Their names were based on those two Canadian anchors - but Eugene Levy modeled Earl's persona on Buffalo, TV news anchor Irv Weinstein, while it is most likely Flaherty's model for Floyd Robertson as news anchor was the dean of Pittsburgh TV news, Bill Burns.

@@wmbrown6 I forgot. Everything revolves around 'Murica

@@jamesstuart3346 - Certainly to Flaherty and Levy . . . I knew about those Canadian names, though. But their portrayals otherwise had nothing to do with their name sources.

I'm not familiar with those names, so to me they seemed like parodies of the vocal mannerisms of Sam Donsldson and David Brinkley.

You mean if they were around today... they were most definitely real back in the day and still are.

Also his eyebrows.

Can you say, in terms of LaRue, "tone deaf"? And did not those at the protest notice, or even bother to?

Only thing, Floyd got one detail wrong: Cosmo Topper wasn't the ghost, he was the one haunted by ghosts.

Dining with Larue when he visits the Vegetarian restaurant is gold 😂

How apropos a response from someone who uses an alias that relates to a perverted right -winger.

Your worship of The Donald meshed with fascism is typical of your uneducated ilk.

Michael: SCTV had some pretty off-color humor too.

I watched it as a kid in the 80's in a Fundamentalist Christian household. My parents had no issue with the show. The worst I saw was Edith Prickly in her bra! These days I actually find her kind of attractive.

@@foobarmaximus3506 Actually, I watched them on a regular basis as a child. I still enjoy them. Anything they did produce that would be considered risque, for instance, was cleverly disguised. Another brilliant masterstroke on the show's part. Your counterpoint is insipid. Devoid of even a whiff of independent thought. Just another plebeian attempting to gain some trace of self importance.

+egreenbery From Wikipedia: 'At least one sketch implicitly suggested that Robertson, in addition to co-anchoring the SCTV News, was also the station's news director (a common practice in the earlier years of television). After SCTV's resident foreigner, Pirini Scleroso (played by Andrea Martin), botched a taped field report, Camembert pointedly reminded Robertson that he was responsible for her being hired as a reporter in the first place.'

"You look ridiculous."

@@frstwhsprs - I can imagine Pittsburgh TV news anchor Bill Burns berating some colleagues like that in the newsroom, but not on the newscasts. Burns did have a bluntness on the air, though, that seemed to seep through Floyd in several SCTV News sketches. Floyd did get one detail wrong though. He claimed Earl looked "like Cosmo Topper." Only Topper wasn't the ghost - he was the one being haunted by ghosts.

@@foobarmaximus3506 - One wonders if SCTV (the fictitious entity, as opposed to the TV sketch show) was modeled after the RKO General stations in the U.S. which were likewise run on the super cheap (I seem to remember reading that, in New York, WOR-TV [Channel 9] at one point used consumer minicams for when reporters filed stories from various locations).

Is that Cookie, for here or "TOGO"?

@@ihavefallenandicantreachmy2113 Shut up Earl !!

I seem to recall in the videos I've seen that he made references being the *news editor,* if not outright director.

He was also moonlighting as "Count Floyd," and vigorously always denied it.

+Glenn Marshall Yes, but mostly during the later seasons. In the early seasons, Floyd was practically a put-upon saint having to deal with Earl's stupidity.

Earl was at times, but he would try different things, like when he ate dinner while doing the news, heheheh

@@michaelglickman1300 - Since you mention it, I have noticed that as originally conceived, Floyd and Earl represented the polar opposites of the guiding philosophies of the news business as it stood in the 1970's - Floyd as the old-school anchor in the Walter Cronkite-Chet Huntley mold, advising on the important national and international issues of the day (though his fixation on Togo was reminiscent of a local news director of the late 1970's who mandated that a portion of news items be about his ancestral country), whereas Earl was schooled (such as it was) on the more sensationalistic, razzle-dazzle, consultant-driven "Happy Talk" style of news presentation and journalistic choices. It also begs as to whether Floyd doubled as news director - but as such was not exactly Ralph Renick of WTVJ Channel 4 in Miami (among whose hires was Jane Chastain as a sports reporter), more dictated by who was at SCTV at the time (I mean, Johnny La Rue as here and, later, Pirini Scleroso as reporters?).

@@wmbrown6 That was probably a result of network boss Guy Caballero, obviously because he felt the latter two worked cheap.

lol

Could well be what in the news business is called a "Milano." One wonders why - was Floyd, in his early years as a journalist, a foreign correspondent assigned there? Did he once vacation there before it became more known for its earthquakes every other day? Was he buddies with the head of the Melonville branch of the Togo tourist board or the staff of the Togo Embassy HQ in Melonville? If this would have been the case, this passage of an article I read comes to mind: " . . . The phrase was invented by a long-time news executive named Dick Reingold when he was at WCBS-TV in New York. Apparently there was a news director at the station who took a memorable trip to Milan and was frequently demanding stories about his beloved northern Italian city, pronounced a la Italiano. In CBS lore, a Milano refers to, 'The distortion of news executives' editorial judgment based on their own personal experiences.' . . . " This is also why the question remains as to whether Floyd Robertson was SCTV's news director. No news anchor does a disproportionate amount of stories from this area unless they or whoever is above them directs it. But as SCTV was an uber-cheap operation, chances are the buck stopped with Floyd.

It's never going to happen; there aren't enough people who would want to buy a complete remastered show on Blu-Ray to justify the cost of making such sets.

Including the original half-hour Canadian shows! And some live footage of their stage shows would be an awesome bonus.

@@Neville60001 - AND, in the early years, their use of any and every music led to a situation where there was a host of rights issues that would also put the kibosh on such a remastered set, even if the demand were high.

@@wmbrown6, exactly that. Make no mistake, I myself want a complete remastered Blu-Ray/4K set, but as this article about another older TV program shows (treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/) the possibility of one is sadly remote.

Why "remastered." What is wrong with the Episodes, as is, so long as they can be seen/heard, in a reasonably coherent fashion. Besides; do you know how many Baby Seals have to be Clubbed, to Remaster one Episode? Or is it, How many Baby Seals does it take, to fill up "Remaster's Nightclub," for to watch an "All Night SCTV Watchathon."

Some people just don't understand the humor. It's above their capabilities. The show was brilliant in many ways. It reflected much on current events and culture of the time. One specifically was CRTC rules on Canadian content...hence the reason they were producing in-house shows with in-house characters as many actual tv stations did at the time.

That wasn't him. It was their weatherman, Bob Clark (Dave Thomas). Earl was in drag impersonating their feminist reporter. Badly, I might add, and still wearing the loud suit and bow tie.

I'm sure many an employee of WOR-TV in New York in the 1970's could relate to that aspect (cheap sets, that is) . . .

At least the "SkyPiggy" or "Bet" ("Bus/Jet", because, you can "Bet" you will not arrive, at your destination, alive.) is real.

@@foobarmaximus3506 - Same thing with the naming of Floyd Robertson and Earl Camembert. That's also why Ms. Barrett's surname here was missing the extra 't'. Combination of comedy and legal.

It was very much frowned upon to use actual names in most situations, hence “Alex Trebel,” “Lola Heatherton” (combination of Lola Felana and Joey Heatherton, 1960’s-1970’s sex symbols for TV. Plus, they could not so much imitate the real people, but could sort of morph them into their own SCTV characters.

Hilarious can't wear blue we are using chromakey today.

How the frak do you figure that?

@@foobarmaximus3506 - And it would have showed in LaRue wearing a seal skin coat to this protest. If that doesn't count as tone deaf . . .

Seals, "JAWS" and Whales. Oh, my.