SO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
So anyway, we went on the air, Saturdays at noon. It was a kids show, we did sort of cartoon “konk on the head” kind of humor. For the first year I chose to go with the Universal horror package, Frankenstein, Dracula etc. to keep it kid friendly.
After a few months, the Elvira movie at 11pm on Saturday was ending. So they asked could we do a second show, as more of a late night show? With scarier movies.
Umm…sure. How do you say no to another TV show where you can do whatever you want?
So initially we did two shows each week. Two sets of jokes. For kids and then for the older crowd at 11pm.
Exhausting.
We realized after a while, that it wasn’t so much just kids watching at noon. There were lots of adults. And many kids were watching at 11pm, often on video. So we tried to average it all out and make it funny for everybody.
And we got tons of mail. Initially there were so few, I read them all on air. As it went on, there were more and more, so many I couldn’t fit them all in. I generally wrote back and sent a picture when people asked. Years later, when we would meet with fans, they would have letters and things I sent them in their hands. And would tell me how much that meant to them. And to me, I had just been a guy making jokes as a movie host. But it made a lot of difference to the viewers.
Anyhow, it could not go on twice a week. So we started doing one show of joke segments, with a separate open and close for each different show. Seemed to work.
Eventually the noon show was stopped to put something else in there, and it was just as well. So now we were actual late night horror hosts.
The show did well right away. A few years later the station got sold. The new folks wanted to cancel us. I said it on the air and got 1000 letters from viewers that week. I dumped them on the new boss’ desk and showed him the ratings. He said, “Oh, I didn’t know people here liked it.”
A few years later it was cancelled by new um… managers ( I am being nice), even though it still pulled good ratings. It was the top rated show after midnight for the month they cancelled it.
We were immediately offered a spot on a local cable channel called BLAB TV. The owner of the channel loved the show, and watched it with his kids. So we were on live every Friday. And we were the most watched thing on that channel. Eventually, it was too exhausting. And we stopped. (Doing the live show is probably another article.)
Then back at the Fox station, they told me the word had come down from corporate that the station was supposed to be producing a live show. Where was the one they were supposed to produce? Could I think of something? They had wanted me to do a kids show, which I was not excited about. I said I could have a Dr. Gruesome show on it 10 days. They said “Do it.”
And it was on for a few more years until 1996. That’s probably the era most people remember it from.
Why did we finally stop that time? It was my choice. Matt was no longer working at the station, so we did it in the evenings after work. Then they said, “Oh we want it to continue, but it will have to run from 3am to 5 am on Saturday.”
It was a lot of work for 3am. I set up the whole production. I edited it myself. Maybe I was not appreciating what we had.
We had been in parades. We had been featured at the fairgrounds. We even did a show “live” from the fair. (Which side show attraction was Skeetr’s parent?) People walked up and asked me “Are you the real ones from TV?” “Um yes,… like there would be more that two people walking around like this?” We had made appearances. We had done 270+ shows.
So that was it. We were done.
Until it came back again…..