Keven Scarpino has been working as a board operator at WOAC channel 67, and also acting as a crew member for the station’s horror host, The Cool Ghoul .When The Cool Ghoul leaves, Keven creates The Son of Ghoul and succeeds in becoming the new host. After years on the air, the station is sold, and employees begin to trickle away. Son of Ghoul is the last to go. Moving immediately to the CAT, channels 35 and 29, Son of Ghoul continues an unbroken string of broadcasting that will eventually put him past twenty consecutive years on the air. A significant change to the program is the addition of midget Ron Huffman, who quickly becomes a popular local celebrity as Son of Ghoul’s long time sidekick. Huffman would tragically die of alcohol poisoning on Feb 24^th, 2003. Later Jungle Bob, a local animal handler, would evolve into something of a replacement.

 
 

SOG: In the meantime, I had this guy who was working for me named Cowboy Bob. He acted like he was a manager or executive or something. And he was just a con man. He was involved in some promotions and stuff. He was an alright guy. He went up to the CAT (ch 35 & 29) and he talked to them about me coming up there. There were interested right away. In fact, he negotiated how much they would pay me.  
 

DokG: They were familiar with your show? 
 

SOG: Absolutely. When they were getting ready to sign on their station, Bill Klaus (one of the CAT owners) came to channel 67. He spent a week there just to observe our operations and see what we were doing. I didn’t know who he was, but I remember him being there. And then they (the Klaus brothers) came up with their own station. Also, Bill Klaus, I think, worked for awhile at channel 5 in Cleveland…interned there or whatever. Right away they were interested in the show because they were interested in a local identity. 
 

So, Cowboy Bob negotiated it (my contract) originally. Once he came back and told me he had talked with them, without me knowing, I immediately called them up and said, “Nobody makes a deal for me except me. Do not negotiate with him anymore, negotiate with me.” And at that time, Cowboy Bob presented me with this contract. He wanted to manage the show and be the producer. It virtually said I paid for everything, including his phone bill. At that point, I cut ties, because the Klaus’ had said yes.  
 

I was losing the station and the production facilities, so I went to a local place called Talon Media. A couple of guys had gotten some equipment, and were working out of a building in Massilon. They were trying to set up a little makeshift studio there. And they came to me and said “Don’t worry, everything would be smooth. We know what you need for your production, we have it all covered.” 
 

So, they built me the set I’m still using now. They designed all that, I didn’t do anything. I walked in the first day and they had it standing. And it was one big clusterfuck at that point. Everything they’d promised me, they weren’t able to deliver. I almost threw in the towel right then. It was just too overwhelming. Everything I’d taken for granted, all the luxuries of the station…It didn’t feel like luxury at the time…I bitched then. The difference there was, something broke down, you wrote out a work order and the engineer fixed it.  
 

But now, we don’t have a tripod that can stay still, you bump a cord and everything goes out, the lighting was bad, the cameras were cheap…you can’t do this, you can only do this, you can’t dissolve here, you can only do it there. There was no talent at the controls. Like I said, I’m surprised I didn’t quit. But we kept on with it because, hell, it was still a paycheck. But when I moved to Talon Media, I gave up half my money to production costs. Well, that wasn’t working out. I was originally taping every week. Then I started taping every two weeks. I did two shows. Then I started taping three shows at once, trying to save time…and money.  
 

DokG: Would this be in a similar amount time that you had been taping single shows?  
 

SOG: Well, I go in and tape three opens, three closes. Then we would do a bunch of mail breaks, and I’d just split those out over three weeks of shows. We might do a couple bits. And I’d stick them in anywhere. I’d make three weeks of shows out of that, because I just couldn’t afford to tape every week.  
 

Eventually, that came to an end. The two partners split up. One guy took all the editing equipment, set up his own computer system and got a building across town in Canton. There was nothing left at Talon. The other partner couldn’t edit. There was nothing he could do. He could shoot stuff, but he couldn’t edit it. I needed stuff edited, so I had to go with the equipment. I stopped working at Talon and went over to Digital Illusions. And it was an illusion. I did that for about a year. It was a completely different building. I liked the studio. I liked how the set was staged. But workable it wasn’t. Everything was wrong. They had ten tons of cable going from the studio to the console, creating a lot of audio noise.   
 

So again, I’m taping three shows a week and not coming back for a month. And the owner was expecting me to be paying his rent by coming in every week. And when that didn’t happen, he said, “That’s it. I’m closing the studio.” At that point, I had no choice but to buy the editing equipment off of him – for a phenomenal amount of money. Way more than what it was worth. But I had no choice, ‘cause I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. That’s when I took over all the editing myself…and I prefer it that way.  
 

DokG: Did you find you began to shape the show differently? 
 

SOG: Well, I thought it saved the show. By that time, we were going into twelve years of the show. All the tricks we’d been able to do the first 9 years, we weren’t able to do anymore. At that point I was working with guys who weren’t getting paid. And believe me, it was showing up on screen. You’ve got a photographer doing sound effects, and he’s busy signing ‘J.S.’ on the back of each of his photos. He’s got a stack of photos like this and he’s signing ‘J.S.’, ‘c J.S.’. I said, “John, what does that mean?” He say’s “I’m copyrighting my photos.” I said, “That doesn’t mean shit. You want to copyright your photos, you’ve got to send them in, fill out all the paperwork. Just because you sign it with your little chicken scratch means nothing legally.  
 

