Special thanks to Keith Andrews for this incredible rare picture of himself playing the part of the American icon Bozo
Special thanks to Keith Andrews for this incredible rare picture of himself playing the part of the American icon Bozo
My career in television began in 1966 as I took over for another guy who was going somewhere else. This took place at WQAD TV 8, Moline, Illinois. We were the third station in a small market.
I was Bozo from the beginning of the show on WQAD. I went to Boston for a week to learn how to put the makeup on and to be fitted with the costume. We did the show once a week. It was taped it on Thursday afternoon and it was played back on Saturday mornings.
I am not sure the reason why WQAD went with the Bozo Show. The history of WQAD was - in order to get their license, they promised a lot of prime time public service type programs and hardly ever delivered on any of them. We did not have any syndicated cartoons to show when we started Bozo, it seemed like WHBF had them all sewed up at the time. It sounded like it was a wonderful thing at first. It came across like it was going to go daily or something like that but it never did.
Someone took over for me when I left WQAD to become the Marketing Director of Bear Industries. The gentleman was named Tom I believe, he was a cameraman.
The deal would be that you signed up as a franchise type of thing and you paid them something to air the show any number of times. I went to a station in Boston and was fitted for the costume and was trained on how to put the make-up on and act. I sat and watched each of the shows. They were on five days a week out there, it was on every afternoon. When I was there, I was the only one in training.
I did make a couple of special appearances. The one that I remember in particular was at John O'Donnell Stadium in Davenport, Iowa. If I remember right, it was a Fourth of July event going on. We had developed two characters on the show and they were with me at that appearance as well. Rags and Patches were their names.
Patches was one of the film department guys who would edit the movies down a bit for TV and clean the commercials up. He donned the baggy pants and the charcoal on the face and a derby hat that had a hole in it. Rags was a high school girl that came in and said "I want to be on the show and I will be Rags" and she came in the Rags costume - Raggedy Ann. So the three of us started off together when we first went on the air.
An audience of little kids appeared on the program as well. Believe me, we had no problem filling the bleachers with children.
The format on the show included coming up with little skits and kidding back and forth with the kids. Due to the age of the kids however, you really didn't get much out of them. There were probably around twenty children on each show depending on how many showed up that day. I can not remember for sure but it seems to me that they had to call first in order to be able to appear on that day's episode, they couldn't just show up and get on the air.
The station decided that $40 was a personal appearance fee. I thought that the agreement was going to be for two hours. So one of the salesmen was trying to get me to go to Muscatine, Iowa for one of these appearances. It turned out that it was at a used car lot with no place to change and instead of a two hour appearance, it was for the entire day! I said no way, not for $40 and I turned it down. I am not sure what they were selling down there or how bad this guy needed a Bozo to roam around a used car lot but he certainly didn't need me bad enough.
I really never got extra money except for one or two personal appearances. The sales department would come up with ideas but then there would be no push.
My own kids knew that I was Bozo, it was not that big of a deal to them. By that time they were a bit too old for the show.
Bill Flannery and Don Raymond were buddies of mine at the station. Don was an announcer and did some news on the air. Jim King did the evening news and Flannery was just a photographer/reporter at the time and Don did some photography too, some on location stuff. We were shooting things on key-wound cameras with no sound when on location for the news. We would tape on 2" full rack tape recorders. Things have really changed!
More about Bozo on WQAD from a 1960's clipping in the Moline Dispatch.
Bozo the Clown has been enchanting children in this community for almost two years. He's not the baggy-pants type clown. Most of the pranks are pulled on Bozo himself.
Bozo cavorts on the television screen on Channel 8 at 10:30 each Saturday morning for 30 minutes. Bozo himself thinks "its great fun". He considers the role "a welcome change of pace."
Bozo will remain anonymous in this article, just as he is on the television screen. It really doesnt matter who he is, because Bozo is a fun character and part of the charm of the show is maintained through imagination.
It is a fact that Bozo is from this area and has three children himself - his oldest two are sort of non-committal on his "extra" role but his youngest still likes Bozo the Clown.
Bozo the Clown is really a syndicated character and the 150 Bozo cartoons are likewise syndicated. Each Bozo on a local television station has spent a week at a training center learing the characteristics the a clown, the make-up and some of the games. There are over a hundred Bozos in the country now.
Scheduling the happy clown show in the middle of Saturday mornings breaks up the mayhem of regular cartoons on Channel 8.
About 60 youngsters watch Bozo in the studio each week and there is a long waiting list, according to a station representative. These young viewers also participate in the activities on the show and receive a bag of goodies.
This grainy picture from a clipping the the Moline Dispatch shows Keith Andrews applying face paint to a boy at the Rock Island County Fair.
As Bozo says: "Its great fun" to know that children still like a clown.
Don Welch remembers his friend at WQAD and explains why Bozo went off the air -
Keith Andrews was the chaps name who played BOZO. He
left WQAD to become the marketing director for Bear
Manufacturing in Rock Island. Very talented fellow who
was in the programming department at the TV station
for several years. The fee to use the BOZO name and
likeness became too expensive, and once Keith left,
Art Swift (GM) just dropped the show. Actually, Vinnie
and Emmitt (from Acri Creature Feature) made several guest appearances on the show
and the little kids loved them. I was on at least
twice reading books to the kids. It was all "live" and
in our main studio A.
If you have any memorabilia, pictures or stories of WQAD's Bozo Show or other great items from the 1960's and 70's at WQAD, please email me!
For the last week, Bozo has been appearing at the Rock Island County Fair for an hour each afternoon. More than 200 children came to talk to Bozo on the first day he was there and many tried their talent at drawing Bozo to win an extra prize. 
Special thanks to Dave Coopman, author of "Someplace Special ... KSTT" for the image scan of the original Channel 8 logo.
