Davey and Goliath - Television Airing

Television Airing

In some markets the show aired on more than one station. In New York City, for example, it aired simultaneously on three stations: WOR-TV, WABC-TV, and WPIX. WPIX aired only one episode per week, while WOR-TV and WABC-TV ran two episodes back-to-back in a 30 minute time slot. For a short while, WABC-TV and WOR-TV aired the show in the same time slot but aired different episodes, though all three stations ran all the episodes available. WOR-TV dropped the show in 1985. WABC-TV dropped it in 1987 while continuing to air holiday specials until the mid-1990s. WPIX dropped it in 1990. Also, in the 1970s the show aired in the Los Angeles on KCOP-TV. In most cases, the shows were run in chronological groups. An order is known in terms of the year each was episode was made, but actual chronological order in which they were made is unknown.

In the 1980s, commercial stations began gradually dropping the series. Religious stations picked it up in many markets and ran it in their blocks of Christian children's programs. By 1990 only a handful of commercial stations still aired the series, including WKBW-TV, which aired it as part of its Commander Tom Show/Rocketship 7 compilation programming. When the series began airing on religious stations, some episodes were gradually dropped. They included "Polka Dot Tie" (which addresses racism in an indirect way), "On The Line" (due to the scary nature of the episode), "Ten Little Indians" (due to what was interpreted as racism in the word "Indians"), "Man Of The House" (which was controversial due to the children being left home alone at what may be perceived as too young an age), and "The Gang" (due to the violence on this episode). Commercial stations, however, continued running these episodes throughout the 1980s until they dropped the series altogether.

In the early 1990s, those five episodes were officially pulled from syndication and not available to stations regardless of their format (whether religious or secular commercial stations, though very few commercial stations ran it anyway). In the 1990s the show aired strictly on religious stations including from Baptist-based services like FamilyNet to ecumenical religious networks like VISN/ACTS (now Hallmark Channel, which no longer airs the series), Pentecostal-based services like Trinity Broadcasting Network, Roman Catholic tele-ministries like CatholicTV Network, EWTN (which had also aired the series in the mid-1980s but no longer airs it), a few local diocesan cable Catholic channels, and religious independent stations.

"Man Of The House" and "On The Line" have recently been revived and ran on Trinity Broadcasting on beginning in 2006. In the last few years, however, several of the later episodes have been withdrawn due to some behaviors demonstrated on these episodes are considered by some to be "politically incorrect". These episodes are "The Watchdogs" (due to its topic of violent crime), "What's His Name" (due to the nature of threats that Davey makes to take revenge on someone), "Louder Please" (due to Davey's attitude toward handicapped people), and "Help" (because a character came extremely close to a death causing injury), and "Down On The Farm" (one very brief scene has a naked Davey skinny-dipping, and was thought to be too casual a reference to childhood nudity). Additionally "Pilgrim Boy" were withdrawn from television due to negative references to American Indians.

The show continued to air on CatholicTV Network until late in 2009, on Tri-State Christian Television also until 2010 and still airs on a few local Christian television stations. In 2004 and 2005, when Hallmark aired a Christmas special and the 1967 "Happy Easter" episode, they aired the program with several commercial breaks. Until then no station, commercial or noncommercial, had run commercials during an airing of an episode.

Hallmark aired the entire series commercial free until 2001. Since then, Hallmark only aired a few of the holiday specials, as well as the Snowboard Christmas special made in 2004.

In 2008, iTunes began offering episodes as free downloads. By December more than 20 episodes had been made available. Today they cost $0.99 each

The series continues to be shown on TBN Saturday afternoons, and during the week it's seen on the TBN owned Smile of a Child network, which is carried on digital subchannels of TBN affiliates.