DokG: So he was doing that while he was doing the sound drops?  
 

SOG: He’d read Playboy…I’d call and say we’re going to tape at 8, he’d come in at a quarter to 9. So at that point, I was just tired of dealing with people, and I’m sure they were tired of dealing with me. My attitude was really bad too. I had no patience. Everything was a pain in the ass. You couldn’t move, ‘cause a chord would jiggle and the picture would go out, and it would take them twenty minutes to figure out which chord had jiggled. I’d ask if we could have the chord replaced and we’d come back in a month and it wasn’t fixed.  
 

DokG: Was this at Digital Illusions? 
 

SOG: No, this was at Talon. I bought the editing equipment, but I couldn’t shoot because I didn’t have a camera. So, I had to take the set back over to Talon, put it back up again and keep shooting. We were there another two and a half years. J.P. Lewis (the owner) wouldn’t go out and get a job to pay the $270 rent on the building. So he eventually let the place go. So that was the end of that.  
 

DokG: Once you took over the editing yourself, how much time did you start spending on a show? 
 

SOG: It all depends. The way we used to do it, John Stone and I, he would load the sound carts and I would cue them in and out. We did it together. Sometimes we would go in and sound effect the movie maybe two and half hours before we started taping. Some times we would tape and try to sound effect the movie afterwards. You can really tell with some of the old shows. Those are the ones where the audio drops out, the soundtrack abruptly cuts out. We didn’t even think about mixing it or anything. ‘Cause that’s all the technology we had there.  
 

When I moved the editing here, to my home, I figured I could do a better job with the sound effects. So then I started taking my time with it. I can work on a movie for two weeks, I can work on it for three days. I can’t really put a time on it. What I do now is work on it some night for two hours, get burned out and shut it down. And sometimes I won’t go back to it for a couple weeks. Then I’ll go back in and do a couple segments or something.  
 

DokG: Sometimes you load up the films pretty heavily with sound effects. How does that compare with the movies back on the Ghoulardi’s show? 
 

SOG: Chuck Schodowski did the audio drops on the movies. And they didn’t put in a lot in there. ‘Cause their idea was to catch you off guard with it. So the sound effect would be a surprise, rather than something you expected to happen.  
 

I didn’t sound effect all of my movies at channel 67. When I went to the CAT, they wanted the sound effects. They said, “Oh yeah. Put ‘em in. Go for it.” So the first movie I did for them, Godzilla vs Megalon, I actually did on 67’s equipment. That was the first one. We did ourselves after that. I had more time to do it.  
 

Now, I’ll be watching the movie, and I’ll see something and think, “Wow, this one little sound drop from this one old movie or cartoon would be great right in here. “ So I hit the stop button…and it may take me two hours of digging through all my stuff to find that one cut.  
 

DokG: It seems to me your love of cartoons and Three Stooges films make your choices particularly creative. You turn the films into live action cartoons.  
 

SOG: Well, sure. There were so many sound effects in those old cartoons. And so much of it keyed off action. I loved all that. And once all that stuff became more available…you’ve got CDs of cartoon music and cartoon sound effects, Little Rascals music. You can get anything you want to.  
 

But if I had to do it all over again, I would have started in 1986 and never used one piece of recorded music by anybody. I would have done it all myself, all original. If I had any brains, I would have done it that way. Because if someone decided to syndicate my show in a large market, they might run into problems. I sent a demo tape once to a big company in California that sold shows here and overseas. The first skit had me cleaning Fidge at the carwash, with the song ‘Car Wash’ on the soundtrack. And the first thing they said was do you own the rights to the song ‘Car Wash’?  “No.” “How can you use that then?” At the time, it fell under the blanket rights of the station. They paid a yearly fee to ASCAP, BMI, whatever, and I never worried about it. But when you’re producing it yourself… 
 

DokG: Or shipping it out as your own commercial product.  
 

SOG: Then you’re going to run into the problems.  
 

DokG: What were your favorite shows, the films you felt you’d done a particularly good job on?  
 

SOG: I think the best sound effect job I’ve ever done might be on The Most Dangerous Game. I probably spent the most time with that one, mixed it really nice. It was really well-mixed. I always thought Hal Roach would be proud of me. I started to take more pains with it, two-tracking the audio and keeping as much of the original as possible. It was much smoother that way. That’s the way I like to do it now.  
 

DokG: Another major change from the channel 67 days was the character of Fidge.  
 

SOG: I moved to the studio in Massillon and Fidge, a local guy who knew J.P. Lewis, the owner of the studio, would come and hang out at Talon. Once word got out I was working there, he asked J.P. if he could come down to a taping. Fidge showed up the next Tuesday, just as a spectator. And what the hell, you’re there and there’s one midget in the room? Please! Right away it was, “You, come here!”  
 

The word “fidge” came from the Little Rascals. There was this one episode where two of the kids shrink. And there’s this old grouchy guy from the kids’ home who takes them to this high class party where there are a couple of midgets. And of the kids goes, “Them fidgets can talk!” So when Ronnie showed up, I think I said, “C’mere, ya fidge!” And the name stuck.  
 

