypass surgery.

Me: Oh geez!

MS: St. Vincent’s. And of course it took awhile to recupe from that. I remember the first show I did [after that], I made up a great big band-aid out of colored paper and pasted it on me! Everybody was fussing about the surgery, so I had to put them at ease!

Me: The show’s timeslot: The most famous was an hour of Three Stooges and two movies?

MS: Yeah, originally it was two movies and some other stuff. Sometimes it was Stooges, sometimes it was Superman, the live-action Superman with Steve Reeves or George Reeves or whatever his name was. It changed around over the years, but for the first, I don’t know, 7 or 8 years, 10 years, it was like two movies and short subjects on Saturday.

Me: I read that you ended up showing the Adam West Batman series at one point.

MS: Yeah.

Me: What did you think of those programming changes?

MS: Well, ultimately, when my ratings started sagging, just because people were used to it and all the little kids who used to watch grew up and got a job. They couldn’t spend all day watching the movies! So, that was fine with me.

Me: Was it your decision to end Superhost, or was it WUAB’s?

MS: Well, it was kinda mutual in a sense. We had a new station manager who was brought in from the sales department, and he decided that he‘d do away with Superhost because he could do better with putting wrestling on Saturday. So that was what ultimately caused the end of Supe. And I had told the new program manager that I had rather just kill of Superhost than have him die a slow miserable death. So, he agreed.

Me: I was watching that last one not too long ago and it really does have a, I’d guess you’d say, bittersweet ending. You know how it says “Good Luck, Supe!” at the end.

MS: Yeah. That was the director, his name was Paul Nickerson, who added Thanks” or “Goodbye” or “Good Luck” or whatever it was they put on. I haven’t watched that show in a long time. I’ve got it somewhere on a disc, I think.

Me: what did you do after Superhost ended? You stayed in broadcasting for a few more years, right?

MS: I did, yeah. I stayed at channel 43 still doing the announcing. It was about that time that they put in a whole evening news thing at 10 O’clock on channel 43. I was the only newsman they had for years; I would just change out of the super suit and go out there and do 5 minutes of headline news at 10 O‘clock at night. But then they decided to put in a news department – that took about 35 people to replace me! So that made me kinda smile!

Me: You retired in, 1993, was it?

MS: Right, 1993 and moved over here to Oregon.

Me: Can you still do the Superhost voice?

MS: Yeah, sure! “Hello dere! This is Supe!”

Me: [Laughing] Can you do “Gimme dat shoe?”

MS: Sure! “Gimme dat shoe, y’know!”

[NOTE: I don’t mind telling you I was dying with laughter at this point.]

Me: Would you ever consider coming back and doing a one-off special, or is that sort of…?

MS: No, I don’t think I want to bother with that. Besides, the super suit is getting a little tight around the middle!

Me: Is there anything you miss about broadcasting or Northeast Ohio?

MS: Well, I miss Northeast Ohio. I don’t really miss broadcasting. It was a great run while I had it, but that’s over with. I do miss the people in Northeast Ohio. I mean, they’re just the salt of the earth. They were very faithful to me the whole 20 years I was on television. They were supportive, and friendly, and that applies to everybody in Northeast Ohio.

Me: Well, there’s lots of people that still admire you. You’ve still got a ton of fans here that are grateful, thankful for everything that you did. You’re still very much admired!

MS: Well thank you very much! That’s very kind of you!

Me: Well, thank you very, very much. I can’t tell you how really amazing it has been to talk with you. What a huge, huge thrill it was for me!

MS: Well God Bless you! Thank you!

********************

What an honor it was to speak with a genuine Northeast Ohio television legend. I can’t thank Mr. Sullivan enough for taking the time to speak with me. I know I speak for countless other Northeast Ohioans when I say “Thanks for all the laughs, Supe!”

WAOH TV-29 in Akron / WAX TV-35 in Cleveland (“The Cat”) stuff.

[UPDATE: This article has turned out to be one of the most popular on this site. As such, I feel it’s worth mentioning that WAOH TV-29 ended its life on October 25, 2017. So, as ’17 drew to a close, I felt the need to not only recognize once again the station that was so, so important to me over the years, but to also take an updated and expanded – not to mention better written – overall look at it. You can see that article right here, and believe me, I think it’s FAR superior to the early effort you’re currently looking at.]

In the late-90s and early-2000s, one of the most important channels for me was WAOH TV-29 in Akron / WAX TV-35 in Cleveland, better known as “The Cat” (Cleveland-Akron Television, dig?). Both 29 and 35 were the exact same channel, so I’ll simply identify it as The Cat or WAOH. There’s surprisingly little info about the station on the internet, and someone I was talking to once exhibited some interest in the fact I had recorded a number of programs off the station (believe me when I say I taped a lot of stuff).

