What Are You Doing on Saturday Night? Staying Home to Watch ‘Svengoolie’
Cord-cutters get antennas to watch campy horror-movie anthology show on MeTV, led by a comedian in a top hat offering corny jokes from an upright coffin
By Lillian Rizzo
August 31, 2022
When he canceled his cable-TV package, Gerry Green bought an antenna for the one show he couldn’t stand missing: a weekly horror-movie anthology hosted by a heavily made-up 70-year-old man standing in an upright coffin.
“I was hooked,” Mr. Green said of the first time he stumbled upon “Svengoolie” while channel surfing. Now Mr. Green, a 59-year-old product manager from New York, hardly ever misses an episode, even when he’s out of town.
Nearly one million Americans watch “Svengoolie” in prime time on Saturday nights, often giving its little-known network, MeTV, bigger ratings during that time slot than giants of the cable dial including TNT, CNN and the Paramount Network.
The appeal of “Svengoolie”—a portmanteau of “Svengali” and “ghoul”—isn’t necessarily obvious. Most films featured on the show are grainy, black-and-white oldies, such as 1941’s “The Wolf Man,” 1942’s “The Ghost of Frankenstein” or 1943’s “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.” Many of them can generously be described as B-movies.
The main attraction, fans say, comes from frequent intermissions during which Svengoolie—played by actor and comedian Rich Koz, donning a top hat and black makeup—offers color commentary and corny jokes.
“The program could be two hours of nothing but Svengoolie reading a phone book, and I’d still tune in,” said Sarah Rhodes, a 37-year-old who works in broadcast radio in Dallas and discovered the show in 2017 while staying with family. Ms. Rhodes has missed only three episodes since, she said.
When a joke lands particularly poorly, Mr. Koz gets pelted with rubber chickens by the few people on set—a vaudeville-inspired slapdown that can happen every few minutes. Mr. Koz is used to it at this point: He’s been hosting the show since 1979.
“These movies are so campy, and he’s got such a great sense of humor,” said Joe Mantegna, an actor whose credits include “The Godfather Part III” and the CBS TV series “Criminal Minds.” Mr. Mantegna said he watches “Svengoolie” most Saturdays for Mr. Koz’s routine. “It just transcends what it is, and becomes hip,” he said.
The show’s audience has nearly doubled since 2018, according to Nielsen. “It took me 40 years to become an overnight sensation,” Mr. Koz said.
Many of Mr. Koz’s jokes are known for their long setups and underwhelming punchlines. Last year, as he gave a rundown of “The Black Scorpion,” a 1957 horror movie in which a natural disaster awakens giant scorpions from the depths of the earth, Mr. Koz said the executives behind the movie initially considered having the scorpions masked so as not to look too scary.
That plan never came to fruition, but “It gave executives at Fox the idea for the current hit show ‘The Masked Stinger,’ ” Mr. Koz joked. He was promptly pelted with a flurry of rubber chickens. Fox, home of the “Masked Singer” singing competition, is part of Fox Corp., which shares common ownership with Wall Street Journal parent News Corp.
The ratings performance of “Svengoolie” makes it a rarity in an era of rapid TV-viewership erosion caused by cord-cutting and a growing number of alternatives, from streaming services to TikTok.
“It’s both rare and unexpected to see a [traditional] TV show’s ratings remain steady” in this age, said Jim McKairnes, a former CBS executive who is now a lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University.
“Increasing? Rarer still,” Mr. McKairnes said.
The show recently got the ultimate hallmark of success: a spinoff. “Sventoonie,” which is hosted by a hand puppet looking very much like the original character, began airing directly after “Svengoolie” earlier this year. The puppet makes jokes about clips of films even farther down the B-movie scale. Mr. Koz isn’t involved in that program.
Mr. Koz didn’t invent “Svengoolie.” He resurrected the show in 1979 with the permission of Jerry G. Bishop, who originally hosted it between 1970 and 1973. For decades, the show was available only in the local Chicago market, where it is taped.
That changed in 2011, when “Svengoolie” moved to MeTV, a Chicago-based over-the-air network that broadcasts nationwide and is available on some cable and satellite packages. The network started airing the show in prime time on Saturdays, which coincided with a spike in viewership.
MeTV, which is known for playing reruns of older TV shows such as “The Andy Griffith Show” and “The Three Stooges,” has recently become available on streaming through two TV-over-internet bundles, Frndly TV and Philo, but many “Svengoolie” fans still use old-fashioned methods to watch the show on broadcast TV.
“I’m actually buying an antenna for our TV just for ‘Svengoolie,’ ” said Adam Keith, 39, of Nashville, Tenn., whose previous antenna broke during a recent move. Mr. Keith said he and his wife, Lindsay Cordes, 37, started watching about four years ago, after learning about it through her father.
Many fans have found the show by accident.
Annette O’Toole discovered it during the pandemic while staying in Vancouver, where she was filming Netflix Inc.’s “Virgin River,” in which she plays the town’s mayor. She stumbled on the show one Saturday evening after filming.
“I was so taken with him,” Ms. O’Toole said of Mr. Koz. “He was so charming and funny.” The two now occasionally correspond on Twitter.
Another celebrity is rumored to be a fan of the show: Lady Gaga, who a couple of years ago posted a photo of herself on Twitter in which she wears a hoodie that appears to feature the “Svengoolie” signature rubber chickens. Representatives for Ms. Gaga didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Social media is helping fans connect with Mr. Koz and one another. Many live-tweet the show on Saturday nights using the “svenpals” hashtag.
Ms. Rhodes, the Dallas radio worker, frequently tweets about her love of the show, which led her to meet Mr. Koz. She gave him a hand-painted “Svengoolie”-themed skateboard that now occasionally gets screen time. Mr. Koz said most of the items on set are tchotchkes sent by fans.
“I’m very grateful for the loyalty of the fans,” Mr. Koz said. “I hear from people who say they’ve been watching since I first came on in 1979, and the fact they haven’t—I don’t know how better to say it—outgrown me, is very flattering.”
Ms. Rhodes said “Svengoolie” reminds her of local programming she used to watch as a child. “It’s comfort food for the mind,” she said.
Daniel Stempien, a 41-year-old Chicago-area native, said his father introduced him to the show when it was just a local phenomenon. He has watched ever since, and says “Svengoolie” served as an inspiration for his career: He makes sets for haunted houses, TV shows and conventions, where he occasionally runs into Mr. Koz. He said he tried to get his own son to watch the show—unsuccessfully.
“He doesn’t like lame, dad jokes,” Mr. Stempien said of his 12-year-old son. “He doesn’t even laugh at mine.”