When I had a batch of t-shirts printed up, just for a joke, I had ‘Fidge’ printed on the back of his shirt. I gave him that shirt, and I swear to god, he must have had that one every day for, like, two years. Everywhere he went he wore it. And the more I had the guy on the show, the more popular he became. And he actually started to get a little bit more mail than me.  
 

I don’t know what it I about midgets. I guess it was just his honest about it, you know?

He couldn’t hear real well. So half the time he didn’t know what was going on. But if you asked him to do something, he’d do it. He didn’t question stuff very much. But the more he was on the show, and the more he became, the more I used him.  
 

Around (the year) 2000, Regis comes on with ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’, and suddenly games shows is all popular again. The Klaus’, since they owned talk radio as well as the TV station, thought immediately, “Let’s get on the game show band wagon.”

I guess some years before they’d had a game show on, I think it was called ‘The Bingo Movie’ or something. People would play bingo during the breaks and some deejays would come on and call numbers…”B 12”…They actually called bingo over the air. But I think something came down that claimed it was gambling on the air and they couldn’t do it. So they had to stop it.  
 

Now my movie show didn’t really create a lot of revenue for the station. But they continued to pay me even with very little coming in. For one thing, I don’t think their salesmen really went out and tried to sell it. The commission was too small. This is a problem for most of the horror hosts. I think that’s what happened with Sweed at WB55.

He created no business. If his show had created business and had steady sales, he’d still be on right now.  
 

With the Klaus’ on the other hand, I’m deal with the smallest fish in the pond, and they’re looking for any recognition they can get.  And they know I have viewers. As a matter of fact, the Klaus’ have a viewership map that shows N.E. Ohio with all these red pins stuck in for all these little cities. And they said, “These are areas we’ve received mail from  that view the CAT.” And it was based on the mail that I got. Sometimes someone would write me from the other side of the state, and they would put a pin there, like the signal got there or something. The signal would never get there. You couldn’t get the signal at the end of the driveway at the TV station, let alone there. And to prove that fact, I took a portable TV with an antenna on it in my van and drove to the end of the driveway. I could not pick up the station.  
 

Anyway, with Regis coming on the air, they called me in. “Keven, come on up. We want to have a meeting.” So I went up and they said, “Look, the movie show has been steadily losing money. We have an idea. We want to produce a live game show to cash in on the popularity of this ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’. It’ll be a call-in show with contestants on the phone, and we want to do this two hours a night, five nights a week.” And I said, “Well…what do you mean?” “We want to do this two hours a night, five nights a week, live.”  
 

Five nights a week. Immediately the calculator starts going off in my head. Oh man, what a pay day this is going to be! But they turned around and said, “We’ll continue to give you your regular pay.” I said, “Wait a minute. You’re paying me for a two hour slot, but you want me to do five nights for two hours for the same money? Can’t do it”   
 

Fortunately for me, within about a week or two of talking about this, they came to their senses and realized five nights a week was completely nuts. See, their perspective was, they had live deejays on the talk radio who was doing four hour shifts six days a week. Why couldn’t some guy go TV two hours, five nights a week? That was their idea. In reality, that would have been the biggest burn out that ever happened.  
 

DokG: For the host and the audience… 
 

SOG:  But they still wanted to produce the show. What they said at that point was, “Why don’t you drop the movie show? Because we feel it’s a little past-tense now, not as important as it used to be. We want you to focus all your attention on the game show. In between games, you can still show your little skits and stuff.”  
 

My answer was, “Without the movie show, why do you need me then? Why not get some guy in a suit and tie? The whole point of me is the movie show.” So they said, “We’re not going to pay you for two shows.” So instead of five nights a week, they decided on one night a week. But they were unsure whether they wanted to make it an hour show or a two hour show. But it was going to be ‘The Son of Ghoul’s House of Fun and Games’. 
 

So we tried three trial nights. The first night (08/30/00), I did an hour. The second night, I did an hour and a half. The third night we did two hours, and I took Fidge with me just for the hell of it. Just to break up the monotony. And having him there turned into the biggest goof, because only could he not hear the answers, he had absolutely no idea what to write on the scoreboard. Now we were live, so we had contestants on the phone. And once I started goofing on him, you could hear these people laughing over the air. So I thought to myself, “This is kind of working. In some odd way, this is working.”  
 

So we did the three shows, and they (the Klaus brothers) said, “We think you should have the midget all the time. He was a scream.” And compared to the first two shows, he was a scream. And it was different, ‘cause now I had somebody to play off of. It wasn’t just a straight-forward game. It was better for me, but sometimes Fidge was just worthless during the games. Many weeks he had nothing funny to say, didn’t really do anything. He was just there. People loved that little guy though, man. They loved him.  
 

And once he got comfortable with it, he really started to develop his act. It got to the point where I didn’t have to explain things to him. There were times where I’d have to say, “Now Fidge, when I grab your neck, I’m not going to chock you. I’m going to grit my teeth and go like this (pretending to strangle). Don’t fight it, just go with it. And it won’t hurt, and you’ll see how funny it looks to the audience. And once that happened, he realized it was working and just go with the motions and make noises. And that would be it, you know? Sometimes, we did get carried away. I did beat the guy a bit too much, I suppose.  
 

