Post by Baker on Jul 26, 2021 4:56:28 GMT
TIL Gorilla Monsoon & Sean Mooney hosted a daytime talk show called Bingo Break in 1994. It aired exclusively on Fox 45 right here in Baltimore!
Don't remember this at all. Probably didn't know it existed due to the inconvenient 10 a.m. weekday timeslot. Of course there's always a chance I did catch one episode for about 5 minutes, realized it wasn't for me since talk shows were emphatically not my thing, and never bothered with it again. Gorilla hosting wouldn't have been THAT weird to me since I would have still viewed wrestling personalities on more or less the same level as the stars of tv, film, music, and sport in 1994.
This is a legit shoot talk show that has nothing to do with wrestling beyond the hosts. It largely follows the standard talk show format of the day....only with more bingo! as the big hook.
Gorilla is billed as "Bob Marella." He co-hosts alongside a woman with acting experience named Caron Tate. Sean Mooney basically acts as their sidekick...the proverbial third wheel. He is dubbed "The Bingo Master" which totally should have been a wrestling gimmick.
Gorilla & Tate interview guests and they have a lousy house band called the Dave Smith Five. The one episode available online aired on April 1, 1994 which dovetails nicely with the episode of Superstars UT just watched. Like that episode of Superstars, there are April Fools jokes all over the place. The main guest was a psychic because 1994. Then business picks up when Bobby Heenan from "The World Wrestling....err World Championship Wrestling" shows up unannounced. The reactions to Heenan are a shoot. The producer (more on him in a minute) did not inform the rest of the cast Heenan was going to be there.
The producer was a chap named Nelson Sweglar. Have to admit I never heard of him before today, but he produced Tuesday Night Titans and Prime Time Wrestling for WWF in the 80s. Bingo Break does give off the same vibes as those shows judging by the little I've seen of them. I even found one article claiming Sweglar was the Kevin Dunn of 80s WWF in terms of influence/importance. Gorilla and Sweglar were good friends in real life which is how Monsoon got the gig.
Daytime talk shows were all the rage in 1994. Sweglar set out to capitalize on the talk show boom by producing his own, only with more bingo! as the big hook. He was a Baltimore native who surely had ties to local media which is why the show started in his homebase of B-More. His plan was to get the show syndicated all across the US. So confident was Sweglar in his big idea to combine a daytime talk show with bingo that he allegedly sank $250,000 of his own money into the show.
Turns out another reason the show may have kicked off in Baltimore is because bingo was apparently big here. OK, I was not aware of this (though there was a bingo hall less than a mile from where I lived for like 25 years), but that's what I just read.
Anyway, Bingo Break flopped. And with good reason. But not before 65 episodes aired over a 13 week period in early 1994.
Watching this bizarre blend of boring mid-90s daytime talk show fare and bingo featuring wrestling personalities I grew up with is akin to experiencing a surreal fever dream. It does seem like a parody, but I can assure you that was not its intent.
Not gonna lie. I popped hardest for the local sponsors. Metro~! Got groceries there many times. They went out of business some time in the early 2000s.
Oh, and Sweglar is still involved in the wrestling business. He does stuff for MLW nowadays. Nice.
Unfortunately I could only find one episode online. And here it is in all its surrealistic, fever dreamy glory...
Don't remember this at all. Probably didn't know it existed due to the inconvenient 10 a.m. weekday timeslot. Of course there's always a chance I did catch one episode for about 5 minutes, realized it wasn't for me since talk shows were emphatically not my thing, and never bothered with it again. Gorilla hosting wouldn't have been THAT weird to me since I would have still viewed wrestling personalities on more or less the same level as the stars of tv, film, music, and sport in 1994.
This is a legit shoot talk show that has nothing to do with wrestling beyond the hosts. It largely follows the standard talk show format of the day....only with more bingo! as the big hook.
Gorilla is billed as "Bob Marella." He co-hosts alongside a woman with acting experience named Caron Tate. Sean Mooney basically acts as their sidekick...the proverbial third wheel. He is dubbed "The Bingo Master" which totally should have been a wrestling gimmick.
Gorilla & Tate interview guests and they have a lousy house band called the Dave Smith Five. The one episode available online aired on April 1, 1994 which dovetails nicely with the episode of Superstars UT just watched. Like that episode of Superstars, there are April Fools jokes all over the place. The main guest was a psychic because 1994. Then business picks up when Bobby Heenan from "The World Wrestling....err World Championship Wrestling" shows up unannounced. The reactions to Heenan are a shoot. The producer (more on him in a minute) did not inform the rest of the cast Heenan was going to be there.
The producer was a chap named Nelson Sweglar. Have to admit I never heard of him before today, but he produced Tuesday Night Titans and Prime Time Wrestling for WWF in the 80s. Bingo Break does give off the same vibes as those shows judging by the little I've seen of them. I even found one article claiming Sweglar was the Kevin Dunn of 80s WWF in terms of influence/importance. Gorilla and Sweglar were good friends in real life which is how Monsoon got the gig.
Daytime talk shows were all the rage in 1994. Sweglar set out to capitalize on the talk show boom by producing his own, only with more bingo! as the big hook. He was a Baltimore native who surely had ties to local media which is why the show started in his homebase of B-More. His plan was to get the show syndicated all across the US. So confident was Sweglar in his big idea to combine a daytime talk show with bingo that he allegedly sank $250,000 of his own money into the show.
Turns out another reason the show may have kicked off in Baltimore is because bingo was apparently big here. OK, I was not aware of this (though there was a bingo hall less than a mile from where I lived for like 25 years), but that's what I just read.
Anyway, Bingo Break flopped. And with good reason. But not before 65 episodes aired over a 13 week period in early 1994.
Watching this bizarre blend of boring mid-90s daytime talk show fare and bingo featuring wrestling personalities I grew up with is akin to experiencing a surreal fever dream. It does seem like a parody, but I can assure you that was not its intent.
Not gonna lie. I popped hardest for the local sponsors. Metro~! Got groceries there many times. They went out of business some time in the early 2000s.
Oh, and Sweglar is still involved in the wrestling business. He does stuff for MLW nowadays. Nice.
Unfortunately I could only find one episode online. And here it is in all its surrealistic, fever dreamy glory...