Q. Who are
you, and why do you do this?
A. My name
is Ed Golick. As a baby boomer growing up during the Golden Age of Television, I
have always had an interest in the TV programs and pop culture of my youth. I
created detroitkidshow.com in 2002 because at the time there were no books
dealing with the history of television in Detroit. And what little information I
found on the World Wide Web was inaccurate. A year earlier, after reading a
couple of how-to books and asking my computer guru a lot of questions, I built
my first computer. So I figured, why not build a website honoring my childhood
TV heroes? I bought a couple of web design books, and a few months later, detroitkidshow.com
was born.
Early on, I was very lucky to connect with Tim Kiska, who at
the time was
writing his book From Soupy to Nuts! A History of Detroit Television. He was looking for
information on local kids TV host Sagebrush Shorty, and my name turned up on an
Internet search. I had just purchased a good portion of Sage’s estate, and was
happy to share my memorabilia with him. Tim has opened up a lot of doors for me
that would have otherwise remained closed. He is my mentor and a good friend.
Q. I
appeared with my Boy Scout Troop on Milky’s Party Time. Can you tell me
where I can get a copy of the show?
A. Over
the years I have received scores of emails asking me where to get copies of old
Detroit TV programs. The sad fact is, they don’t exist. When the Ampex VRX-100
videotape machine was introduced in 1956, it was pitched to local TV stations as
a way to time shift their local programming. Before the invention of videotape,
a show like Milky’s Party Time would air live. With videotape, a
station could record a handful of shows in one day, and air them whenever they
wanted to, saving time and money.
In 1959, a one-hour reel of blank Ampex tape cost $271.00.
Each tape came with a log sheet, numbered from one to twenty five. The practice
was to erase the tape and use it again for another program. When the tape was
used twenty five times, it was discarded. No thought was ever given to archiving
programs. Even NBC erased the first ten years of Johnny Carson’s Tonight
Show.
Another issue was space. A one-hour reel of Ampex 2” Quad
videotape is wound on a 12-½ inch aluminum reel. Tape, reel and storage box
weighed in at about 12.2 pounds. If CKLW had decided to save just one year of
Bozo shows, they would have filled a room, floor to ceiling, 9’x9’x 8’
tall. That’s a lot of Bozo!
A few examples of old local Detroit TV have survived, usually
snuck out the back door by a station employee or rescued from the trash. But for
the most part, the local programming that you remember is gone forever.
Q. Hey,
how come (insert your favorite local TV celebrity here) isn’t on your web
site?
A. Over
the years, TV stations have discarded most of their archives, making research
extremely difficult. Thousands of photographs, reams of documents and miles of
film and videotape have been dumped into landfills.
I continually scan eBay, old trade journals, newspaper
microfilm archives and the Internet for information. Every interview that I
conduct gets transcribed and every bit of info that I dig up gets filed. When I
have enough photos and information on a particular person or TV show, I begin
writing.
I would love to write an article on The Black Spider,
Detroit’s first TV horror host, but the information- so far- has eluded me.
Ditto for Leon McNew as Captain Flint, Cuzzin Cyrus and a handful
of others. As elusive as they are, they can’t hide forever. The information is
out there. I just have to track it down.
Q. What
about Sir Graves Ghastly?
A. There
is already a fine web site dedicated to Sir Graves at www.sirgravesghastly.com.
Q.
Remember when a kid told Bozo to “f#@k off” on live TV after losing the
Grand Prize Game?
A. Sorry.
It’s an urban myth that never happened.
Q. I know
someone who worked at channel 2 (or 4, 7, 9 or 50) back in the day. Are you
interested in talking to them?
A. By all means! I’m also interested in any memorabilia pertaining to Detroit TV from 1947 to about 1970. Just shoot me an email at detroittvguy@hotmail.com and let me know what you have.