“Uncle Al” Lewis passed away this weekend. I don’t, honestly, remember much about the show, but I remember liking it and I remember doing “the twist” in front of the TV when they had the kids dancing. I grew up in Richmond, on the Indiana/Ohio border, so I got “Uncle Al” out of Cincinnati and “Cowboy Bob” out of Indianapolis.
According to Wikipedia “The [Uncle Al Show] ran an estimated 15,000 episodes, with an estimated 440,000 children having appeared on the show throughout it’s run.” Not a bad life’s work. Rest in peace, Uncle Al.
Yeah…and don’t forget Wendy…
I wanted to be on that show soooooo bad.
Our kids don’t know what they are missing by having kids shows available 24/7-and especially not having any locally-based kids programming.
Did the twist many a morning.
The guy in the cubicle across from me was on the show once in the late 70s. He did the twist for me. Hoo boy. Those were the days, eh?
I was looking at the “I was on the Uncle Al show” Facebook page and had completely forgotten about this one: “Alacazam one, alacazam two, alacazam three, and poof you’re gone!”
I remember them both, but don’t remember details either. Just good feelings about being a kid :-)
Just another chunk of my childhood slippin by. Yeah, we got both Cincy and Indy TV — but Indy only after we got the do-hinky that turned the antennae towards Indy — remember that jerking whirring sound…
I’m sorry to hear this. We no longer get WCPO on our cable system, so I was not aware of Al Lewis’ death.
Never went on the show, but I knew people who did. I remember Captain Wendy. Wasn’t she married to Uncle Al? As kids we also thought that Cowboy Bob and Janie were married.
I remember that on Uncle Al they were always making ice cream floats and calling them brown, red, or purple cows depending on the flavor of Barq’s that they used.
Hoosier 1-Yes the rotar is a big part of my t.v. memories!!
My parents have had cable for over 20 years now-but I still find myself on occasion trying to walk over to the spot where the rotar box was…to turn the direction to Dayton or Cincy…
Ours had stickers on it that marked the best position for reception of each channel…
O.k., now I feel old. I’m pretty sure I started coming around your house before your parents had cable.
Did your antenna need to be any taller to get reception in the valley?
I should never have posted that I remember before anybody had a TV set! The Masson bloggers are a young set of people.
People in PA tell me that that’s where cable TV started .They needed cable from the very beginning of TV broadcasts because TV signals go in straight lines and won’t go around hills.
The big push to cable TV came around 1982.That’s when many new cable stations began starting up,such as the Weather Channel.
I had a roommate in college from Chardon, Ohio who told me it was the first town with cable because its inventor was from there. A bit of wikipedia searching makes me doubt this claim.
John Walson of Pennsylvania seems to have implemented the first community antenna television system in 1948.
I had a teacher at IU who looked at some parallels between implementation of technology. The comparison I recall was to the effect that cable:broadcast as railroad:canal. Both cable and railroads originated as supplemental appendages to the more developed technology of canals and broadcast but ultimately came to largely replace them.
CATV History
I know this sounds untrue, but my childhood best friend’s family had cable sometime in the late 70’s, I think. They got it because it was difficult for them to get local stations, even with an antenna. I know that the primary reason many people I knew ended up getting cable was to receive local stations from all three of the markets that served our area (Dayton, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis) without having to have a giant antenna and a rotor. Getting HBO, Lifetime, MTV, etc. seemed to be a secondary reason, IIRC.
As our cable service has “matured,” it has removed several local channels that it doesn’t want to carry from the system. Comcast is now hinting that it may remove the Dayton stations allegedly due to the FCC moving Richmond into the Indianapolis TV market.
I don’t remember not having cable. Early on, we had 3 ABC stations (2, 6, & 12); 3 CBS stations (7,8, & 9) and 3 NBC stations (5, 12, & 13) two independent stations (4 & 11). I can’t remember if both 3 & 10 were PBS stations or what. The network stations were one each out of Indy, Cincinnati, and Dayton. Four was out of Indy. And 11 was Channel 19, WXIX out of Cincy. I remember when I was eight or nine being pretty excited to figure out that “XIX” was the roman numeral for “19.” (And even more excited when Mom confessed that that hadn’t ever occurred to her.)
We had cable in Bloomington in the early 70s. Indianapolis and Louisville channels, and maybe WGN.
After moving to Indy it was about ten years before we got cable again, the history of cable in Indianapolis being like Chinatown with “wire” replacing “water”.
Originally, CATV broadcast multiple local stations because of lack of other content.
Today, local stations are the main impetus behind one not getting local stations from multiple markets, as they think it is diluting their market share (correctly, I’d imagine).
Besides, there is more content available than there is bandwidth (or money) to show today. Too much competition.
DR, I remember WTTV, WGN, WOR (NY!), WTBS, the Indy stations, maybe one Louisville station, the two PBS stations (WFYI – Indy and WTIU – Bloomington)and HBO during the mid-70s in Bloomington. Cubs, Braves and Mets fans rejoiced! It also heralded the rise of the Turner Broadcasting Network empire.
