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HISTORY Cincinnati Thomas created Garfield Goose for a local program called ''Meet the Little People'' on WKRC-TV ( CBS ) in Cincinnati , Ohio . Thomas, an Indiana native who had worked on Cincinnati local radio since before World War II , said he had gotten the idea from Catholic nuns collecting for charity. He recalled how they'd appear with a sock puppet in the form of a goose and that children were invited to "feed the goose" with donations. The name "Garfield" came from WKRC-TV's telephone exchange. Cincinnati's version was somewhat different in that Gar lived in a cuckoo clock as he'd wanted to be a cuckoo bird. Chicago and WBKB Thomas and Gar moved to Chicago in 1951, appearing originally on CBS affiliate WBKB-TV, then on Channel 4. At first, the goose appeared as a featured character on a show Thomas hosted called ''Petticoat Party'' but it was decided the character had enough appeal for a show of his own and on September 29, 1952, ''Garfield Goose and Friend'' made its debut, with the help of Chicago puppeteer Bruce Newton. Gar originally communicated with Thomas via an off-screen typewriter during Newton's brief time with the show. But when Thomas and new puppeteer Roy Brown expanded the cast and renamed the program ''Garfield Goose and Friends'', it would fall upon Romberg Rabbit to translate for Gar -- no easy task as Rom's speech, as well as the rest of the puppets, was so quiet (silent, in reality), only Thomas could "hear" them. Thomas would then repeat what Rom and the rest of the puppets were communicating to him. At WGN After a complicated sale of stations in February 1953, WBKB-TV became WBBM-TV , the CBS o-and-o (owned-and-operated station), and moved to Channel 2. Gar moved to WBKB-TV (now an ABC o-and-o) Channel 7 a year later. The show finally nested in on WGN-TV in 1955 and remained for over two decades, usually appearing weekday afternoons and later mornings. The program gradually lost viewership in the early 1970s due to competition (and in part because of timeslot tampering with one episode even depicting Gar as being VERY upset over this) and the show's long run ended on October 1 , 1976 . But this was not the end of the puppets. Frazier Thomas had taken the role of circus manager on WGN-TV's longtime hit program '' Bozo's Circus '' after the retirement of Ringmaster Ned Locke and Thomas cleverly kept his puppets on the air with a storyline that had Gar buying ''Bozo's Circus.'' The puppets would continue to make appearances until 1981, when they were retired. Thomas would continue to work on ''The Bozo Show'' until his death in 1985 and the puppets were donated to The Museum Of Broadcast Communications in Chicago in 1987. As was often the case for television producers in the 1950s and early 1960s (such as with ''. Coincidentally, the White Sox had just won the 2005 World Series in their first World Series appearance ''since'' 1959 when this retrospective show first aired. The premiere was #1 in the Chicago market and is rebroadcast annually during the holiday season. EXTERNAL LINKS
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