Wonderama was a long-running children's television program that appeared on the Metromedia-owned stations from 1955 to 1986, with WNEW-TV in New York City being its originating station.
Wonderama also was run in five other markets in which Metromedia owned television stations, including WTTG in Washington D.C., KMBC-TV in Kansas City, KTTV in Los Angeles, WXIX-TV in Cincinnati and WTCN-TV in Minneapolis – Saint Paul. The show ran three hours long, and later two hours on Sunday mornings.
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Despite the frequent turnover of hosts throughout the 1950s, Wonderama experienced its greatest viewership by way of one-time Baltimore kids' show host Bob McAllister, who replaced Sonny Fox as host in 1967 and remained host until 1977.
Each show's taping included (but was not necessarily limited to) education, music, audience participation, games, interviews and cartoon shorts. Popular features of Wonderama during the McAllister years included:
After singing, Bob would canvass the audience for their own good news.
Each week, audience members received a package of parting gifts as detailed on the show, containing varying items including:
The program aired for three hours included several breaks to allow for cartoon insertions. On most of Metromedia's stations, these would be Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s. KMBC-TV in Kansas City, an ABC affiliate, the show only ran two hours without the cartoon inserts (since these stations did not own broadcast rights to cartoon shorts).
The program's closing theme song, sung by McAllister, was called Kids Are People Too ("wacka-doo, wacka-doo, wacka-doo") which was later adapted as the show's title when ABC picked it up as a Sunday morning kids show. The song was also featured on an album of music from Wonderama by McAllister called Oh Gee It's Great To Be A Kid.
In 1977, the show was scaled back to two hours before being canceled in December of that year. The last produced show was taped December 21, 1977 and aired on December 25, 1977. McAllister was upset when an advertisement for the 1972 Charles Bronson movie The Mechanic aired during the show. He bought an ad in the New York Times telling viewers to stop watching. In a 1990s interview with the Southern California interview show, "Remember When", McAllister said that might have led to the cancellation. However, in an interview on WNEW-TV's local talk show Midday with Bill Boggs on the day of the show's cancellation, McAllister claimed to have no idea why the show ended. After its cancellation Wonderama continued in two-hour Sunday morning reruns from January 1978 until June 1980. McAllister reportedly was unhappy with the edits, which usually eliminated celebrity performances in order to avoid having to pay royalty fees.
In the 1960s, Wonderama aired in a one-hour weekday version in addition to the three-hour Sunday show. The one-hour program lasted until 1970.
Originating from New York, top stars from all genres of entertainment (music, movies, television, etc.) made appearances on Wonderama, including:
Beginning in 1980, a documentary/magazine show for children (and hosted by teens) ran on Sunday mornings on WNEW-TV. While this show maintained the Wonderama title, the show itself was nothing like the kids festival that it once was. This hour-long incarnation ran until 1983; reruns edited to 30 minutes aired from 1984 to 1986 on WNEW-TV/WNYW on Saturday mornings.