http://www.seemagazine.com/article/news ... tside0416/
Local TV in the 1960s was low-rent and had low entertainment value, but it was Edmonton
Published April 16, 2009 by Maurice Tougas in Comment
As an avid, maybe even excessive TV viewer, I do not miss the old days of the two-channel universe. Today’s TV is so far superior in both quality and quantity to the TV of my youth, it hardly seems like the same medium.
But there is one aspect of olden-days TV that outdoes anything we have today: local content. Aside from newscasts, there is no local content anymore.
Thanks to the money-saving homogenization of television and the ubiquity of Sniffles and Simpsons reruns, local TV has been wiped clean of every last vestige of individual personality.
Remember a station called CFRN? It’s still there, sort of, but now it’s called CTV Edmonton, which looks exactly the same as CTV Anywhere. Remember CITV? It’s still around too, but now it’s called Global, which looks exactly the same as Global Anyplace.
Edmonton today has four local stations, but my guess is the four combined don’t produce as much local TV as CFRN did in the 1960s. For that entire decade, Edmonton was a two-station town: CFRN (born in 1954) and CBXT (1961). It took until 1974 to get a new local station (CITV).
From a kids’ point of view, however, there was only one channel: CFRN, which produced hours of local TV. Most of it was aimed directly at kids, and even the stuff that wasn’t was still happily juvenile.
Every kid in Edmonton watched CFRN’s local programs, and the favourite of mini-Edmontonians was an afternoon show called Popcorn Playhouse, 90 minutes of goofiness broadcast every weekday.
How big was Popcorn Playhouse? Let me put it this way. Popcorn Playhouse was to Edmonton kids what The Krusty the Klown Show is to Springfield kids. At 4 p.m., Edmonton kids would gather around the TV and turn on Channel 3, just the way Bart and Lisa tune in Channel 6. Instead of a chain-smoking clown, we had a sly, funny host named Klondike Eric. And while Krusty has Sideshow Mel (or Bob), Klondike Eric had Muskeg Moose, a ratty-looking papier-mâché moose’s head that hung on the wall. Instead of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, we had Popeye.
Popcorn Playhouse was broadcast in front of a live audience of antsy kids from a faux log cabin. Every kid in attendance got some face time in a one-on-one interview with Klondike Eric. There were other hosts from time to time (one guy reminded me of a terrified substitute teacher in front of an unruly class) but Klondike Eric was the man. The interviews with the kids were hardly in-depth — name, age, school, likes, dislikes, then onto the next kid — but you were ON TELEVISION!
Popcorn Playhouse was the biggest kids’ show on CFRN, but not the only one. Saturdays featured two other “classic” programs: Kiddies on Kamera and Kids’ Bids. Kiddies on Kamera, most often hosted by avuncular longtime CFRN staffer Ed Kay, was a talent show featuring local kids. I’m sure many Edmonton kids have fond memories of appearing on Kiddies on Kamera, but it was not exactly a showcase of cutting-edge talent, consisting as it did mostly of baton-twirling and tapdancing.
A better, if somewhat weirder, show was Kids Bids. The show featured a young audience bidding on a variety of toys, using empty bags of Old Dutch potato chips as their monetary units.
The show was hosted by real auctioneers, an older couple named the O’Haras, who didn’t cut the kids any slack. They would go full out with that incomprehensible speedspeak of the auctioneer, while baffled kids tentatively raised their hands to bid on items.
I’m trying to picture exactly what the appeal of this program was, and I’m coming up with nothing. But we watched it nonetheless.
Perhaps the best of all CFRN programs was one that wasn’t aimed directly at kids, but had a major young audience all the same. I guess the best way to describe The Noon Show was to say that it was a variety program. The hosts, a rotation that included Ed Kay and a lanky fellow named Norris McLean, wore loud Hawaiian shirts and goofy hats, indicating that The Noon Show was not to be taken too seriously.
There was even a house band, the legendary Gaby Haas and The Barn Dance Gang, who played just the kind of music you’d expect from a band named Gaby Haas and The Barn Dance Gang. For kids, the highlight was the daily airing of The Three Stooges. Inspired by the Stooges, we would meet on the playground and promptly poke each other’s eyes.
The CBC didn’t contribute much as far as I can recall, although I do have a vivid recollection of CBC suppertime news parading the participants in the Miss Nude Edmonton Pageant sometime in the 1970s, just as they would appear in the pageant — nude. Does anyone else remember this, or was it just my fevered teenage brain at work?
Alas, aside from hours of news, locally made TV is no more.
I’m not saying Popcorn Playhouse was brilliant television, or that Kiddies on Kamera was anything more than a low-rent showcase of modestly talented children, or that either show would hold the attention of today’s short-attention-span generation.
But as bad as it was, and as cheap as it was, it was a part of Edmonton. It was ours.
mauricetougas@live.com
Comments: 1
sginther7 wrote:
Even after all these years Popcorn Playhouse comes up in a conversation between us mature folks. I was part of the show a few times, I also was one that cried when Idid not dig a nugget out of the sand box. That show bring so many memories, especially when you have a run in with someone who has also been in the show, then you try to remember if you were on the same episode. Besides what a way to get excited when you go for a taping of a show, then you to see yourself on TV. Remembering having 1 TV was special. I would have loved to see myself in color, LOL
Can you imagine if we had that show again? the family dynamic have changed so much, that if Eric Neville would ask a3-8 years old kid today what they what to be when they grow up. The answer won't be like it was in the 60's they would want to be fire truck( remember some of those answers) today they would probalby want to grow up to be drug dealer (i know went to extreme) but this would not surprise me. Wouldn't it be nice to have Popcorn Playhouse come out of the archives at CFRN, so we could share the moment with our children, or even grand children for some .... not me (thank goodness). Saturday morning would be a great time for reruns.
Thank you SEE for the great memory.
Skg