That’s the kind of thing where you didn’t realize what you had till it was gone. That was my Abbott and Costello thing. I never really wanted to have a co-host, and I didn’t consider him a co-host. I considered him a crew member. But we got locked in on the game show and it made us seem like a team.  
 

DokG: …a sidekick… 
 

SOG: Exactly. But I referred to him as a kick stand, rather than a sidekick. Boy, I used get so annoyed picking him up to go to the game show. There was many weeks on that the 45 minute ride up to the station where I wouldn’t speak to him the whole time. I was so annoyed that he didn’t have a license. I had to go pick him up and take him everywhere he went.  
 

Anyway, once they wanted him on the game show, then I negotiated for him to get paid. They said, “We’re not going to pay him what we pay you.” And I said, “Well, I hope not. But you’ve got to give the guy something. Give him fifty bucks a week, anything.” Which they did.  
 

So at that point, I started to charge him for gas money to go up (to the station). I had to. I mean, it was only five bucks, but I’d say, “Fidge, I’ll split it with you. You’re not putting oil in my car, you’re not putting tires on my car. You’re just going along for the ride, you little midget.” Let alone taking a 45 minute ride with midget fumes coming from the back seat. Sometimes it was pretty tart. Or some nights, he’d have on so much cologne, I’d have to roll down the windows, ‘cause it was gagging me.  
 

DokG: His love life turned into a real soap opera on the show. He’s talk a lot about all these dates he was trying to set up…  
 

SOG: He didn’t have a love life. He tried real hard, but I don’t think he ever succeeded. Unfortunately, I think the poor little guy died without experiencing a complete session with a woman, shall we say. One time, he told me he was at an appearance, and some chick was fondling him under the table. And he was so damn proud of that. He was something else.  
 

DokG: There were a number of people who called in regularly to the show who became characters themselves: Margie, The Cake Lady. And they would keep you up to date on their lives, almost like a local television diary.  
 

SOG: Yeah, with the game show, you’d get four contestants on. And the funny thing about it was, I’d get people coming up to me saying, “I’ve been trying to call in for two months and I can’t get a line to ring.” And other people would call and get in every damn week. Every week! And yeah, we had regulars who called in for this dumb old game show. And for as crappy as it actually was there was something about it…. 
 

DokG: A community feel. 
 

SOG: Yeah. 
 

DokG: People did get to know each other on the air. 
 

SOG: Exactly. So much TV is just mechanical now. Even with news crews. You’ve got these news crews come on who are so far removed from the public. You would never get a chance to talk to them. And they’re so plastic with their presentation. We scripted nothing. I probably made more mistakes and flub-ups, and mispronounced words, than any other host in the country…on a continuous basis. The game show was on Wednesday night. Thursday and Friday night, the station played my movie show. So that was a total of six hours every week. My face probably had more screen time than all these people. It was a two hour game show. And I would say all but maybe 15 minutes of those two hours was stuck on my mug.  
 

DokG: And that was for three, three and a half years? 
 

SOG: Yeah, yeah.  
 

DokG: You did the game show as long as Ernie [Anderson/Ghoulardi] did his show back in the 60s.  
 

SOG: Exactly. Now, the game show was fun. But again, it was lack of revenue. What happened really was this: the station, being a small, low-watt outfit, had a home shopping network that bought time on the weekends. And they had three different infomercial companies that bought big chunks of air time – a lot of time and a year at a time. What I later found out was, the revenue from those informercials, and the home shopping on the weekends, was actually paying my salary. That’s how they could keep it [the game show] afloat. All at once, all three of those of those accounts decided not to renew their contracts for the following year. They lost all that revenue. At that point, they put the breaks on everything! We had to stop the game show.  
 

DokG: But in the meantime, the game show had really raised your profile. You were invited to produce a stage show at Six Flags for their October 2002 Halloween season.  
 

SOG: We had a local amusement park in Aurora, Ohio called Geauga Lake Sea World, and they sold out to Six Flags, who closed down half the park and revamped the other half. I had a website up by that time, and I got an email from the general manager of the park. Aurora cable carried our show, and he watched. Loved Fidge, loved him. He emailed me, asking I contact him about some possible Halloween appearances at the park. Would I be interested? Yeah, I was on it. I answered them. They said, “Come on up, let’s talk.”  
 

So I drove up for a meeting. When I went into the office, I see the guy there in charge of the park had this green blackboard that was in the hallway that went right back to his office. I glanced up, and right there in white chalk he had wrote on his blackboard ‘FIDGE RULES’. So I thought, “Oh I got this gig.” I didn’t really know, but I went in and asked what he wanted. They wanted me to put on three stage shows a day – Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the entire month of October, including Halloween night. So that was a total of 17 nights.  
 

I had never really done a stage show at that point. But I figured this couldn’t really be that hard, could it? They loved the idea of Fidge, they loved Fidge. So I came up with a price that would allow me to bring in my crew – and Fidge. And it really ended up being a good payday. We all got paid. Fidge made money, the crew made money, everybody made money…made good money. We signed the contracts, and they bought $3,000 worth of commercials on the show. And they had me come up and do a spot, which ran on my show. But then they did another spot that ran on all the other stations. So I kind of got screwed on that. But that was okay.  
 

