I just read where Royal Parker passed, he was one of the early host of the bowling shows in Baltimore along with being a legend in Baltimore television and radio. RIP Royal!
I was 12 in 1976, but I remember a lot of TV from those years. Living in Hagerstown, I was just close enough to receive the broadcast signals from Baltimore and Washington. The 70's made its mark on me.
Dennis Murray hosted "Duckpins and Dollars" in mid-1971,replacing Tom Cole, after he was fired for asking a not so pertinent question on the air to a contestant.
I'm noticing that in this Baltimore version, the contestants chose either the left lane with regular bowling pins [2 strikes wins the pot] or the right lane with the smaller duckpins [1 strike to win]. It's understandable, since the "Bowling for Dollars" format began in Baltimore as "Duckpins and Dollars" way back in the 1950's.
Channel 11 used to have bowling shows in their studios because they didn't want to go to local lanes to do remotes. Their notable shows included, "Sparetime Bowling", in which women from local leagues competed; "Pinbusters", where children and teens competed. "The Bowling Bank", where contestants rolled strikes for cash in the jackpot. That show morphed into "Duckpins and Dollars", then subsequently "Bowling For Dollars". The hosts for for these shows were Tom Cole,Dennis Murray,Ron Riley and John Bowman, with Royal Parker as the fill-in host.
Mrs. Anna Pfeiffer would probably not be selecting one “L. Margaret Bastard [sic?] of Silver Spring” as her pin pal if the show were broadcast today. After the 2009 digital conversion stations stopped putting out analog signals and the new HD signals travel less than half the distance as the old ones. It would have been a reach to get the new signals to Silver Spring from Television Hill so MS (Bastard?) probably would not be a “Bowling for Dollars” viewer today. Additionally, Wash. and Balto. stations, in effect, generally block each other from their respective cable and satellite lineups by exercising FCC (fraudulently)-approved “exclusivity agreements.” Not being able to get the Balto. channels on my cable lineup is the main reason I “cut the cord.”
Tacky polyester 'fashions', bad boufant hairstyles with tons of goop 'n spray, horn rim glasses, and dumpy, out of shape people who think that all they have to do to lose weight is eat yogurt. Yep. The mid-seventies. (Bowling was real big back then.)
