Romper Room

I was the last Romper Room teacher in Wichita, KS, hosting from 1977-1986. I too was a real teacher. In fact, I was a university teacher educator, helping would-be teachers become elementary educators, during the years I was Miss Marti. Under Ronald Reagan, all federal agencies were deregulated, including the FCC. Previously, the FCC required commercial TV stations (I was on an ABC affiliate, KAKE) to produce a certain number of weekly hours of educational children's programming. That requirement disappeared under federal deregulation, and so did children's shows like Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo (on CBS affiliates; his show was picked up by PBS, the only channel on which children's programming could still be found). The irony is that my ratings in my M-F morning time-slot were beating Phil Donohue, then very popular and programmed against me, but Romper Room was in the wrong demographic zone, children vs. adults who would spend money, even though it was always parents and grandparents who pointed me out to children when I was in public, i.e., adults were watching my program.

I wrote a paper on leadership in my Ph.D. program called "The Axing of Romper Room," for which I received an A+. I guess my passion showed/still shows through.