So we went up and did the Six Flags shows. I have to tell you, the first show was on a Thursday night, and was open only to the park employee’s families. It was a real thin crowd that first night and it was real stiff. We didn’t have it down yet. That whole first weekend, it was kind of weird, real half-assed crowds. The second weekend, the weather was warming up. It was, like, 68 – 70 degrees here.  
 

When I got to Six Flags, I had to park in the back of the complex. And I had a hand truck, a two-wheeler, that I used for all my stuff: my costume, my bass guitar, all the things I used for my show. And I had to wheel it all through the park to the theater we were at, they had us in a theater with a big stage and everything. And they had built me a set. They re-created my TV set up on the stage there and everything. They built me a wall, and I brought some of the props from the ozone set.  
 

Anyway, like I say, that first weekend was kind of slow. The second weekend, the park’s just packed, lots of people. And I’m wheeling through, I’m not in make-up or anything. I’m just wheeling through. And when I rounded that corner to where the theater was, it just stopped me in my tracks. ‘Cause there was at least 350 people standing in line for at least an hour and a half, waiting to get into this thing. And I was just, “Oh my god!” 
 

We were all kind of shocked. So we snuck in the back door of the theater. We got in there and it was standing room only for all three shows. They cheered and it was just great. And we started working out the bugs then and got into a routine. We did the same kind of show every time.  
 

By the third week of October though, the weather started turning. And the crowds started diminishing. ‘Cause who’s going to come to an amusement park and walk around in 30 degrees? And they had people working the park in costumes, and they had to work outside. I know they were freezing. We were the only place in the park that had heat. By Halloween night it was like a ghost town in there, man. Nobody was in the park. 
 

So we had two weeks of standing room only. We did eighteen shows to standing room only. It went great, everybody had a good time with it. And by the end of the month…that last show…man, I was ready for it to be over. It was really grueling. I live about 60 miles from the park. So you would drive up there Friday, do it, drive home. The next day drive back again, drive home, up, back, up, back… 
 

DokG: It got old pretty fast.  
 

SOG: Yeah, it was old real fast. So that was that. We did it and it was a good thing. Unfortunately, the park was in financial trouble, which started that year. And by the next year, Fidge had died. The manager of the park loved Fidge so much, he just didn’t feel a show without him would be as family oriented. He didn’t give me a chance to explain what new ideas I had. We could have come up with something else that was just as fun. He wasn’t really that big a part of the stage show. He came out and did a couple of things. He might have been on the stage for 10 minutes.  
 

DokG: He did Fidge’s Fables… 
 

SOG:  Yeah, the fables. And he did ‘The Monster Mash’. That was about it. When we’d decided for him to do ‘The Monster Mash’, we realized there would be no way he could do it live on stage. So we decided to record it, and just let him lip [synch] it. It took him seventy takes to get through the song, seventy takes. And believe me, I was ripping the rest of my hair out of my head over that.  
 

DokG: Was the vocal recorded in pieces and stitched together? 
 

SOG: No, seventy takes! He would get three quarters of the way through the song and screw up. We had to start all over again.  
 

DokG: There was no way to punch in a partial vocal? 
 

SOG: No way to edit. We were running a CD with the music along the vocal, mixed and going directly into a burner. Live. I’ll tell you what I had to do to get him to do it right. He could never start the vocal at the right time. He was just so off. So I had to sit there with a ruler and smack him the leg when he was supposed to start sing. Bam! And he’d go to the next line. I said, “When you feel the ruler leave your leg, shut up. Then – smack – do the next line. Then he’d read the wrong line. He’d lose his place on the sheet. Seventy takes. But I don’t think the audience caught on. I think they thought he sung it live.

DokG: Oh yeah, the effect was god from the audience. I thought he was singing from the stage.  
 

SOG: The Six Flags shows were really nice for Fidge. Down here in Massillon, we couldn’t see my TV show. Nobody carried the station. So he had no idea of the viewer response. He wouldn’t get any phone calls.   Nobody around town would saw, “Hey, we seen the show and it’s funny as hell.” ‘Cause nobody seen it.  
 

But people up north seen it. And it was really cool when he finally got to go to Six Flags. People would stick around to get autographs, whole families. One guy brought his kid in. He had a speech impediment. And Fidge talked a little funny. The guy said, “We brought him to meet you because he can relate to you.” It was big thing for that kid to meet Fidge.  
 

I was so glad the little guy got to see the love from the people, and got a feel for the effect he had on them. He had no clue up until then. So he did get to see that, and that was good.  
 

When he died, I at first had no idea. We didn’t hang out socially. It was a Monday afternoon when the phone rang. It was some guy from town here. “Keven, did you hear about Ronnie?” I said, “What? What did he do now?” “Well, he passed, man. He passed away” “What! He’s dead? What happened?!” “He was at the bar, and some people were feeding him alcohol. It’s all cloudy, we’re still not sure.”  
 

