Clowning Around With Joy and Hamburgers on TV

Clowning Around With Joy and Hamburgers on TV was Originally Posted on March 30, 2013 by lavarock

What a title, yet when I’m done, you will see how the title fits the content.

Speaking of content, did you know that if you took all of the interesting tidbits from all of my blogs and printed them out, you could probably fill an index card or two? Try it!

Many, many years ago, ther were two “air personalities” who were quite popular in the Washington DC area. One was Ed Walker (who incidentally was blind) and Willard Scott (yes, the same one from NBC TV). Together they hosted a radio show called the “Joy Boys”. With todays “shock jocks” and “morning zoos” the Joy Boy humor seems a bit dated, still at its time, it was THE thing to listen to.

There is a page dedicated to their show here: http://www.thejoyboys.com

However, I wanted to talk a bit about Willard. I met him a few times, the first when I was on his TV show with my sister. Willard hosted a local show called “Bozo the Clown”. Yes, Willard was one of the national Bozo characters.

As we went through backstage at the station, there was a cabinet of sorts and sitting on top was an original Jim Henson Muppet used to sell Wilkins Coffee”.

Later, Willard went on to star as the first Ronald McDonald, wearing what looked like a tray on his head.

For more info on the history of Ronald McDonald: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McDonald

So many many years later I was a volunteer with a Public TV’s production called “The Great TV Auction” which people used to think involved auctioning off TV’s on TV. What is was is the original home shopping network with an auction rather than a sale and with public TV and not a commercial TV station.

The public TV stations would get donations of items, then auction them off on their station to the highest bidder. The donor got a mention (which was really a commercial), the winner of the auction got a great deal and the station got the money. It was a win-win-win and the FCC (who normally would not allow “commercials” on public TV), looked the other way because the public felt it was a viable fundraising activity that the public approved of.

Willard came to host one year and I reminded him of an incident I caused on one of his Bozo shows (no, I was not the guy who punched him).

I have a video somewhere of me auctioning off items on public TV and perhaps I’ll convert it to digital at some point, but in the meantime I searched in vain on Youtube in case someone had already posted a video of the version of the Great TV Auction we did in Washington. I did not find it, but I did find a similar promo for the Blue Ridge chain of stations in a different part of Virgina. It brought a shiver to me when I saw one station mentioned in the promo, WSBN in Norton. They have changed the call letters, because it used to be WSVN channel 47. I know this piece of trivia because I helped build the station.

The call letters reminded people (We are Southwest Virginia Norton – WSVN). At the time, the station received video tapes from Roanoke and were queued up and played a week after they appeared on the Roanoke station.

Years later, after the auctions and when things settled down, I worked for Hewlett Packard in Maryland. At one time I had to call a co-worker in Roanoke whose last name was Rexrode. I told Gary that I helped his father build the Norton station. What a coincidence!

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-12776170.html

While these items are exciting to me, in the world of blogging I’m sure some will yawn and say “yeah, but it’s not all that interesting in the scheme of things” and they would be right. However, I always find it interesting how a simple fact sometimes has a chain of interrelated stories all tied together.