I grew up in Cleveland in the early 50's, when TV was black and white, three stations, and a fair amount of local production. Nobody really know how to do TV then, so a lot of stuff was brought over, more or less directly, from the radio. Polka shows, in-studio wrestling, amateur talent shows,bowling shows, locally produced movie programs, children's shows, most of it truly awful, though it didn't necessarily seem that way at the time....I know I preferred the locally produced " Uncle Jake" to " Howdy Doody" because you could actually go downtown and get on "Uncle Jake", while nobody knew how you got to be on Howdy.
Anyway, there was a certain bit of funky hometowness to those shows, that is gone, gone with the wind now. I got rid of my TV in the mid 70's, but in this culture, you can still know a lot about what goes on with TV even if you rarely watch it. My most recent TV encounter was watching Jerry Springer every day with my mental health clients. I think that the earlier poster was correct: Jerry Springer is secretly running everything.
seth