Chicago's Mayor of 'Cartoon Town' Dies at 86

[Mark Jeffries]

Cartoonist Bill Jackson came to Chicago to do two little-remembered kids shows for CBS' WBBM, but he flowered at then-UHF independent WFLD in 1968 with "Cartoon Town," which immediately attracted the attention of kids with its colorful group of puppet characters, Mr. Jackson's cartooning talents and his penchant for putting in as much production as possible regarding the low budget he had to work with, writing, voicing and designing the shows--which often included a running serial--with the assistance of only two assistant puppeteers.  Its hipness for the time immediately made inroads with kids over the calcified lineup of WGN ("Bozo's Circus," "Garfield Goose") and probably sold more UHF TV sets than WFLD's expensive package of White Sox games.  Mr. Jackson moved the show (by then called "The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show," giving billing to the smoke-billowing, crabby, egomanical postmaster) to WGN in 1972, but only lasted one year.  He then moved to ABC's WLS in 1975 with  the weekly "Gigglesnort Hotel," putting his characters in a more educational format (not that he had already been slipping little bits of learning into his shows over the years), which went into national syndication and ran there much longer than the three years of production.  To Chicago kids of a certain age, his talents will be long remembered:

https://www.robertfeder.com/2022/01/19/bill-bj-jackson-1935-2022/

[Bob Jersey]

Feder didn't mention, but Wiki did, thanks to Ted Okuda and Jack Mulqueen's compendium of Chicago kids' telly: the shorter tenure at 'GN was precipitated by Jackson's having to commute between there and NY, where NBC4 bought essentially the same format under the title "BJ's Bunch"...     B

Mark Jeffries, Jan 19th: