Retro: Little Rock Tuesday, May 22, 1979

[bpatrick]

Someone recently asked for some retros from the
Little Rock/Shreveport/Monroe area; sorry, I don't
have any Arkansas editions of TV Guide, so this is
the best I can do (I'm always on the lookout for
Oklahoma editions from 1977-80, if anyone has any
they'd like to get rid of). From The Arkansas Gazette:

KETS Ch. 2 (PBS)

2:30 Villa Alegre
3 PM Electric Company
3:30 Over Easy
4 PM Lilias, Yoga And You
4:30 Studio See
5 PM Sesame Street
6 PM Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
6:30 MacNeil/Lehrer Report
7 PM Wodehouse Playhouse
7:30 Walking Tour Of Sesame Street
8 PM Lewis Mumford
9:30 Arkansas Children's Hospital
10 PM Dick Cavett
10:30 Captioned ABC News
11 PM Principles Of Real Estate
sign off 12 M

KARK Ch. 4 (NBC)

6:15 Devotions
6:30 Lone Ranger
7 AM Today
9 AM Card Sharks
9:30 Tic Tac Dough
10 AM High Rollers
10:30 Wheel Of Fortune
11 AM Password Plus
11:30 Hollywood Squares
12 N Little Rock Today
12:30 Days Of Our Lives
1:30 The Doctors
2 PM Another World
3:30 Bewitched
4 PM Six Million Dollar Man
5 PM News
5:30 NBC News (Chancellor/Brinkley)
6 PM News
6:30 Brady Bunch
7 PM Greatest Heroes Of The Bible:
"Sodom And Gomorrah"
8 PM NBC Movie: "A Man Called Intrepid"
(conclusion)
10 PM News
10:30 Tonight Show
12 M Tomorrow
1 AM 700 Club

KATV Ch. 7 (ABC)

6 AM PTL Club
7 AM Good Morning America
8 AM Good Morning Arkansas
8:30 Ironside
9:30 Edge Of Night
10 AM Laverne & Shirley
10:30 Family Feud
11 AM $20,000 Pyramid
11:30 Ryan's Hope
12 N All My Children
1 PM One Life To Live
2 PM General Hospital
3 PM Bozo's Big Top
3:30 Our Gang Comedies
4 PM Gilligan's Island
4:30 Andy Griffith
5 PM ABC News (Reynolds/Jennings/
Robinson)
5:30 News
6:30 Mary Tyler Moore
7 PM Happy Days
7:30 Laverne & Shirley
8 PM Three's Company
8:30 Taxi
9 PM Helen Reddy Special
10 PM News
10:30 Gunsmoke
11:30 ABC Movie: "The Friends Of
Eddie Coyle"

KTHV Ch. 11 (CBS)

6 AM CBS News (Bob Schieffer)
7 AM Captain Kangaroo
8 AM Dinah!
9 AM Donahue
10 AM Price Is Right
11 AM Young And The Restless
11:30 Search For Tomorrow
12 N News
12:30 As The World Turns
1:30 Guiding Light
2:30 M*A*S*H
3 PM Love Of Life
3:30 Little Rascals
4 PM Popeye
4:30 Get Smart
5 PM Carol Burnett & Friends
5:30 CBS News (Walter Cronkite)
6 PM News
6:30 Newlywed Game
7 PM The Paper Chase
8 PM CBS Special: "Blind Ambition"
(Part 3)
10 PM News
10:30 Barnaby Jones
11:40 CBS Movie: "Woman In The
Shadows"

KTVT Ch. 11 Dallas/Ft. Worth (Ind.)

6:35 Meditations
6:40 News
7 AM Slam Bang Theater
8 AM Comedy Capers
8:30 Dusty's Treehouse
9 AM Leave It To Beaver
9:30 That Girl
10 AM The FBI
11 AM Ironside
12 N News
12:30 Cartoon Carnival
1 PM Movie: "House Of Seven Hawks"
3 PM Popeye & Friends
3:30 Battle Of The Planets
4 PM Krofft Superstars
4:30 Gilligan's Island
5 PM I Love Lucy
5:30 Dick Van Dyke
6 PM Bewitched
6:30 I Dream Of Jeannie
7 PM Gunsmoke
8 PM Mary Tyler Moore
8:30 Bob Newhart
9 PM Movie: "Open Season"
10 PM News
10:15 Movie continues
11 PM Movie: "To Kill A Clown"
1 AM News And Meditations

WTCG (WPCH) Ch. 17 Atlanta (Ind.)

6 AM Three Stooges/Little Rascals
7 AM Leave It To Beaver
7:30 Discovery (yes, the 1962-71 ABC
series)
8 AM The Lucy Show
8:30 Green Acres
9 AM Movie: "My Friend Irma" (movie debut
of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis)
10:55 News
11:10 Movie: "Back Street"
1:30 I Love Lucy
2 PM Rebop
2:30 Flintstones
3 PM Space Giants
3:30 Gilligan's Island
4 PM I Dream Of Jeannie
4:30 The Lucy Show
5 PM Andy Griffith
5:30 My Three Sons
6 PM Carol Burnett & Friends
6:30 Baseball: Braves-Astros
9 PM America (time approximate)
10 PM Hogan's Heroes
10:30 Movie: "The Day Of The Triffids"
12:30 Braves Replay

KXTX Ch. 39 Dallas/Ft. Worth (Ind.)

6 AM Ross Bagley Show
7 AM 700 Club
8:30 Romper Room
9 AM Movie: "Goodbye My Fancy" (stars
Robert Young, who's coming up at...)
11 AM Marcus Welby, M.D.
12 N Big Valley
1 PM The Lucy Show
1:30 Andy Griffith
2 PM Father Knows Best
2:30 Popeye & Bugs Hour
3:30 Flintstones
4 PM Brady Bunch
4:30 Partridge Family
5 PM Star Trek
6 PM Hogan's Heroes
6:30 Chico & The Man
7 PM Get Smart
7:30 Andy Griffith
8 PM 700 Club
9:30 Zola Levitt Live
10 PM Practical Christian Living
10:30 At Home With The Bible
11 PM Charisma
11:30 Life Of Riley (Bendix)

 

[BoscoGoldBear]

KTVT Ch. 11 Dallas/Ft. Worth (Ind.)

7 AM Slam Bang Theater
8 AM Comedy Capers
8:30 Dusty's Treehouse

12:30 Cartoon Carnival

WTCG (WPCH) Ch. 17 Atlanta (Ind.)

3 PM Space Giants

Is there anyone online who can describe KTVT's Slam Bang Theater, Comedy Capers and Dusty's Treehouse, plus WTCG's (best known as TBS back in the day) Space Giants? Specifically, are there any Hanna-Barbera connections to any of these programs? I'm thinking Space Ghost, Birdman, The Herculoids, Jonny Quest, etc.

 

[only1moore]

I noticed KATV airing "Our Gang" and KTHV airing "Little Rascals" at the same time, 3:30PM. Thats unheard of.

 

[bpatrick]

Turner didn't own the Hanna-Barbera library at
the time; "Space Giants" was a live-action Japanese
show (he was big on those, like "Ultraman").

Likewise, "Dusty's Treehouse" was a live-action show
hosted by somebody named Stu Rosen; it was syndicated.

I lived in Dallas/Ft. Worth for three years and never watched
"Slam Bang Theatre" and only about two minutes of "Comedy
Capers." I think the latter show had some of the pre-'48
Warner Brothers cartoons; maybe somebody else who's lived
in the Metroplex can answer that part of the question more
completely.

 

[DToTheJ]

I noticed KATV airing "Our Gang" and KTHV airing "Little Rascals" at the same time, 3:30PM. Thats unheard of.

Kinda like how those two stations in Dallas programmed Popeye at the same hour.

By the way, I wonder why the Dallas stations were carried in this particular publication. Were these channels carried on cable in Arkansas back then?

 

[bpatrick]

They were, which is why they're included here.
It is unusual to see these particular competitive
situations. I do know that with the Popeyes,
KTVT carried the Paramount/Famous Studios ones,
while KXTX carried the circa-early-'60s from King
Features. KXTX also carried the post-'48 Warner
Brothers cartoons not playing on "The Bugs Bunny/
Road Runner Show" on CBS.

And as for the Little Rascals/Our Gang: KATV would
have had the circa-early-'40s from MGM that included
Robert Blake, using his real name, Mickey Gubitosi, while
KTHV would have had the King World-distributed ones,
mainly from the '30s, that prominently feature Spanky,
Alfalfa, Darla, Stymie, and Buckwheat.

 

[Stanislav]

And as for the Little Rascals/Our Gang: KATV would
have had the circa-early-'40s from MGM that included
Robert Blake, using his real name, Mickey Gubitosi, while
KTHV would have had the King World-distributed ones,
mainly from the '30s, that prominently feature Spanky,
Alfalfa, Darla, Stymie, and Buckwheat.

In other words, KTHV got the good stuff, and KATV got stuck with the crap...

I grew up watching that King World package (the Roach talkies), and never even saw any of the MGMs until much later. I couldn't believe how bad they were. Like little morality plays/educational films with some half-hearted humor thrown in almost as an afterthought. And acting that went beyond bad, beyond broad, beyond chewing the scenery to swallowing and digesting same. Sad, too, to see Spanky in some of those, now something like 13 or 14 and twice the size (but still wearing that little beanie cap), and obviously just going through the motions with no heart left in his performances at all.

