The 'UA' in the WUAB call letters stands for United Artists, the film studio that owned it at the time. The station was eventually sold to Gaylord Broadcasting in 1977.
Anyway, it's strange to think back how exciting it was for my siblings and me to get another TV channel back then. Locally, we only had Channels 3, 5 and 8 for years. Then Channel 61 signed on in January 1968, followed by Channel 43 later in the year. Suddenly we had a lot of options for our endless cartoon-watching.
I can even remember the printed flyer promoting Channel 43 that either came in the mail or as an insert with the newspaper. Why? Because it was strange-looking. It had a lot of what I now know as clip-art illustrations. The mention of Gilligan's Island (a favorite of ours) had a palm tree and a silhouette of a woman, who I think was supposed to represent Ginger.
Apparently, whatever advertising agency designed that flyer also designed the offbeat ad below, which ran in the Journal on October 31, 1968. The ad was promoting a longer broadcast day.
Note how the graphic for Underdog & Uncle Waldo humorously bears no resemblance to the actual characters (below)!
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| From left to right: Fillmore Bear, Hoppity Hooper and Uncle Waldo |
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| Underdog |
Anyway, we watched a lot of WUAB programming over the years, especially after school and on Saturday nights (reruns of Maverick, Wild, Wild West and Star Trek).
