Bill Jackson and the WPTA children's shows

WPTA-TV, channel 21 — signed on 28 September 1957

The program, on a weaker record: WPTA, channel 21, signed on September 28, 1957, and its children's programming is remembered in station-history compilations — a tier below the newspaper record, and labeled as such here. By that account, the station's afternoon children's show was Popeye & the Rascals, hosted by Bill Jackson, working with the hand puppets "Fergie" and "Morty," the clown "Jingles," and "Cecil B. Rabbit." A separate children's-program listing remembers Fort Wayne's entry in the era's franchised format as "The Little Rascals Club," also hosted by Bill Jackson. The two titles may be one program remembered two ways, or successive versions of it; the record reached does not settle the point, and both names are printed as they stand in their sources. Jackson's act — host, puppets, clown, and cartoons — was the standard grammar of local children's television comedy, and WPTA's version of it is Fort Wayne's second documented example, after WKJG's Engineer John.

Sources:

1. WPTA station-history compilation (the station's history as assembled in the WPTA reference summary) — the sign-on of September 28, 1957; Popeye & the Rascals with Bill Jackson, the puppets Fergie and Morty, Jingles the clown, and Cecil B. Rabbit. A compiled station history, carried at that weight.
2. Children's television program listings of the era's local hosts — "The Little Rascals Club" of Fort Wayne, hosted by Bill Jackson, as the listing gives it.