A friend of mine once said of Steve Allen, "He was so square, he was hip!" That also describes KTVU 2 from the mid-1960s to at least the end of Creature Features in the early 1980s.

Dialing For Dollars sums up KTVU well - KTVU was mainly about entertainment, and pretty much mainstream entertainment at that. The channel always projected a relaxed, friendly, but somewhat bland image. They never had the anything-goes, no-budget craziness of KEMO-TV 20. The wildest it ever got at KTVU was local wrestling and Bay Bombers roller derby and, later, Benny Hill. Their 10:00 O'Clock News never even went Happy News on us.

So what made KTVU hip? Well, besides wrestling and roller derby, in part it was the quality of their children's programming. In the 60s, they were at least partly responsible (with KPIX 5) for putting Brother Buzz on the air. Charley And Humphrey were also around in the '60s and early '70s, and Captain Cosmic left a distinct impression on anyone who watched TV after school in the late '70s.

Although KTVU never entered the all-night movie race being waged locally by KNTV 11, KEMO-TV 20, and KGSC-TV 36, their evening and weekend movies were obviously programmed and screened with more care than usual for a local station. The other local independent which relied heavily on evening and early-late night movies for it's identity - KBHK-TV 44 - was prone to abrupt commecial cuts on the clock, while KTVU obviously attempted to program commercial breaks more unobtrusively.

KTVU's hipness really derived from one show: Creature Features, which came in two flavors, the Bob Wilkins version from 1971 to 1979; and the John Stanley version from 1979 to 1984.