This is Monday afternoon at 4 o’clock. We’ve got to hit the air Wednesday night with the game show. What am I going to do? I immediately called the Klaus’. I said, “Hey, man. Fidge died.” “What are you going to do?” “Well, obviously I’ve got to put together some kind of tribute for him.” I mean, I’ve got to do something. We can’t just go on with, “Here’s the game! Here we go!”  
 

So I got virtually no sleep from that point on. I went downstairs and started pulling out tapes. And I was amazed at how much shit he had did in the time he was here. It was quite overwhelming. I can remember getting all done with the editing, and I was just kind of numb from it all. It was Tuesday afternoon, and the show was going on the air Wednesday night. I had a moment there where it all caught up with me. I kind of broke down a little bit. Goddamn! I felt really pissed because after all that time and effort, feeding him lines, getting his little act together…everything was in vain. It was all flushed down the toilet. How do you start over now? How do you turn around and make it different?  
 

Then I had to sit back and think how I’d done nine and half years without the guy, before he was there. So this can’t be that impossible. Let’s just go back to the roots, you know? At that point, I had to become the buffoon again. I had to do Bud Abbott and Lou Costello at the same time.   
 

DokG: I can see that. When you were partnered with Fidge, you assumed the role of the straight man – or the adult.  
 

SOG: When Jungle Bob took over, it was a whole different thing. ‘Cause obviously, I couldn’t grab Jungle Bob by the neck and start choking him.  
 

DokG: As tempting as that might be sometimes… 
 

SOG: ‘Cause that wasn’t his act. And he would problems with that, ‘cause that’s not what he was about. He’ll buffoon as much as anybody else and act like he’s dumb, but there were limits. I couldn’t stretch it with him. So that was hard. It was hard to get a feel with him at first, and I didn’t want to push it. I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. I guess it was like getting Shemp to replace Curly in the Three Stooges. Or maybe Joe Besser! It’s a strain at first.   
 

Jungle Bob used to be part of Sweed’s show. But he wasn’t happy with how his segments were going down. I think he was fine until Sweed’s time slot got shifted to no man’s land. And once they started cutting back his hosting time to five minutes per show, there was no more time for Jungle Bob. Everybody accused Jungle Bob of jumping ship, but he didn’t. What happened was, there was a guy, Dave Shaw, who booked Sweed for an appearance at a drive-in. And when the time came for the appearance, Sweed cancelled, for no reason. He didn’t feel like going, he was sick, I don’t know what it was. So that’s when Dave Shaw called me and said, “I work at this drive-in, we’re interested in some summer appearances. Would you like to appear?” And I don’t know if that was some spiteful move on his part to stick it to Sweed. Though I think that’s what was behind it, if truth must be told.  
 

So I met Dave Shaw for lunch. I’d never met the guy before. We met at the Sheraton Suites in Cuyahoga Falls, which was about half way for both of us. He talked about the drive-in, what he wanted. I gave him a price, we negotiated, I said yes, I’d do it. A week later, he gives me a call and says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. When you appear, Jungle Bob is going to be here. Do you have any problems with that?” I knew he’d been on Sweed’s show, I’d seen him on Sweed’s show, though I’d never met the guy. I said, “Absolutely not. I don’t care.” As long as I was getting my dough, I could care less. Fine, you know? Less I have to do.  
 

And so we did it. We both appeared at the drive-in. And he was a nice guy. We both clicked. We got along good, there was no tension. I think they [Sweed’s crew] might have had this picture of me that wasn’t true. I was exactly the opposite. They thought they’d see this smart-ass, this unappreciative guy, come in…I was anything but that, you know? I was happy to be there, I was willing to work with anybody. Everything was cool.  
 

So after two appearances at the drive-in, it was natural to say, “Hey, Jungle Bob. Would you like to come on the show? Why don’t you bring some animals on the game show? So he did. Jungle Bob came down to the game show. He came on a few times. By that time, Sweed had been bumped to three in the morning. And once Jungle Bob and I had done the show at the drive-in, Sweed was quick to pull the plug on him ever coming back [to The Ghoul Show]. So, it wasn’t like he jumped ship. He just saw a ship that was slowly sinking and stepped lightly into a lifeboat before it went under. And he’d never set out to do that. It just happened. Of course, if you look at the other side, they probably thought it was all planned out, that it was a spiteful move. And it really wasn’t. Truthfully, when I tuned into Sweed’s show at the time, I thought his best segment was Jungle Bob’s. But I never had a thought of having him on my show.  
 

So Jungle Bob came down to the show a few times, Fidge ended up passing away, we did the tribute show, and they [The Klaus’] announced that they was going to get a replacement for Fidge. They said it was open to anybody. Send us your tape, call us up, we’ll line you up for an appearance. What do you do? We’re looking for a score keeper.  
 

DokG: They were originally interested in a woman, weren’t they?  
 

SOG: They thought that a pair of big jugs on the screen would lift…something. I wasn’t against that. I said okay. But everybody who came in…they didn’t fit. This one chick who came in, she was good looking. But she comes in and says, “I just came from this wine tasting party. I think I maybe had one too many. I’m alright though.” I said alright. We clip the mic on her, and just before we go on she says, “Oh by the way. I don’t want you to mention anything about me drinking wine, ‘cause my son will be watching.” And I went, “Eh…this isn’t going to work.”  
 