 

[bpatrick]

I have to agree. Watching Spanky in those
'40s "Our Gang"s is like watching Jerry Mathers
in the last two seasons of "Leave It To Beaver"--
a fat, clunky kid whose natural acting ability has
dried up.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

But at least the later seasons of Beaver had the "scary Revue tag"
at the end!

Speaking of--and as good a place as any to do what we do best, that is,
sidetrack a thread--it's been established that Gomalco Productions (the
earlier seasons of Beav) was part George Gobel ("Go"). But who was "mal"?

And in the later seasons, was there a "Kay" and a "ro" that made up Kayro
Productions? Wives or kids of creators/producers Connelly and Mosher?

 

[wbhist]

Speaking of--and as good a place as any to do what we do best, that is, sidetrack a thread--it's been established that Gomalco Productions (the earlier seasons of Beav) was part George Gobel ("Go"). But who was "mal"?

And in the later seasons, was there a "Kay" and a "ro" that made up Kayro Productions? Wives or kids of creators/producers Connelly and Mosher?

Don't forget that by the time Mr. Connelly and Mr. Mosher mounted The Munsters in 1964, Revue had become Universal TV - and Kayro Productions became Kayro-Vue. Evidently the "Vue" was a reference to the old Revue.

Gomalco Productions, however, was owned by comedian George Gobel (as you noted) and his agent David O'Malley (Gomalco = Gobel-O'Malley Company). (Leave It to Beaver, in its early years, was co-owned by Connelly/Mosher, Gobel and O'Malley.) Gomalco was also the producer of Mr. Gobel's 1950's variety show. It was all tied in to MCA, which represented Mr. Gobel as well as many of Beaver's writers. Gobel made millions off the repeats of Beaver. As for the ultimate Kayro (later Kayro-Vue), that company was initially named after Connelly and Mosher's respective wives (Kathryn [a.k.a. Kay] and Rose).

There's another question, though: What in the world did Sto-Rev Company (the production firm set up to produce McHale's Navy, which also sprung from Revue/Universal) signify?

 

[bpatrick]

I have no idea what "Sto-Rev" stood for, unless
the "Rev" stood for "Revue."

But re Kayro, Connelly and Mosher produced the
1961-62 animated show "Calvin And The Colonel"
under the Kayro banner. They had been writers
on "Amos 'n' Andy" before creating "Beaver"; those
of us with long memories know that Calvin and the
Colonel were a bear and a fox, a thinly-disguised
Andy and the Kingfish. I remember that the show
wasn't all that terrible, but I think the "Amos 'n'
Andy" connection probably kept it out of syndication
and/or network Saturday-morning reruns. (The ratings
weren't all that great; it was pulled almost immediately
from its original Tuesday 8:30 slot, then resurfaced in
January 1962 on Saturdays at 7:30 to play out its run.)
I keep thinking "The Munsters" was also a Kayro production.

 

[wbhist]

I keep thinking "The Munsters" was also a Kayro production.

Actually, as I said, by the time The Munsters came on the air, it was Kayro-Vue.

 

[bpatrick]

I apologize for overlooking that; you did say it.

I forgot to mention that when "Calvin And The
Colonel" aired on Saturdays, it was on an hour
before "Beaver" (8:30 ET), giving Connelly and
Mosher half of a two-hour kid-oriented block that,
in hindsight, seems like a precursor of TGIF:

7 PM Beany And Cecil
7:30 Calvin And The Colonel
8 PM Room For One More
8:30 Leave It To Beaver

 

[rwells2265]

By the way, I wonder why the Dallas stations were carried in this particular publication. Were these channels carried on cable in Arkansas back then?

As BPatrick noted, they were. Most cable systems in Arkansas, save for the eastern part (near Memphis) carried 'em. I lived in Arkansas from 1982-1990 ... Hot Springs, Jonesboro, N. Little Rock and finally Pine Bluff. All except Jonesboro had both KXTX-39 (which at the time was owned by Pat Robertson) and KTVT-11. Hot Springs, in fact, also carried the DFW ABC affil WFAA-8 overnights when they used to show movies.

KTVT's carriage in Arkansas was dealt a death blow in July 1983 when Little Rock's first indie KLRT channel 16 signed on. Most of the CATV systems dropped KTVT and replaced it with KLRT. KXTX, meanwhile, survived. The Arkansas Edition TVGs had 'em as white bullets - "11D" and "39D"

--Russell

 

[bpatrick]

And there's no chance of KTVT getting back on cable,
since it's now a CBS o&o; KTHV, for one, could block
it. And since KXTX is a Spanish-language channel, is
it still on Arkansas cable systems?