2105 S . State Street • Chicago • reggieslive , com
14 illinoisentertainer . com october 2022
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id Rich Koz think he ’ d be doing the character of Svengoolie this long ? “ Not at all . That wasn ’ t even in my mind when I got the show at WFLD in 1979 ,” he says . “ I just thought , ‘ wow , this is really cool , I got a job , and I ’ m on TV .’ I never thought , ‘ yeah , I ’ ll still be here 43 years later .’ Nonetheless , I ’ m still here .”
Not only is he still here , he ’ s everywhere . Svengoolie went national eleven years ago on the Me-TV network , and he ’ s become a big deal all across the country . How big ? The Wall Street Journal recently profiled him . Mr . Bigshot realizes we still consider him ours , right ? “ Chicago is my home base and takes precedence over anywhere else , really ,” he agrees . “ Although it ’ s pretty overwhelming at times to see how the show has done so well nationally . I always say that everyone grew up with some sort of horror host in their town . I equate it with Dr . Who , where the original one you saw first is always your favorite . I ’ m happy to say that people all over the country have taken to the show and are big fans . It ’ s pretty humbling .”
Luckily for Koz , very few accommodations needed to be made when they took the show nationally . “ We still bring up Berwyn ,” he points out . “ The great thing is there are other Berwyns in America . The people in Pennsylvania think we ’ re talking about their Berwyn . For the most part , we just dropped some of the local references like local news and weather folks or local sports teams , but that ’ s basically the only thing that changed . It ’ s pretty much the same content we ’ ve always done . Unfortunately , the rubber chickens will never leave . I ’ m constantly being pelted by them . The office people come in and really get into it , sometimes a little too much .” Svengoolie even managed to adapt and navigate through the difficulties of the pandemic .
“ It ’ s still sort of a hybrid thing ,” he says , explaining his work process these days . “ I do a lot of my screening and writing at home . I screen the film , figure out the breaks , write the bits and decide where to fit them in , and while I ’ m doing that , we ’ re working on post-production . We really only tape three times a month , and we cram a lot of taping into those sessions . It is kind of hectic in that while you ’ re working on something new , you ’ re also working on something you ’ ve already done . It ’ s a constant cycle .”
Luckily , the bit ideas keep on coming .“ You train yourself to keep your mind open because you never know what will trigger something . And obviously , with the movies , there are certain things to jump out right away to me as far as what kind of bits I can do .”
After writing bits for television and radio for over 50 years , I was curious if Koz had any idea how many bits he had written . “ Oh my God . I could not tell you how many bits I ’ ve written . Somewhere in my basement , I have all the scripts .
By Rick Kaempfer
SVENGOOLIE SPOOKTACULAR
Someday I ’ ll go through them and be able to answer that question . Between WFLD and here and my radio career before that ( with Jerry G . Bishop & Dick Orkin , among others ), I can ’ t even begin to count them all . It ’ s been quite a trip .”
During the month of October , it ’ s going to be a " Sven-tacular " trip . If you love Svengoolie , you ’ ll love October on Me-TV . “ We ’ re calling it Svengoolie ’ s Halloween BooNanza ,” he says , “ and I know that sounds like we ’ ll have a Zombie Lorne Greene , but this is pretty cool . We have a Svengoolie special airing on October 1st . We had a crew come in from elsewhere to shoot this . It ’ s like a documentary . We went out on location to shoot .
Rich Koz aka Svengoolie
We have various guest stars . Some might surprise you . We will have footage from our Svengoolie Day in Berwyn . And we ’ ll have a special cryptshaking reveal that will happen at the end , and I think a lot of Sven fans will find that interesting . That night of the special , we also have the second season premiere of Sventoonie ( 15 new episodes on the way ), and we ’ ll be showing the famous Karen Black made-for-TV movie ** Trilogy of Terror . And then , the night before Halloween , we ’ ll have the classic film Count Yorga-Vampire . Plus , every Sunday will have a big block of horror-based episodes of shows like Leave it to Beaver ,’ Gilligan ’ s Island , and The Brady Bunch and blocks of shows like Kolchak and the The Addams Family . During the regular schedule , there will also be horrorbased episodes of the regular sitcoms we show , and I ’ ll be popping up now and then directing traffic through all of it .”
If you think that sounds exhausting for Sven , you aren ’ t alone . But he doesn ’ t plan to slow down anytime soon . “ Not in the near future . I ’ ve always said I ’ ll keep doing it as long as I ’ m healthy enough to do it and as long as it ’ s still fun to do . It ’ s work , and it ’ s a lot of work . But it ’ s also so much fun . And it ’ s very rewarding when we go out there all over the country , and people come up to us and say ‘ Thank you for doing this ’ and tell us how much it means to them . I can ’ t tell how much that means to me . That ’ s what keeps me going .”