WGN's "The Bozo Show" from 1984-2001 (with Joey D'Auria as Bozo) has to top the list for me as the most annoying show ever. This version of The Bozo Show had both live action and animation. I tried to find a full episode online from the late 1980's-early 1990's...but apparently, those shows are really rare because they weren't taped or the tapes were all recorded over with other shows. A part of me thinks "thank goodness for that!"
Those of you who didn't grow up with Bozo (especially the Chicago Bozo), Krusty the Clown's on-camera behavior wasn't too far from it. (Krusty's voice was based on Bob Bell, who played the original Chicago Bozo). I wish that I could especially find the theme song from the 1989-1992 era of the show, just to show you. It's the type of thing that could easily have been played to torture military prisoners in Guantanamo. Imagine a blasting, rapid circus fanfare, pounding bass drums, whistles (like a coach or referee uses) and an announcer that yells everything like Garrett Morris doing his "News for the Hard of Hearing" bit on SNL. They also used a lot of swinging the camera around and zooming in and out rapidly to create "action". It made you sick to look at it.
The whole show was like that.
Everyone yelled: the clowns, the kids and the ringmaster. The music cues blasted after every joke or act. It wasn't like Caroll Spinney's bits from the Boston Bozo Show. Those you can watch and be impressed by the Mr. Lion bits. (We'd appreciate them on a different level, since it's Caroll).
The worst part of it was, my father used the Bozo Show to wake up my sister and I
every weekday morning before school. He'd turn up all the TVs in the house
full blast and even take the volume knobs off of the TVs so my sister and I couldn't turn the volume down again. It was like when Bugs Bunny was in the army and got woken up by Reveille.
Back then,
everything on WGN from 7:00AM-9:30AM was extremely loud, even with the TV volume at a normal level, even the commercials. There was Mr. Bucket (of course), this Mickey Mouse Playhouse commercial:
Finally, there was this one for a game called "Melvin". Yeah, imagine hearing
this at full blast every morning along with Bozo:
One of the best pieces of evidence I can find of the 1980's WGN Chicago Bozo Show I remember is this promo. It's not the theme music I was looking for, but at least you can get kind of an idea:
Because of the description in another YouTube video, (dirty word) I can't post it here, but if you look for "Bozo Show with Andy" on Youtube, you'll see a clip from the show, featuring the "Grand Prize Game". They played this game on every show.
The only thing I really liked about Bozo was since it was filmed/aired live, there were bloopers they couldn't cut out. One time, some kid got
really mad when he missed the 2nd bucket. He kicked the buckets over, (including the one filled with ping pong balls, which went all over) and went into a
huge screaming, kicking, Donald Duck temper tantrum
on the air! Imagine Kylo Ren being the butt of Mr. Moose's ping pong ball prank and how he'd react to it. Yeah, it looked like that.
The cameras quickly zoomed in on Bozo's face while ushers and security had to haul the thrashing, screaming kid out of the shot. Bozo quickly announced "Hey kids! It's time for a cartoon!"