Dear Ol' Channel 20

Today as I was driving around listening to my Hanna-Barbera Theme Songs CD I got to thinking about one of the greatest influences in my life. Probably the biggest reason that I love television, love cartoons and always wanted to work in television was my favorite TV station growing up: WDCA-TV 20 in Washington D.C. (actually I'm pretty sure they were out of Bethesda, MD but they were a D.C. market station.) I was a Channel 20 addict, and could easily watch Channel 20 all day long except for The 700 Club and Barney Miller. In the 70's and early 80's kiddie programming on the local station was mostly old theatrical animated shorts. Channel 20 used to run Popeye, Casper, Bugs Bunny, and one of my favorites Mighty Mouse all the time. I guarantee I had seen every cartoon that station owned at least five times! They also ran a block of cartoons called "KARTOON KARNIVAL" which also included Hanna-Barbera shorts. Mostly KARNIVAL ran the same cartoons 20 ran all the time, but every once in a while a Hanna-Barbera cartoon would be slipped in and that's where my love of H-B began. Another great thing about Channel 20 is they had cartoons on Sunday morning when the rest of TV Land was running religious stuff! Sunday Mornings and WHEELIE AND THE CHOPPER BUNCH was a ritual in our house for many years!

Channel 20 didn't just run great cartoons. They also had a host and his name was Captain 20. Captain 20 was awesome! He'd pop up in between shows with contests or a public service announcement reminding us not to try and fly like Superman. Captain 20 even pulled weekend duty `cause he was always there during WHEELIE AND THE CHOPPER BUNCH! Captain 20 was also a part of two shows that were unique to Channel 20 and I always loved these shows because I knew, even at a young age, that they were low budget and locally produced and I appreciated that!

WOW! was on in the mornings, and it was actually on late in the morning and you couldn't see it when you had to go to school. It was a treat for days off and summer. WOW! Consisted of Captain 20 and a small handful of kids. At the top of the show the kids would slide down a sliding board through a wall and come up to the microphone and say their name. (The sliding board coming out of the way was the coolest thing ever, and to this day I think it's one of the coolest things ever!) WOW! also featured Magic Picture Frame. Kids would send in their art and see it appear in the Magic Picture Frame on TV. That was also cool. I never had the guts to send in my own picture because my brother and I used to sit there and make fun of everyone else's artwork so I figured someone would do the same to my creation! Captain 20 also gave the kids a snack...usually Ants on a Log - celery with peanut butter and raisins. They'd also watch a little film, the only one I can remember is HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON and they did a craft project! WOW! was an awesome half hour of TV!

Then there was KIDS' BREAK which was on at 2:30 in the afternoon. Again, at school while it was on...but I still caught it whenever I could! KIDS' BREAK was hosted by Howard Huge, a puppet that looked like a Cookie Monster puppet spray painted green. He sat at a little David Letterman-esque desk and told jokes and introduced clips like "Word of the Day" or "Timmy Time". Timmy Time was a clock and you were asked to tell what time he was saying on his face. Most of the segments on KIDS' BREAK involved some sort of interaction with the audience. It was fun! Captain 20 would drop by once and a while to help out with a segment, and Chef Combo would also make an appearance. Chef Combo was a little Italian chef puppet that was already the star of his own PSA's on the station. Sometimes on the show, they would feature the KIDS' BREAK ART GALLERY where kids could send in their art work and have it displayed on TV. Again, I never sent anything in!

WOW! and KIDS' BREAK made big impressions on me as a kid, and I've remember both shows quite well over the years. In fact, when I was a producer with Comcast Public Access we even talked about doing a kids show heavily based on WOW! The working title was SUPER WOW! It never got off the ground, but I would have stayed up all night building a wall with a sliding board coming out of it!

My internet search for pictures to go with this post not only yielded some great pictures but also tons of information on Captain 20 and his shows! It turns out that the good Captain himself was responsible for everything that happened on WOW! and KIDS' BREAK. Not only did he write the shows but he performed all the puppets too!

Dick Dyszel is the man responsible for all the greatness that was WDCA TV-20! Last time I went searching for stuff about Captain 20 he lived in Chicago and was DJing at weddings. He recently moved back to the area and is now doing he DJ thang out of Virginia. How awesome would it be to have Captain 20 DJ your wedding reception. Heck, he's a Captain...he could just go ahead and perform the ceremony too! That would be sweet. You could slide down a sliding board through the wall of the church and have Howard Huge be the best man! That would be freakin' awesome!

Anywho...check out these cool websites: Captain 20.com which appears to have been put together by Mr. Dyszel himself. On his site, not only can you watch the PSA about not trying to fly like Superman, you can watch a crystal-clear, glitch free episode of KIDS' BREAK in its entirety. And yes, I did sit here and watch the entire episode a half hour ago and I loved every minute of it! Also check out the stills from an episode of WOW! There is another website called Kaptain Kidshow, a site dedicated to memories of kids programming in D.C.