When I was a child of the 1960s, it was the wild west when it came to keeping kids entertained on television. Sure there were national shows such as The Friendly Giant and Captain Kangaroo, amd Romper Room, Soupy Sales and Sherri Lewis and Lambchop were everywhere back then, but the regional shows are the ones that fascinated me. If you had a black and white TV and an imagination, it was fantastic.
In the Toronto area, in the early ’60s, one of my favourites was Kiddo the Clown on then fledgling CFTO and starring future comedy director Trevor Evans. Around the same time, strange shows such as Professor’s Hideaway, Schnizel House and Big Al out of Kitchener, Ontario, were cueing up cartoons, talking to puppet friends, and telling kids to look under their beds for a birthday present. These low budget local efforts inspired future generations to come up with Krusty the Clown on The Simpsons, or even Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
Across the border from Canada there were several children’s shows coming out of Buffalo, New York. One featured a skipper with a marionette first mate who showed plenty of Popeye, I watched in horrow when he ended his series with the ship they were all on supposedly sinking! There were also filmed shows such as the bizarre Diver Dan — about a deep sea diver who spoke with marionette fish — which originated in Philadelphia. On CFTO’s Cartoon Playhouse, Pick-a-Letter with George Feyer still haunts me to this day.
One show aimed higher: WKBW’s Rocketship 7. Hosted by Dave Thomas, who was known to parents as the station’s weatherman and mid-morning Dialing for Dollars cohost. Thomas was in the right spot at the right time, seizing upon the space race to the moon as a cool theme for a kiddie series. With the original seven Mercury astronauts making headlines, trim and personable Thomas ran the show from a plywood and paint flight deck, bantering with a large, bulb-blinking robot named Promo.
Beyond the usual mix of Gumby and Davy and Goliath cartoons (and later Roger Ramjet), Thomas asked his young audience to send in drawings of space capsules, or help raise money to bring snow leopards to the Buffalo Zoo. There was a gentle mix of education and entertainment that — back before Sesame Street and children’s programming was ever regulated — made Rocketship 7 take off as one of the safest havens in the kiddie genre.
Thomas hosted the three hours a day, five days a week, morning series for 16 years — from 1962 to 1978. Then he moved to Philadelphia, where he became the weatherman and a daytime talk show host and a Hall of Fame TV personality in a whole new region under the name Dave Roberts.
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His real name, however, is David Boreanaz, Sr. Thanks to an introduction from his busy actor son, David Boreanaz (SEAL Team, Bones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and a little help from Bones creator and executive producer Hart Hanson, I’ve spent several weeks in 2025 interviewing Boreanaz. We spoke over zoom calls and reminisced about Rocketship 7 and other WKBW adventures. Boreanaz, who turns 90 next Valentine’s Day, holds all those memories dear and it has been a great pleasure getting to know him and to share in those stories.
Which is the only way to experience Rocketship 7 today as the entire series is lost! All 16 seasons, save for a few minutes at the end of one episode, disappeared after the original tapes were erased, a practice all too standard in the early days of local television. So many pioneering broadcasts, especially in the world of regional children’s programming, failed to get any kind of archival attention.
You can, however, rocket back to Rocketship 7 right now with a click of a link. Enjoy this 47-minute trip in the wayback machine with a true gentleman and a genuine TV pioneer, David Boreamaz Sr. This special video episode of brioux.tv: the podcast will also be available in audio-only form starting first thing Monday morning.
