CAPTAIN SATELLITE
Wiscononite Bob March was only 25 years old when he became Captain Satellite. KTVU,
an up-
Originally, Captain Satellite’s on-
Eventually, the set was upgraded to the saucer-
The “clear-
“5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Launch! FULL POWER!”
Cut to the pretaped footage of a saucer-
“Stand by for acceleration! Switching to stardrive!”
By now, stars (or at least blinking lights) would be visible through the Laser II’s windows (despite the fact that the model had no windows).
For the remainder of the hour, Captain Satellite would feature cartoons (moldy-
The show ran for a decade, due in no small part to March’s enthusiastic personality. He would occasionally crack himself up with bits of silliness, such as recommending “peanut butter and bubble gum sandwiches! They stick to your ribs—and everything else!”
After Captain Satellite said “over and out!” for the last time in 1968, March moved on to hosting the morning edition of KTVU’s Dialing for Dollars, which featured reruns of old sitcoms, such as The Patty Duke Show and Make Room For Daddy. March would draw tiny slips of paper from a drum; these slips had been cut from “the nine Bay Area telephone directories,” and he would phone one of the numbers. If the person answered the phone (which they often didn’t) and could correctly tell March “the count and the amount,” they would win a modest jackpot.
In 1973, March briefly made it to the big screen in Magnum Force, the second film in the “Dirty Harry” series. The film opens with an infamous mobster’s case being dismissed on a technicality. The mobster is positively smug. The prosecuting attorney (played by March) is bitter. He tells the assembled reporters:
“This has happened before. It will probably happen again. I have no more comments!”
March returned to school and received his Masters Degree in marriage and family counseling. He has since retired, and, at last report, is living in El Dorado County.
Captain Satellite’s direct competition was The Mayor Art Show, which ran on KRON from 1959 to 1966.
As embodied by the amiable Art Finley, Mayor Art wore a high hat and tails. Each
of the three-
As with Captain Satellite, cartoons were the order of the day, including the never-
Findley’s hosting style was more frenetic and slapstick than March’s. For instance,
he had a hand puppet sidekick named Ring-
Mayor Art had his own vocabulary: the handheld microphone was “the salt shaker,”
and unsafe activities were condemned as being “danger-
“SUB-
Shortly after Mayor Art ended, Finley was given the thankless task of hosting KRON’s
short-
Finley went on to great success as a talk radio host, both in the United States and Canada. He retired from public life in 1995.
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