By Scott Buckner

Since forever, science and industry have been on a mission to develop some sort of life form capable of doing nothing but growing or shitting money. By the looks of Food, Inc., the Robert Kenner documentary released in 2009 and shown last Sunday night on PBS’s POV, the American food industry has made astounding headway toward accomplishing that goal.
I’ve never been particularly concerned over who makes my food, how it’s slaughtered and processed, or how it ends up at my grocery store. I’ve never exactly been picky about what goes into it, either; I love a good hot dog, a nice bologna sandwich, and I’ve rarely met a hamburger I didn’t like. I like it that way. But Food, Inc. made me reconsider what constitutes good food made good and fast and cheap.
Yet therein lies the dilemma I’ve been dealing with for years since I’m not affluent and do my own food shopping. I know anything off a Wendy’s dollar menu is cheaper and tastier than a whole head of lettuce, and takes no prep time; I also know that’s why so many of us have become lard-assed Type II diabetics. Yet the same foods that are better for us (no pesticides, no growth hormones, no genetic engineering, no feedlot raising, etc.) cost three to four times more than the regular stuff. To me, $10 for a gallon of milk and $6 for a pound of ground beef isn’t exactly a consumer-friendly way to cultivate mass appeal.

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Posted on April 30, 2010

By Scott Buckner

Concluding our conversation with Bill Jackson.
– Part 1: The studio resembled the remains of a battlefield.
– Part 2: Twinkies and the FCC.
Beachwood: You drew huge crowds during your public appearances, and your backyard carnivals for muscular dystrophy made kids aware that there was such a disease before we knew what a Jerry Lewis telethon was. How did your involvement with muscular dystrophy begin, and where did it go over the years?
Jackson: Muscular Dystrophy representatives approached me shortly after Cartoon Town began climbing in the ratings. I was quite happy to support this worthy cause and promoted the Carnivals, even attended some. Later, when I no longer had a daily show and my weekly shows played at different times of the year, my affiliation with MD ended.
Beachwood: Because I just have to ask: What’s your favorite B.J. groupie story?
Jackson: I don’t have any stories, but I did receive a picture of an elderly lady in a bikini. The image is embedded in my memory.
Beachwood: What was the deal with the sideburns? And how long does it take to master the act of flipping a bowler hat off the end of your shoe onto your head?

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Posted on April 29, 2010

By Scott Buckner

Our conversation with Bill Jackson continues. See Part 1 here.
Beachwood: During the mid-1970s, the federal government started pushing the requirement that all children’s programming be “educationally-themed.” How did that change your show?
Jackson: Kaiser Broadcasting purchased WFLD-TV in the mid-seventies and had no intention of continuing any type of kid show, let alone one with the production values of Cartoon Town and B.J. & Dirty Dragon. So, for the second time (but not the last) after coming to Chicago, I was given a termination slip (fired). Pressure from the FCC and Peggy Charren’s Action for Children’s Television (ACT) requiring stations to offer educational/worthwhile children’s programming signaled the end of local kid shows as we knew them. Imaginative entertainment had been my goal, but I had always laced worthwhile values into my programs, and especially pushed the concept of creativity. However, the overall look of Cartoon Town and B.J. & Dirty Dragon was taken as merely entertainment (no offense taken), which rendered me unemployable. Pondering my future while sitting in the sun on my tiny Arlington Heights patio, I slowly formed the format for The Gigglesnort Hotel. WLS-TV, looking to satisfy both the FCC and Peggy, agreed to the production values I requested and what its promotion department touted as the most successful kid show in the station’s history was born.
Beachwood: If it was possible to say that there was a time when B.J. & Dirty Dragon jumped the shark, my vote would be when it turned into Gigglesnort Hotel. No disrespect intended, but what in the world was someone thinking?

