Robert Bunzel's financial support for KKOG-TV ended at the beginning of February, 1969 but there had already been some defections among the creative forces at channel 16. The schedule that took effect January 10 had the weekday sign-on at 5:00pm, beginning with “Prince Gary's Kingdom of KKOG”, “All About Women” moving to 7:00pm replacing “16th Round”, and the rest of the late afternoon schedule cancelled. Frank Maggipinto had apparently run out of topics to discuss on “Sí Sixteen” and was replaced by “Fiesta Latina”, a counterpart to the Sunday afternoon “Sí Amigos” musical program. The ambitious three hour “Sports Friday” program, which was difficult at best to produce when confined to the studio and with only sporadic use of film segments, was halved (a weekly square dance aired from 9:00 to 10:00pm instead!). A second puppet show, “Nugget Theatre with Santa Barbara Sam and Goldie” appeared on Sunday evenings following Don McCoy's prestadigitations and “Showdown 16” had been reduced to a single weekly show, replaced by hobbyist shows on gemology and hiking.


It only got worse when Bunzel left.

The schedule that took effect on February 8, 1969 had KKOG-TV operating from 5:00 to 11:00pm seven days a week, with the exception of the local Church of Christ program which moved from 9:00am to 4:30pm on Sundays (the remaining local churches had left, one by one, over the first few weeks and were replaced by generic religious programming hosted by whatever ministers and church choirs Julian Myers could convince to appear free of charge).

“Prince Gary's Kingdom of KKOG”, “All About Women”, “Hollywood and You”, “Alone Together”, “Sports Friday” (expanded back to two of its original three hours), “Sí Amigos” and “Fiesta Latina” (each occupying a single hour on Saturday and Sunday at 5:00), “Cycle Action”, “KKOG-In Party”, “Don McCoy's Magic House” and nightly half-hour newscasts at 6:00pm and 10:30pm -- anchored by whoever was available at the moment -- remained on the schedule. “16 Stock and Business Answers” expanded to a half-hour at 6:30pm weekdays and now featured a rotating set of guest hosts from various brokerage houses and investment consultant firms. All the rest of the once-ambitious slate of local programs covering various interests was gone.

To fill two hours of vacated airtime on weekend evenings, Julian Myers innovated as only he could, creating a new program which he titled “Prizes and Surprises”, mainly consisting of amateur local talent (a local accordion studio proudly presented various assortments of their students every week and hyped it in their newspaper advertising) and call-in giveaways of whatever prizes Myers could convince the remaining advertisers to provide in trade for extra spots on their contracts.


Myers also took advantage of the contacts he had made among local country and western bands in having originally presented a half-hour showcase on Sunday evenings and put several of them in the 9:00pm timeslot most evenings. Suddenly, three groups that had been little known other than at the handful of country nightclubs in the area -- Leroy Motley and His Melody Makers, Chief Big and the Scalp Hunters, Curtis Tate and the Broncos -- joined Dusty Thomas and His Drifters and the weekly square dance on the channel 16 schedule. All of them appeared free of charge for the exposure.

Ironically, it wasn't until KKOG-TV was in decline that its listings were carried anywhere but the Ventura County newspapers. TV Guide began listing channel 16 in its June 7 issue and the Los Angeles Times followed suit in its weekly “TV Times” supplement a week later.

By then, Myers was appearing five nights a week as “Mr. Know-It-All”, interviewing people about their occupations, which -- along with a nightly local sports interview show -- had replaced “Hollywood and You” as their hosts departed the station, tired of not being paid. (Myers used to open his show tongue in cheek by saying he was really “Mr. Doesn't-Know-It-All”.) The country bands came and went as well, with the schedule featuring at various times Lowell Thomas' “Pickin' Time”, Danny and the Deputies, the Bob Faith Band, “In the Saddle” and folk group The Home Grown. (In time, the bands came and went so quickly that the program listings defaulted to simply “Country & Western Music”.) “Alone Together” morphed into a nightly program called “Sex And You” which was hosted by an assortment of doctors, social workers, and ministers, and which proved to be more adept at attracting listener calls. When Bobbie Gee left and took “All About Women” with her, local radio disc jockeys were invited to preside over a nightly half-hour (and quickly expanded to a full hour to fill airtime) music program called “16 Spinoff”. Even “Prizes and Surprises” had left the schedule by the end of June, having apparently burned through everyone with any talent who lived close enough to the KKOG studios and would appear at no charge.

But Julian Myers' flare for showmanship and promotion hit its peak in May.


On the next page: What the heck is a “Konstant Kontest”?