Jimmie Dodd went on publicity tours to some of these stations, appearing on camera with the local host and conferring a sense of legitimacy to them. To give the show a contemporary update a few stations in larger markets resorted to locally-produced segments featuring an adult host, usually in Mouseketeer costume, to supplement the Disney-provided material. 5:15 pm in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and 4:25 pm in Pittsburgh) were not unknown. Most stations scheduled the show for the late afternoon time period in which it had first appeared, usually from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, but odd starting times (e.g. The coverage was so widespread that some lucky kids found they could watch the show on two different channels from overlapping markets and if they were really lucky the shows would come on at different times. This was a far greater number of stations, with a much wider geographic coverage, than had ever been achieved on ABC. What they received was the right to exhibit 130 half-hour shows, with limited reruns, for a one year period starting September 3, 1962. One hundred fifteen television stations signed up to re-broadcast the Mickey Mouse Club, despite the very stiff price demanded by the Disney Studio. Jimmie traveled to two dozen cities in the east and midwest drumming up business. After the nature of the revival became apparent, a few mice were enlisted along with Jimmie Dodd and Roy Williams to make personal appearences on behalf of the syndication effort. Early rumors reaching Mouseketeers in late 1961 led some to tell fan magazines they thought the show might be coming back. Once the decision to syndicate was made, the Disney publicity machine was cranked up to start promoting the show again. So a significant effort in time and money would be required for the film editors to produce new half-hour shows out of the first two seasons. The half-hour third season shows were suitable from the standpoint of serials, but were weak in Mouseketeer material. The existing half-hour episodes from the fourth season all lacked one or other of the show's two essential strengths: the dramatic serials and Mouseketeer sequences. Marketing studies of children's shows suggested a half-hour would have broader appeal. The Mickey Mouse Club had triple this number, but the majority of material was in hour-long format. For a show to succeed in syndication it needed at least one hundred episodes. What was less certain was whether enough stations would commit to justify the cost of producing a syndicated version. That there was demand for the show among the public was clear from letters coming into the studio. Syndication involved selling the show not once to a network, but multiple times to a broad array of independent stations and network affiliates. Nevertheless, seeing a chance to recoup the money spent in making it he had the Disney Studio staff investigate syndication. Walt Disney found that none of the networks was interested in re-broadcasting old episodes of his children's show, while he himself had no inclination to make a new version of something that had never really interested him. By the terms of that agreement the latter show could not be broadcast again until 1961. The 1959 lawsuits between ABC and Disney over Zorro and the Mickey Mouse Club had been settled through arbitration in 1960. For that last year of broadcasting on ABC, Disney editors recut material from the hour-long shows of the first two seasons into a half-hour, using a four short segment pattern dictated by the removal of serial episodes to a separate program called Adventure Time. Film being an inelastic medium, this reshuffling wasn't attempted until the fourth season (1958-59). The interchangeable quarter-hour segments were meant to be reshuffled between shows for reruns according to producer Bill Walsh's original report on the show's proposed format. From its inception the Mickey Mouse Club had been designed with an eye to subsequent reuse.
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