List of Local Children's Television Series (United States)

List Of Local Children's Television Series (United States)

The following is a list of local children's television shows in the United States. Local children's television series were locally produced commercial television programming intended for the child audience with unique hosts and themes. This type of programming began in the late 1940s and continued into the late 1970s; some shows continued into the 1990s. Author Tim Hollis documented about 1,400 local children's shows in a 2002 book, Hi There, Boys and Girls!

The television programs typically aired in the weekday mornings before school or afternoons after school as well as on weekends (to a lesser degree). There were different formats. Almost all shows had a colorful host who assumed a persona such as a cowboy/cowgirl, captain/skipper/commodore/admiral, jungle explorer, astronaut, king, princess, clown, sheriff/deputy/trooper, cop, firefighter, hobo/tramp, railroad engineer, magician, "cousin", "grandfather" or "uncle", whose role was not only to be the "DJ" for syndicated material (typically cartoons, although westerns were more popular earlier on) but also to entertain, often with a live television studio audience of kids, during breaks.

Early program fare included cartoon favorites such as Crusader Rabbit, Dick Tracy Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Mighty Mouse, Porky Pig, Deputy Dawg, Tin Tin, Mel-O-Dee toons, Woody Woodpecker, The Funny Company, Mr. Magoo, Space Angel and Clutch Cargo as well as movie shorts such as Our Gang/The Little Rascals and The Three Stooges and animated versions of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello and The Three Stooges and live action shorts such as Diver Dan. Some included educational segments like the portraits of wildlife in Nature's Window.

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    It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.
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