Exhuming Dead Ernest

As you might recall from my last blog post, it's been rumored that a TBS horror host by the name "Dead Ernest" was actually played by media mogul Ted Turner. I first heard about the rumor from an old issue of Scary Monsters magazine and there are several references to it online. In fact, that last reference reveals that the show existed much earlier than I had originally thought. So early, in fact, that the "TBS" it was on was a far different animal than the one we're all familiar with. The history of TBS is complicated. Really, really complicated.

I was very pleased to discover that the webmaster of E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts had apparently gotten in contact with Ted Turner's assistant. After all, this saved me the trouble of having to do it myself. As you've probably guessed, Ted Turner never played Dead Ernest. However, he was apparently very fond of the character. You know, that probably explains why Monstervision hung around TNT for so long, going from a horror marathon to a bumper that played before showings of certain horror films to the Joe Bob Briggs-hosted show of the same name. On the other hand, that show was forced into becoming a "movie in general" show, so I could be wrong.

On a final note, I find it quite odd that there's so little information about Dead Ernest online. Maybe I'm just missing the right links due to Google pulling up stuff on a novel and britcom of the same name. If anyone has any links or information about Dead Ernest they'd like to share, feel free to post them in the comments section.