a gifted artist, comedian and puppeteer, responded in 1968 with a program initially called Cartoon Town, but later renamed The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show. It was here that Jackson, playing the mayor of the cartoon town, reached great heights with characters such as Dirty Dragon, "Weird" and "Wally Goodscout", "Mother Plumtree", the "Old Professor", and a town monument called "Blob" which was made of clay and could, with Jackson's help, assume any form. Jackson wrote and produced the show, performed all of the puppet characters' voices, and built and designed the sets and puppets. The show featured a variety of cartoons, including Underdog, Popeye (the early 1960s made-for-TV King Features version), "Out of the Inkwell" (the made-for-TV version produced by Hal Seeger) and George of the Jungle. The show was broadcast for five years on WFLD, but ended after the station's owner, Field Communications, sold an interest to Kaiser Broadcasting, and Kaiser streamlined local productions on its group of stations. The final WFLD episode (#1311) was broadcast July 27, 1973; one month later, The BJ & Dirty Dragon Show (now set in "Carefree Corners") began a one-year run on WGN. Meanwhile, Jackson began commuting between Chicago and New York, where he produced and hosted another local show, BJ's Bunch, featuring many of the same characters. By the fall of 1974, WGN cancelled The BJ & Dirty Dragon Show, after which Jackson produced a one-shot holiday special, A Gift For Granny, which aired on WMAQ-TV, Chicago's NBC affiliate. Later career Jackson and his puppets next appeared in the educationally themed program Gigglesnort Hotel in 1975, which brought most of the old Cartoon Town characters back, plus a few new creations. Produced and broadcast by WLS-TV, Chicago's ABC affiliate, the show was very popular with critics, though less so with the public, and ran for three seasons. Jackson said his influence for the show was Fawlty Towers. He made a final program called Firehouse Follies using the characters in 1979–1980, then left television to teach at California Institute of the Arts for the School of Film/Video for 12 years, retiring in 1990. In a 2001 interview, Jackson expressed some frustration at seemingly not being able to fit into the criteria established for children's programming on network television. He said, "I am not "teachy" enough for PBS and am not considered worthy enough for Nickelodeon." By the end of its run, Gigglesnort