Wonderama
| Wonderama | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Game show |
| Presented by | various (see below) |
| Ending theme | "Kids Are People Too" (1967–1977) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 26 |
| Production | |
| Location(s) | New York City |
| Running time |
|
| Distributor | Metromedia |
| Release | |
| Original release |
|
| External links | |
| Website | www |
Wonderama is a children's television program that originally appeared on the Metromedia-owned stations from 1955 to 1977. The show was revived from 1980 to 1983, and again in 2017.
Wonderama aired on its originating station, WNEW-TV in New York City, as well as in five other markets in which Metromedia owned television stations: WTTG in Washington D.C., KMBC-TV in Kansas City, KTTV in Los Angeles, WXIX-TV in Cincinnati, and WTCN-TV in Minneapolis – Saint Paul. The show was three hours long for most of its run on Sunday mornings.
In the 1960s, Wonderama aired in a one-hour weekday version in addition to the three-hour Sunday show. The one-hour program lasted until 1970.
The show scaled back to two hours in 1977 before WNEW canceled it in December of that year. The last produced show was taped December 21 before airing on December 25. In an interview on WNEW's local talk show Midday with Bill Boggs on the day of Wonderama's cancellation, host Bob McAllister claimed to have no idea why the show ended. However, in a 1990s interview with the Southern California interview show Remember When, McAllister stated that an advertisement that he bought in The New York Times telling viewers to stop watching Wonderama might have led to the program's cancellation. McAllister bought the Times ad after he became upset when an ad for the 1972 Charles Bronson movie The Mechanic aired during the show.
After its cancellation, Wonderama continued in two-hour Sunday morning reruns from January 1978 to June 1980. McAllister reportedly was unhappy with edits to the reruns, which usually eliminated celebrity performances in order to avoid having to pay royalties.
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