By 1978-9 the floodgates began to open…
I agree that the Indy licensing process was as influence-driven, pandered peddling as local politics gets around here. Still, see some of the effects today. Can’t blame it on the Democrats, though. Uh-uhh.
Yeah, Doug, dad put up a 50 ft tower to get the antenna high enough to get out of the valley.
Cable came through our neighborhood in the late ’70’s. Mom and dad signed up for it. They tore up our front yard getting it through-as we had underground utilities. The also tore up the side yard to get to the house. It was fall. They said they would fix the yard, and never did. Dad finally straightened out the mess.
In the spring they came to hook us up. They could not find the cable leading to our house and wanted to tear up the yard again. Dad told them what they could do with their equipment!
Finally in the ’90’s the antenna needed major work and mom and dad went for cable. The tower was removed shortly thereafter.
Damn…never made the connection! Spent many a day watching old Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, etc. on that channel!
Doug– I made the same WXIX connection maybe at eight or nine. Don’t know how Andy misses the connection.
That old antenna was something. I climbed within a few feet of the top once and it was very scary. I was probably 13 or 14 at the time.
I have one of those old antennas rusting in my backyard now that I’ll have to take down one of these days. We then transitioned thru the giant dish that was here when we moved in, to now two DirecTV dishes and one satellite internet dish on the roof. I think one more dish up there and people will start asking questions.
I grew up in Liberty. We could get both Cincinnati and Indianapolis stations too. Cincinnati seemed to come in in better. I loved Uncle Al & Captain Wendy. My father was on the show as a child. I was crushed when I told my husband the sad news of his death and he had to use google to figure out who Uncle Al was. He just doesn’t know what he missed growing up in the wrong parts of the state (Boonville and W. Lafayette.)
Television spread very fast when smaller cities such as Champaign-Urbana got their own local station.Channel 3 WCIA Champaign, started in 1954 and then everybody got a TV and even those who had little money somehow managed to bring one home,and it all happened in very short order.
From the 50s to the cable era,TV was marked with roof antennas having to be swung toward the TV signal to pull in the 3 major networks: WCIA (Champaign-Urbana) CBS and Danville, ABC (straight east) and Decatur ( SW) for NBC.Terre Haute also had a station (SE) ,but was a duplicated network.. At first WCIA chose TV programming from all 3 networks,but all 3 networks became wholly available in short order.If you could pull in all 3 networks,you had everything available.
PBS TV also started in the 50s and was called ‘educational TV’,and in that era PBS was like university extension courses.I remember Mr. Miller,’an old guy’ (probably in 50s) with short, curly, white hair doing math problems and equations on a portable blackboard.That was the morning image of PBS in my high school days.Before long began the era of Captain Kangaroo,and PBS became known for children’s programming.
In 1950 nobody had a TV but by 1960 everyone had one.
Tom-I get the connection with WXIX; just never noticed it before Doug pointed it out.
Of course I’m the same person who freaked out when “22 Alive!” news came on one day-and I thought they were commenting on the number of Americans still alive beinbg held captive in Iran. Mom had to point out to me that she was watching news on the Dayton channel we rarely watched and that “22 Alive!” was their slogan;-)
Whew, Rev.AJB. Thank goodness you missed out on a certain Orson Welles’ radio broadcast.
Correction: Captain Kangaroo was a CBS (not PBS)program from 1955-1984. From 1986-1993 Captain Kangaroo re-appeared as PBS programming.
Varangianguard-I think I would have figured it out quickly on my own when I realized they weren’t talking much about the hostage situation. It was the graphic that caught my eye more than anything…
lol
I always thought Uncle Al was kind of the low-rent local version of Captain Kangaroo. Little did I know (via wikipedia) that CBS tried to buy Uncle Al as their national kids show, and Al’s station wouldn’t let him go. It was in the subsequent search for an Uncle Al of their own that CBS found the Captain.
I’m showing my age here, there used to be a kid’s program on WHIO (channel 7 out of Dayton), that I remember watching in the early 60’s when I was growing up in Union City. I think it was called Uncle Orrie or something like that. BTW this early DST sucks, sunrise will occur here in Louisville at 8:05 a.m. Sunday after the time change. That’s five minutes later than the latest sunrise in Louisville at the Winter Solstice, when the sunrise reaches its apex on January 8, the sunrise occurs on January 8 at 8:00 a.m. before starting back. I guess I’m just grumpy due to the fact that we’re working 7 days a week now that we’re in tax season. It would have been nice to get that extra hour this Sunday.
I also grew up in Richmond, Indiana, and watched the Uncle Al show…, it seems that my childhood memories are filled with those from TV’s Past… Here’s to Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Rogers, Uncle Al, Cowboy Bob and Janie for making my toddler-time wonderful!! I still can’t believe i was able to play with Yard-Darts without supervision!! :)