The first big snow that year hit before Halloween and it stayed. We had a heavy snow all winter and we had Ghoulardi coming on TV in January in the coldest winter and in the middle of a newspaper strike. So you had a lot of people sitting bored and cold in their houses with nothing to do but watch Ghoulardi.”

“WJW bought a movie package of really cheap movies and had to show them.”

“People compared Ghoulardi to Howard Stern but the kind of irreverence that he exemplified was really a new thing in broadcasting.”

“He went out on top, like Jim Brown. If you go out before people are sick of you, they’ll remember you. He did “Parma Place” in his last year and that was his most popular skit. It was a goof on “Peyton Place” and had people wearing white songs, with pink flamingos and chrome balls in their yards. Viewer loved it, except for a vocal minority that conducted demonstrations. The mayor of Parma also complained at a Parma basketball game, when people threw white socks on the court. Funny thing is Ernie first lived in Parma when he got here.””He was an anti-hero that told you what you were watching was garbage. He would mention and make fun of other TV people, like Dorothy Fuldheim. He would throw darts at photos of people — the kind of stuff that would’ve been done off the air. But he did it on the air.””Other B-movie hosts around the country were more vaudeville and doing the typical thing. Ernie Anderson wasn’t a Clevelander, but he had the wise-cracking tough irreverent attitude that was very Cleveland.”

“I never thought there was anything mean about what he did. He was always just having a good time.”