All this talk about the Stooges on TBS takes me back to my childhood. I first became interested in the Stooges after discovering them on KTVT (Channel 11 in Dallas) back in the late-1970s/early-1980s. I would travel there in the summer to visit my grandparents. On weekday mornings, KTVT aired a one-hour program titled
Slam Bang Theater. I believe this show originated as a studio show, similar to, say, Officer Joe Bolton's program or
The Bozo Show, in that it mixed live-action characters with various cartoons and shorts from the Stooges, as well as
Our Gang. This, of course, was done before a live audience made up of kids. That's the impression I get from what I've read about the history of the show.
That aside, by the time I started watching, the show was one-hour, with a mix of Stooges,
Our Gang and various cartoons. That was my formal introduction to the Stooges. Living in San Antonio, with no independent TV stations, you can imagine how excited I was to discover our boys on TBS, which then went by WTBS. WTBS, at that time, aired a weekday-morning show titled
Super Station Funtime whose content was the same as
Slam Bang Theater. As I recall, WTBS aired one short per broadcast, and ran them in chronological order, starting with
Women Haters and going straight through to
Sappy Bullfighters. This is how I built my original collection of Stooges shorts. I never had all 190, but thanks to WTBS, I had a fair share of them. I also recall that, for a period of time, WTBS also aired a half-hour show on weekday-afternoons titled
Bugs Bunny and Friends which also included Stooges shorts.
As for
Slam Bang Theater, it eventually evolved into the half-hour
Three Stooges and Friends before finally being dropped from the KTVT line-up all together. KTVT is no longer an independent station. I believe it is now Dallas' CBS affiliate. As for San Antonio, we eventually got our own independent stations in the mid-1980s. KRRT began airing the Stooges one hour a week, on Sundays from 9-10AM. Later, they added another hour, on Saturdays from 6-7AM. Unfortunately, KRRT has since dropped the Stooges from it's line-up. During the boys run on the channel, however, (if memory serves) all 190 shorts were aired at least once.
