Here in Pittsburgh from the early 1960's to the early 1980's, we used to have a horror show hosted by a man named "Chilly Billy" Cardille and it was called "Chiller Theater" on late Saturday nights on Channel 11, WIIC, now WPXI. If you see the old movie, "Night of the Living Dead," Chilly Billy is the TV reporter, IIRC. Anyways, they would use to have skits and stuff as well as talk about space aliens, UFO abductions, and othere paranormal stuff. I remember as a kid, eating pizza, downing pop and so on as we watched it every Saturday. There were others like that too, when we first got WOR on cable, they had something similar as well as WPTT, Channel 22 when it started up as an indy UHF station in 1978.
Today, we have an indy UHF station, low power, channel 59 here in Pittsburgh that show old shows like "Streets of San Francisco," "Hawaii Five-O," old Lucy shows from the 1960's and so on so it still exists here in Pittsburgh. On channel 59 on Saturday nights, there is a horror show hosted much like Chiller Theater used to do although it is more like a 21st Century version and it is called "The It's Alive Show" (
www.theitsaliveshow.com) where they show much the same crappy movies Chilly Billy did although there are skits and even short horror films by local Pittsburgh producers. It brings back a lot of memories when I was a kid as well as there are some references to Chiller Theater and there is even an auto repair commercial hosted by a midget who used to be on Chiller Theater (or it could be his son) who now owns an auto repair business. The main host is "Professor Emcee Square." It's a real riot and hoot. I'm ready to get some pizza and pop and enjoy myself, bring on the acid reflux!
I know here in Pittsburgh, we still have the mentality and though processes that are still very much in the 1950's or even the 1930's. Sometimes that's bad, other times that is good. There is a joke out there that if the world is coming to an end, move to Pittsburgh, you get an extra 50 to 70 years to live.
