If “The Breakfast Club” (1933-69) was on the radio, you may ask, why is Fran (Aunt Fanny) Allison dressed up like Minnie Pearl? Because this week in 1954, the immensely popular ABC show began to be simulcast on TV. The venture was not a success: McNeill, who, when he took over “The Pepper Pot” in 1933, both changed the name and heretically threw out all the scripts, wouldn’t adapt his homespun radio formula for TV. Without quitting her day job, though, Allison joined the Kuklapolitan Players for a somewhat better-known TV program called “Kukla, Fran and Ollie.”
“Breakfast Club” listeners nationwide in 1956: 6 million.
Years after McNeill campaigned for president that Howard Stern ran for governor of New York: 46.
Years “Breakfast Club” ran before it got a single sponsor: 6.
Meaning of “kukla” in Russian and Greek: doll.