What made the channel so special to me was the sheer number of ancient movies, old TV shows and local content they ran. Granted, the majority of the movies and TV shows weren’t actually owned by WAOH, but rather was syndicated content from the America One Network, but the fact remains that The Cat ran things you weren’t going to find on ANY other channel. And all of the local programming gave The Cat a terrific Northeast Ohio flavor.

Furthermore, despite the A1 affiliation, this was really an honest-to-goodness independent station, something that (unknown to me at the time) was becoming increasingly rare around the U.S., and while there was still some old and/or local programming on other channels (for example, WJW had Big Chuck & Lil’ John, and WBNX brought The Ghoul back in 1998), none reveled in it like WAOH.

I discovered the station in the summer of 1997. It was nothing earth-shaking, I was just flipping channels, when I came across an airing of a hugely battered old print of the original 1930 version of The Blue Angel. No one else was running things like that, not regularly on local TV at least, and from then on, I was hooked.

Of course, perhaps the most popular show, and certainly my favorite on the channel, was The Son Of Ghoul Show. Like Ghoulardi and The Ghoul before him, Son Of Ghoul ran old movies, inserted humorous sound effects/drop-ins, performed comedy skits, and read viewer mail. As I’ve mentioned before, SOG started on WOAC TV-67 in 1986, and in 1995 he moved to The Cat.

Those screencaps above are from my two earliest SOG Cat promos. The one on the left is a silent still-card promo that ran for 10 seconds, so what you see is what it was. The one on the right features the standard SOG-pitch: He mentions the show and  the awful movies they run. It’s an all-around promo, and SOG did more than a few for The Cat over the years. Most of them say basically the same thing, but I mean, they’re supposed to.

I actually didn’t discover SOG right away. I mean, I saw the promos, sure, and I had seen bits and pieces of the show here and there, mostly in passing. But it was Halloween 1997 that I actually sat down and watched the show. I stumbled across an airing of the original Night Of The Living Dead, which I had never seen before. Even with all of the sound effects and jokes (it took me a minute to realize what they were doing, but I immediately loved it), I seriously dug the movie, and I became an instant SOG fan. I even wrote him a bunch of letters, and his reading them on the air was always a thing of great excitement. Of course, I was only like 11/12 years old, so I never had much to actually say (and watching my old tapes, I can’t help but cringe a bit).

Today, Son Of Ghoul is still running, and I’m still watching. That screencap above is from the latest promo for the show that I’ve seen. I captured it in 2011, but I think it’s been running since 2009, and I know it’s ran several times since 2011. The reason I say 2009 is because that’s when The Cat became an RTV affiliate, and SOG’s timeslot switched to Saturday evenings at 7:00 PM. The promo is, like the one above, a standard SOG pitch: talking about the awful movies, humorous sound clips, and comedy skits, with the exception that SOG mentions the new timeslot “starting in June,” which was when The Cat became RTV (though I still continue to call it The Cat, and always will). Despite the June mention, this is the only promo I’ve seen the station run for SOG relatively lately. Probably because most of the vast majority of content is RTV’s, and they have their own promos and whatnot. But, you do catch some locally-produced promos here and there. I don’t think they run quite as much as they used to, but there were some WAOH-produced spots for RTV shows, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Speaking of local promos for syndicated content, that sort of thing isn’t new to the station. The screencap on the left is from 1997, the one on the right from 1999. Both are for the western movies that the channel ran every weekday afternoon (and on Saturday afternoons for awhile, and if I recall correctly, occasionally on Sundays, too). Both promos are more or less the same: various scenes from old westerns, while appropriate music plays.

The afternoon Western flick was actually America One’s “Western Theater,” and I loved it. It’s thanks to these films that I became a fan of  westerns. You didn’t tune into this program to see The Shootist, though; these were all old rickety “B-Westerns,” mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. Probably all of them were/are in the public domain. You saw the standards like Roy Rogers, John Wayne’s poverty row films, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard, Rex Bell, etc. etc.

Speaking of films, through America One, The Cat ran a lot of them. This promo is from 1999, and spotlights just how many they played a week. Even back then, the claim of “over 40 films a week” seemed just a bit high to me, but they did play a lot. There was a morning movie that began at 10 or 11 AM, and ran for an hour and a half, the western at 12:30 PM, which also ran for an hour and a half, then the noon movie at 2 PM, which ran for 2 hours. At 8 PM, there was another 2-hour movie. The overnight hours generally featured content from the American Independent Network (AIN), and, if I recall correctly, was two 2-hour films in a row. The weekends were a wildcard. I have a recording of three consecutive westerns from a Saturday afternoon in the late-90s, but that wasn’t always the case. There could be one, maybe two, or maybe none. Sundays generally had less than that or none altogether, and didn’t necessarily have to be a western (I once taped The Tonto Kid, obviously a western, on a Sunday, but my copies of Goliath And The Vampires and Monster From A Prehistoric Planet, clearly not westerns, also came from Sunday airings).