So, I kept on having Jungle Bob on for animal segments. And when there was no one there to keep the score, I let him do it. Now we had other substitutes, and we had women and what have you. But Jungle Bob was the only one who was a natural on camera. He was already a performer. He had been on the air with Sweed. And even before that, he had been on ‘The Morning Exchange’.  
 

DokG: And then there’s the tie-in with [60s TV host and animal handler] Jungle Larry. Jungle Bob was carrying on a tradition himself.  
 

SOG: That’s how I felt. I thought that’d be kind of nice. Then again, I never meant to take another part of Sweed’s show. He’d never believe that. He’s certain it was for spite. But absolutely not, it just happened that way.  
 

DokG: It’s a small pond.  
 

SOG: It’s a very small pond, and Jungle Bob worked out. [The Klaus’] did want Jungle Bob at first. They was dead set on getting some woman in there, but nobody fit the bill. They’d send some chick in there and wouldn’t even know her, we’d have no chemistry. It was just hard. Or else some girl would show up and her boyfriend would be there in the back of the studio with his arms folded, you know? And it’s like, “Ay, yi yi…what do we do here?”  
 

DokG: Gee, that sounds like fun.  
 

SOG: So that was the end of that. Finally, they called a meeting and said, “Bring Jungle Bob into the office.” So we went in, and they said to Jungle Bob, “Obviously you’re the guy. We want to start paying you.” So they did. They put him on the payroll. He got Fidge money, but at least he got money. And they were even saying, “Maybe in time we can come up with a Jungle Bob show, a kid’s show with some animals.”  
 

DokG: Sounds like a good Saturday afternoon thing.  
 

SOG: Exactly. When we walked out of that office, I thought, “We’ve got another year of this at least.” Why would they go through all the trouble of putting the guy on the payroll? Two weeks later, they cancelled the show.  
 

DokG: They put it on “hiatus”.  
 

SOG: They put it on hiatus, that’s what they said. “We’re putting it on hiatus for now, ‘cause we’re having financial problems here. We don’t have any sponsors.” Plus they were carrying Ohio State basketball, and the games would happen to be on Wednesday night. The first year, they thought the game was important enough that they’d move it to Monday’s. By the second year, it was no longer important. So they started pre-empting. So between November and March, it would be on one week, or maybe two. It would be off for three, come on for one, be off for two, come on for two, be off for three. And that’s the way it worked, which did nothing for my paycheck. 
 

DokG: I’m sure it was difficult to keep a rhythm 
 

SOG: It was hard. But I’m skipping ahead of myself. What had happened is, they had wanted me to stop the movie show once they started the game show. But I told them the only way I’d do the game show is if they kept the movie show on. So I agreed to forfeit the movie show money in return for the game show money. But I didn’t care, as long as I was getting paid. At that point, the movie was easy, ‘cause I had years and years of reruns I could tap into. So there wasn’t much work that had to be done. They wanted me to put more effort into the game show, which I probably should have did, but I didn’t.  
 

But then when they decided to stop the game show, they assumed I would take the movie off. Because when the game show stopped, the money stopped. That’s what they said. But at that point, I was so close to twenty years on the air. And my goal was the twenty years. I had 
 

DokG: When all this happened, you were at the eighteen year mark. 
 

SOG: Correct. I was doing a lot of appearances, a lot of conventions, and I was actually making a pretty good business selling DVDs. And they knew the viewers were still there. So the station managed to devalue the show, but they kept it on.  
 

DokG: They still scheduled the movie show two nights a week. 
 

SOG: Still two nights a week. I would have stopped it if they had said it was going to move to a 1 o’clock in the morning time slot”, or something like that. I would have been thinking, “Ehhhhh…I don’t know…” 
 

DokG: Still, it’s surprising they didn’t at least cut it back to once a week. Clearly, they must have been thinking there was still an audience interested in the show.  
 

SOG: They realized there were viewers. I’m probably getting more mail than all of their other local programs combined. Still, to this day. The Klaus’ know that. They like to hire people who have a history. They like that Howie [Chizic] might have the oldest radio talk show in the United States.  
 

DokG: Right, they even brought in Bill “Smoochy” Gordon [an early Cleveland TV personality] for a show.

 
SOG: Yeah, “Smoochy” went back to the old channel 5 days in the late 50s, early 60s. He had a show with Dorothy Fulheim. They did a show called ‘The One O’clock Club. It was a talk show. They did a movie, and would have guests in, like Bob Hope. Dorothy Fulheim, hell, she interviewed Castro. You know, Dorothy was on [Johnny] Carson.  
 

DokG: I may have actually seen her on Carson. When I first began seriously researching Ghoulardi, I came across some material on Dorothy and recognized her somehow.  
 

SOG: She was on talking about her interview with Castro. She was a piece of work.  
 

DokG: “Smoochy” Gordon was on the CAT for maybe a year, back in the late 90s? 
 

SOG: They had this show, and I think they had a couple different hosts. It was kind of like a senior citizen’s show. “Smoochy” Gordon had moved out of the area for years and years. He was back, and doing this show…’Senior Talk’, I think was the name of it. 
 

DokG: The was ‘Can We Talk’. 
 

