All local, all live, just under 60 hours a week. That demanded a lot of creativity, and KKOG-TV attracted many people who provided that creativity. The schedule had a lot of programs that, as Julian Myers later put it, “would not have seemed out of place on a local cable access channel in the 1980s.” To wit:

Mae Canaga, who later found minor fame as a costumer and puppet maker in Hollywood, was co-host of both “Art Unlimited” (a crafts program aimed at children) and “A Child's Happening”, which featured some of her then-already impressive collection of puppets. Dr. Frank X. Maggipinto, who taught Spanish and history at Ventura College, gave weekly talks on the cultures of Spanish-speaking people on “Sí Sixteen”. KKOG News Director Dan Bunzel not only anchored three daily newscasts, six days a week but also talked with local high school and college students about campus life on the weekly “New Horizons” program, brought many of those same students together on the daily “Girls For Guys” and made a daily events calendar somehow fill ten minutes of airtime on “Datebook” at the start of each weekday's broadcast.

Local drive-in owner and amateur actor Gary Dyer hosted a daily children's program (“Prince Gary's Kingdom of KKOG”) that hearkened to an earlier era of television, with stories, games, and anything else he could think of ... anything, that is, but cartoons. "KKOG-In Party" featured local college co-ed Kathy Kelly with guest disc jockeys from local radio stations playing top-40 hits for an in-studio audience of teens and twentysomethings; think “American Bandstand” without the live bands or Dick Clark. Dyer and Kelly also did double duty as the host of the weekly “Pet Parade” show. Sunday KKOG news presenter Garreth Broom also hosted “Showdown 16” three nights a week to bring together people on both sides of local issues to discuss their points of view. Michael Maynez, who founded the local repertory company Plaza Players to stage local drama presentations, showed his (and his troupe's) humorous side with a weekly program called “Nite Fun” (As noted in the ad to the right, N-I-T-E-F-U-N, when dialed on a Ventura exchange phone, connected you with KKOG's main business office).

Ventura Marina general manager Bill Kerrigan hosted a weekly half hour called “Sand and Sea” concentrating on -- what else? -- beach and ocean oriented leisure pursuits. Aspiring country singer Dusty Thomas sang on Thursday nights for anyone who might be listening and Tom Northam (who also doubled as part of Michael Maynez's cast of thespians) similarly sang ballads and other smooth songs on Mondays. “Alone Together” was a show where psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health workers discussed the stresses of today's society; its host, Bobbie Gee, doubled on the six-days-per-week “All About Women”.

KFXM disc jockey and amateur magician Don McCoy drove more than two hours each way from his home in San Bernardino to preside over “Don McCoy's Magic House” on Sunday evenings. Julian Myers himself hosted the weekly “Generation Gab” program, a roundtable discussion featuring teenagers, both young and mature adults, and senior citizens. The concept of pitting generations against each other also surfaced on “Because”, a game show of sorts featuring a rotating panel of junior-high and high-school students and a panel of college students and adults, both given a question that could be answered “yes” or “no”, depending on your reasoning (which you had to provide as the answer); hosted on the first airing by comic Pat Carlin (before being fired the next night, as noted previously) and on subsequent shows by producer Sherry Wilson and a then 12-year-old who shall remain nameless but who is the author of this website. Wilson also did a largely off-the-cuff humor outing on Sundays titled -- logically enough -- “Fun With Sherry”.


On the next page: Television commercials at radio prices.