I don’t know, maybe over 40 films a weeks wasn’t so far off after all.

Most of the films were from America One, but there were a few that the station itself seemed to own. Every Halloween, they’d run Night Of The Living Dead. Since none of the A1 branding was present during these annual airings, I’m guessing the station owned its own print. For Christmas Eve, they’d run the 1935 Scrooge and then Beyond Tomorrow back-to-back, commercial-free. I still have a recording of Scrooge, but not Beyond Tomorrow.

A movie that received some actual promotion was their 1999 airing of the infamous Reefer Madness. I taped it, but later taped over it. I don’t recall if it was an A1 presentation or not. A1 films generally weren’t singled out for promos like this, but I don’t know, maybe they thought there was a specific audience for this? They had various clips on-hand for the promo, and the local announcer that did all of The Cat’s promos did the voiceover here, too. Maybe the clips were provided by A1? Either way, I may not have the actual airing, but at least I managed to capture the original promo.

Sprinkled throughout all of these movies were lots of old TV programs. The early mornings typically had old black and white sitcoms before the morning movie, The Cisco Kid once ran before the afternoon western, and Dobie Gillis followed the 2 PM afternoon movie.

At one point, there was a fairly big push for the Dobie Gillis reruns. They were all humorous, such as the one above. There were a couple “Dear Maynard” spots, always featuring someone writing in to Maynard ala Dear Abby, and then Maynard’s “advice” (a clip from the show taken out of context, which was really pretty funny since it was essentially a non-sequitur moment). There were also promos playing up Bob Denver’s then-recent arrest for marijuana, Dobie’s father’s strictness, and Dobie’s falling for every girl under the sun.

Dobie ran until about 1999, and since I had grown accustomed to watching the 4:00 PM weekday airings after school, I found myself missing it once it was gone. TV Land ran episodes now and then, and nowadays you can catch it on MeTV, but those old Cat airings probably mean the most to me. Even today, I still really like the show.

Other shows that appeared on The Cat over the years courtesy of America One or other networks:

One Step Beyond I watched a few times, but it never really grabbed me. Sort of a lower-rent version of The Twilight Zone.

While I like old sitcoms, The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet was never one of my favorites. WAOH’s promo for it, though, was awesome. This was when V-Chips were first being widely introduced, and the gag was that Ozzie was V-Chip-free TV, but all of the clips had words bleeped out as if there was constant swearing in the show. It was a riot. As you can see from that and the Dobie promos, The Cat often put a lot of humor into their spots.

Two more I never liked. Bonanza, I know it’s considered a classic, but I’ve always been a Gunsmoke man. Also, The Beverly Hillbillies has always left me cold.

Still, The Cat did a great job of selling these promos, mostly through humor, and if I already didn’t like them, I probably would have tuned in to check them out.

And of course, Enigma Theater With Edward St. Pe’, which I’ve already written about, aired very late Saturday nights/Sunday mornings on WAOH, though it seems very, very few people remember it nowadays.

I mentioned above the overnight airings being from the American Independent Network. A lot of the same movies as America One were shown, but the prints weren’t the same. AIN even ran some of genuine “big time” movies once in awhile. Once, they played the original 1939 Stagecoach, which I taped. Despite having never seen the film prior, I could tell huge chunks of the movie were cut out; Stagecoach was just way too disjointed, way more than any film widely considered an American classic would be. I later taped over that airing with a unedited version from AMC, and I kinda wish I hadn’t done that, because in retrospect, films of that caliber (i.e. big-time, never-gonna-be-public-domain) weren’t usually shown on The Cat.

This was a fairly minor problem with the daytime programming, but the overnight schedule was notorious (to me, at least) for often being incorrect. It was a crapshoot whether a scheduled movie would actually be run, or an entirely different film instead. Many times, there was a movie listed that I was seriously stoked for, and I’d set the VCR timer, only to be crushed come the morning when I found out something I had zero interest in was played instead.