SOG: It aired for awhile. I’m not sure why “Smoochy” decided not to do it anymore. Maybe it was ill health, I really don’t know.  
 

DokG: It’s just interesting that you were on the same station for awhile with that piece of history as well.  
 

SOG: Exactly. 
 

DokG: Speaking of history; Big Chuck is set to retire next year [Big Chuck’s final show aired 06-16-07], The Ghoul has been off the air since ’04, and who knows how much longer the Son of Ghoul show is on the air. What do feel is going to happen once the last connection to the Ghoulardi legacy disappears from the air? And how do you feel about your place in that legacy?  
 

SOG: I think once it all comes to an end, in this day and age, and the way television is today, it’s all going to be down to dollars and cents. You might see hosts continue, but money is going to talk. I’m sure once Chuck retires, if I walked into channel 8’s office and said I have two sixty thousand dollar sponsors ready to sign on, they’d be ready to negotiate. But if a person walked in and said, “Boy, I’d like to do this!” they’d show him the door. 
 

DokG: “Boy, it would be really neat if continued to show hosted movies like in the old days…” That’s not going to cut it. But it does seem that the people in Cleveland have a unique loyalty to their horror hosts. 
 

SOG:  That’s just it. The viewers do have that loyalty. And Chuck was absolutely right when he said people here like things to stay the same. Unfortunately, the station management has changed, and they don’t feel the same way.  
 

DokG: They’re coming from out town. 
 

SOG: When the new management came into FOX 8, the first thing they wanted to do was “get rid of the old guy.” The “old guy” was Dick Goddard, who was a staple around here for years, doing the weather. They had no idea of the impact he had in the area, no idea. They were ready to shuck Chuck and John, too. I think that’s another reason Chuck’s kind of thinking about retiring. It’s getting up there in years. He don’t want to go on the air and drool…although I have.  
 

I don’t really understand, but Chuck’s my buddy now. It’s like all of a sudden. It took twenty years. It was a hard thing, man. I grew up watching my favorite local television idols, people you feel like you know’ cause you seen them so long, Not being excepted by them was really a kick in the groin. Really hard. Hard.  
 

DokG: Where do you think the change came in? 
 

SOG: The change came when certain people proved who they really were. And I think my longevity factored in. If you look around, people can plainly see there’s no hassle. There is nobody stirring the cauldron, there is nobody making trouble on this end. Unfortunately, it took twenty years to knock it into these hardhead’s heads. I’m not trying to put down Sweed on anything, but he spent many years telling people, and the people around him, that I was completely this monster. He really painted a bad story. I just did this out of love, out of love of the character, out of love of being a broadcaster, I think. I never did it to try and ruin somebody’s life, ruin their livelihood, and burn somebody.  
 

DokG: As far as accepting you, do you think it helps Big Chuck that he’s seeing the finish line? 
 

SOG: Obviously. We did a convention together recently, and I was on his show advertising for two weeks. In Northeastern Ohio, there’s not one carrier that doesn’t have Fox 8. You’re on satellite, you get FOX 8. You’re on antenna, you get FOX 8. You’re on cable, you get it. You get DirectTV, you get it. It’s on everything. And I think the fact of appearing on Chuck’s show, showing that everybody’s friendly, made it alright. And for some reason, Chuck says it’s okay, so it’s okay. And there are some people who were standoffish before, who gave my anniversary show a chance and got to see a side of the story that was never told to them. A lot of people said it was an educational evening more than anything.  
 

So that was good. If that’s what it takes, you know? I said to Chuck, “It’s obvious, don’t you think, that the only person who causes trouble is not here and there’s no trouble?” Chuck says, “Well…yeah.” Plus, Chuck’s got a year to go. What does he care? He ain’t making enemies now. He’ll just slap you on the back. “Fine, cool, whatever.”  
 

DokG: Chuck has over 40 years on the air, he’s worked with Ernie [Anderson] Lil’ John. If there’s anyone who’s going to have an appreciation for the Cleveland host legacy, it’s going to be him. I’m sure he sees the fondness you have for all of this.  
 

SOG: You know, when Chuck say’s he’s close to Ernie, I don’t think they fully understand it. Chuck really loved Ernie as a person. I have to tell you, I once sat next to Chuck in a theater during a screening of some of the old Ghoulardi footage. A clip came on, and when Ernie laughed on screen, Chuck literally wiped a tear out of his eye. It really meant something to Chuck, you know what I mean? I’ve always been very respectful around him. And we’ve done enough appearances together now, that I don’t think there’s going to be any problem now. Maybe it’s good it took this long, ‘cause it made the 20^th something that much more special. Maybe if we’d all been a happy family ten years ago, it wouldn’t have had the same impact. 
 

DokG: Oh, you again… 
 

SOG: Exactly, exactly. The twenty years for me has been an intense roller coaster ride. You climb that hill, you get to the top, and suddenly you’re down in that dip – and you might be down in that dip for quite a while. And right when it seems like nothing’s happening, and things are just stale and it’s not fun anymore, and my energy’s draining, I suddenly get a phone call saying, “Hey, would you like to come out to San Francisco for three days? We’re going to fly you out, and put you up in a room, and pay you, and do appearances, we’ll film some stuff.” And you think, “God, life’s pretty cool!”