TFTP Kids: "Bozo's Circus" from WGN/Chicago (1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Brian P. Collins'
Length - 56:10

Bozo the Clown is a legendary children's TV character that appeared in local kids' programs in various cities but nowhere as famously as in Chicago on WGN-TV. The Bozo character had been around since the late-1940s on children's record albums and by the late-'50s had begun to be franchised for television. WGN started to air "Bozo's Circus" in 1961 as a midday program aimed at kids who were home from school over the lunch hour.

The episode above is from 1968 and features Bozo (Bob Bell), Ringmaster Ned (Ned Clarke) who was the nominal host of the program, and Sandy the Clown (Don Sandburg). The cast engages in a number of shenanigans, including an attempt at plate-spinning by Bozo and a human-marionette act in which Bozo pulls the strings on Sandy. A Bozo cartoon is shown and two lucky kids (one boy and one girl) from the studio audience get to play the "Grand Prize Game".

This game was the centerpiece of the program into the 1980s, after WGN had begun to be carried on cable systems nationally and the program shifted to an early-morning timeslot (with a new name, "The Bozo Show"). In the "Grand Prize Game", kids attempted to toss ping-pong balls into a series of six buckets, with each successful toss resulting in a group of prizes, progressively more valuable as the game proceeded from bucket #1 to bucket #6. This 1968 episode (which includes original commercial breaks) ends with another signature segment of the Bozo show--the grand march that closes the program.

TFTP Kids: "Ray Rayner and His Friends" from WGN/Chicago (May 16, 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'

"Ray Rayner and His Friends", despite the fact that it seems incredibly bizarre to us now, was a venerable and long-running children's program on Chicago independent station WGN. Many local stations had similar programs in the 1960s and '70s, in which a human host interacts with puppets or other anthropomorphic characters while introducing cartoon short subjects. This episode is from 1980, the final year (due to Rayner's retirement) of a run that started in 1962.

There is a certain slapdash quality to the show--from Rayner's strange coveralls (upon which he has pinned various notes, a Rayner trademark) and the laughably low-budget set, to the decidedly low-tech (even for 1980) use of a chalkboard for displaying weather info and sports scores. Rayner brings a definite improvisational feel to his performance as MC, seemingly (and probably actually) making it all up as he goes along. Kids most likely didn't care, as the Rayner segments were just interstitial to the cartoons they tuned in to see--and which also provided adults in the room with a little weather info with which to plan their day.

This episode has most of the cartoons themselves cut out (except the bulk of a 1930s-era "Flash Gordon" serial), but some of the commercials included (such as a great McDonald's ad featuring Ronald himself).