Rather, a lot of WAOH’s late night programming was often made up of content from who-knows-where. I mean, nothing ever “wrong” or disturbing, but still, waaaay obscure stuff from the far reaches of the U.S. I haven’t always had the greatest sleep patterns, and I recall sometimes stumbling out of bed and watching The Cat when I couldn’t sleep, and wondering “Where did this come from?” Have you ever heard David Cronenberg’s inspiration for Videodrome? When he was a kid living in Canada, late at night his TV could pick up signals from Buffalo, NY, and he’d worry he’d be able to see something he wasn’t meant to. It was the same sort of thing with late night WAOH.

Of course, at the heart of The Cat was the local programming. Son Of Ghoul, sure, but also a lot of stuff that’s been more or less lost to time. A lot of The Cat’s local programming was simple, live call-in shows, with the host or hosts seated in front of a plain black screen and taking phonecalls. Today, the only shows from the old days left besides Son of Ghoul is Steve French Sportstalk and Handy Randy.

Back Talk was exactly that, chiropractic talk. And Senior Talk? Well, that was what it sounds like, too. Back Talk I don’t recall running very long, but Senior Talk ran for a number of years, at least until 2006. It may have been a casualty of the 2009 switch to RTV, I don’t know.

Dining Out With Steve ran for a looong time. I believe it did last until the 2009 switch. Basically, you could call in, talk about local restaurants, and even get gift certificates.

The Hunting And Fishing Show ran for a number of years, and in the summer of 2011 they even tried bringing it back, but it didn’t last very long.

Big Al was very short-lived. It was essentially people performing in a karaoke bar, and hosted by the show’s namesake. I only caught one episode, which featured a bizarre Elvis impersonator that admittedly did sound a lot like The King, but didn’t look much like him at all (despite Al’s constant insisting the guy was “so real it’s scary!” or something to that effect).

I don’t know when Steve French started hosting his WAOH show, but it’s still on, and apparently still pretty popular. I even tried calling in a few weeks back, but I didn’t get through, which is probably a good thing, since I’m by no means a sports expert and the last thing I need is to make an idiot of myself on local TV.

While on the subject of the local call-in shows, SOG hosted a live game show from about 2001 to 2004 or so. Unfortunately, this promo is all I have as far as original recordings go (I did buy some DVDs from SOG himself at the last Ghoulardifest convention). Son of Ghoul’s House Of Fun & Games ran at a time when I actually couldn’t watch The Cat. Y’see, we couldn’t pick it up with the rabbit ears dad decided to use to save money at one point. I wouldn’t even have this promo except I went to grandma’s house one afternoon to tape a movie I particularly wanted back in 2001.

So, that’s my “golden age” of WAOH/WAX, roughly 1997-2001. Like I’ve mentioned, they became an RTV (Retro Television) affiliate in the summer of 2009. Since Son Of Ghoul survived the switch, I was generally okay with it, though I missed some of the old movies or other assorted America One content. Still, RTV was pretty cool. A lot like old school TV Land. A line-up shift in the summer of 2011 took away most of my favorite programs, though there are still a few shows I like, and Wolfman Mac’s Chiller Drive-In on Saturday nights and Off Beat Cinema on Sunday nights is pretty awesome.

To end this post (aka massive article), here’s a few screencaps from locally produced promos for RTV content, which harkens back to the late-90s era I so fondly recall. All of the modern promos are simply scenes/music taken from the opening credits of the respective series, with appropriate logos and voiceover. Unfortunately, no promos for Airwolf or Quincy, M.E. were ever made, and RTV no longer runs them, much to my chagrin.

Neither of these are run anymore. Knight Rider is legit awesome, and I don’t mind The A-Team in small doses. Knight Rider in particular I really miss.

You’d better believe Magnum, P.I. gets two screencaps. Of all the shows that left the RTV schedule in the summer of 2011, this is the one I miss most. I’ve mentioned before what I big fan of the show I am, and while I’ve got the DVDs, it’s still nice to see Magnum being actually aired on TV, even if the broadcasts were a loooong way from DVD quality. As of this writing, no one, at least not in my area, is playing the show, and THAT, my friends, is major uncool.

Highway To Heaven is still being aired on RTV, but Starsky & Hutch is not. I don’t like either show. Starsky & Hutch, in particular, is a show I want to like, I should like, but I really, really don’t like. It’s just never done anything for me.

So, there’s my long, long overview of WAOH TV-29/WAX TV-35. There’s more I could talk about, but man, this post is a beast as it is. It’s not what it used to be, but I’m glad the station is still around, and that they’re still supporting Son of Ghoul. As of this writing, I’m not too big on RTV’s programming line-up (aside from Wolfman Mac & Off Beat Cinema), but if RTV keeps WAOH/WAX alive, I’m all for it.

Better to have some semblance of The Cat than none at all, right?