Svengoolie

The origin of "Svengoolie" is in a show called "Screaming Yellow Theatre" with Jerry Bishop as the Svengoolie character. When this show was cancelled, his young writer Rich Koz took up the mantle and "Son of Svengoolie" began airing on UHF channel WFLD-32 in Chicago. When WFLD became part of the FOX network in 1986, Son of Svengoolie was deemed "not suitable" and promptly discarded.

Finally, in 1993, after 7 years with FOX (with "The Koz Zone" and in other capacities) Koz resurrected the Svengoolie character and found a new home for the series on WCIU (a small local Chicago cable channel). Now simply called "Svengoolie", the show airs to this day, showing a long list of old science fiction and horror movies (mostly low budget) with gags, cheesy effects and skits thrown in during the segue to and from commercial.

Very funny and original idea which was a major influence on things like Mystery Science Theatre 3000.