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Posted on April 28, 2010

By Scott Buckner

Built out of little more than the simple “Hey, someone’s got a barn so let’s put on a show” idea that drove quite a few films of the World War II era, locally-produced kiddie TV of the 1950s and 1960s created magic on the cheap out of clowns, cloth hand puppets, big hunks of clay, and animation considered even then to be ancient or just plain awful. Almost every TV market large and small had their own kiddie TV shows, created and staged at any number of local stations, with their own unique and memorable hosts.
Those hosts were talented, creative station employees who often ended up as a matter of course working as supporting players on other programs at their stations – and by some accounts weren’t paid as handsomely as we might think. Still, they became icons, keeping us company before school, after school, and when we were stuck at home on sick days and snow days. They became inseparable fabrics of our kid lives, created right here in Chicago.
Bill Jackson was one of those people, one who saw first-hand the heyday and then the slow, painful erosion of local TV production. A native of Missouri born to parents steeped in traveling-carnival life, Jackson helped put Chicago’s WFLD-TV on the map with Cartoon Town with Bill Jackson, later renamed The B.J. and Dirty Dragon Show. The background of Chicago kiddie TV and Jackson’s role in it is too extensive to go into here, so you can start here. He would go on to create and syndicate the Emmy-winning Gigglesnort Hotel at WLS-TV, but by the time that show was canceled in 1978 after three seasons, original locally-produced kiddie TV was all but dead in Chicago.
Today, Jackson may be the last surviving, instantly-recognizable Chicago kiddie-TV icon. Ray Rayner, Bob “Bozo” Bell, Ned “Ringmaster Ned” Locke, Frazier “Garfield Goose” Thomas have been dead for years. Hosts of other popular Chicago-produced shows (“Miss Beverly” Marston-Braun of Romper Room, Debra Wuerfel of Treetop House, Charles “Tiny Tov” Gerber of The Magic Door) and a supporting player or two may still be around, but their names are not quickly recognizable unless you associate them with their shows.
The following interview took place via a two-part e-mail exchange and will be presented here in three parts. The initial and follow-up questions and their answers appear as they were asked and answered; their order has been rearranged in some cases to provide continuity and context.

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Posted on April 27, 2010

By The Beachwood 24/7 Affairs Desk

Not very inspiring.
2 a.m.: BET Inspiration
5 a.m.: Morning Inspiration
7 a.m.: The Wendy Williams Show
8 a.m.: The Mo’Nique Show
9 a.m.: The Jamie Foxx

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Posted on April 26, 2010

By Coral Ridge Ministries News

With President Obama and leaders in Washington pushing the country toward socialism, experts on the April 25 Coral Ridge Hour television broadcast discuss the roots of the ideology and the destructive and deadly path it has cut through history. For listings and to preview, visit www.coralridge.org.
“[I]n spite of all the socialistic failures of the 20th century, we are still toying with a socialistic idea that we’re somehow going to find a political utopia and paradise via socialism,” says David Noebel, founder and director of Summit Ministries.
The nationally televised program surveys the principles of socialism as laid out by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in their 1848 publication The Communist Manifesto.

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Posted on April 22, 2010

By The Beachwood Oprah Affairs Desk

“Oprah Winfrey formally unveiled the centerpiece of her new television network Thursday: Oprah Winfrey,” the New York Daily News reports.
“The queen of daytime will become a night owl in Oprah’s Next Chapter, which will air an unspecified number of times a week at an unspecified time on the new Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
“Other programs will be a Shania Twain ‘reality” show, a Mark Burnett competition show that will seek a new daytime TV host, a talk show hosted by Oprah’s best friend, Gayle King, and a ‘master class’ that will feature prominent successful people like Condoleezza Rice, Jay-Z and will.i.am.”
The Beachwood Oprah Affairs Desk has learned that these shows are also under consideration:

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Posted on April 13, 2010

By The Food Network

1. The press release.
Dear Steve,
I am on the casting team for the hilarious yet heartwarming show Worst Cooks In America on Food Network. The show is a culinary boot camp of sorts, with top chefs teaching hopeless home cooks how to succeed in the kitchen.
We are actually in our second season and our casting team is headed to Chicago to find people who have a hard time in the kitchen and really need help! We are going to be hosting a casting event in Chicago on Saturday, April 17th, and are so excited to meet the contestants from the Windy City.
We would love to pitch a small feature – a little more than a listing but shorter than an article – which would include both information on our casting event and information about the actual casting process, what we look for in a contestant, etc.
I’ve answered some major questions below:

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Posted on April 8, 2010

By The Beachwood Behind Bars Bureau

“The number of inmates in American prisons is outpacing the system’s ability to hold them all,” PBS reports. “In one startling example, California prisons hold well over 50,000 more inmates than they’re designed for, even though the state has built a dozen new prisons in the last 15 years. One of the biggest reasons is rampant recidivism.
“This week, NOW goes inside an Illinois prison that may have the answer to California’s problems. With its innovative plan to keep released inmates from coming back, the Sheridan Correctional Center is trying to redefine ‘tough on crime’ by being the largest fully dedicated drug prison in the country. The approach involves aggressive counseling, job training, and following the convicts after they get out.
Can their novel approach keep convicts out of jail for good?

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Posted on April 6, 2010