Captain Noah and His Magical Ark was a television program for children and was generally broadcast around the Philadelphia area. The series aired from 1967 to 1994. It was filmed and produced at the WPVI-TV, Channel 6 (then called WFIL when the program began) studios in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Captain Noah and His Magical Ark, was created by W. Carter Merbreier, an ordained Lutheran minister and former Philadelphia police chaplain, and produced by the Philadelphia Council of Churches. The show initially aired as a religious program beginning in 1967 before switching to a children's program in 1970. The show starred Merbreier as Captain Noah and his real life wife, Patricia Merbreier, as Mrs. Noah. At its height, Captain Noah and His Magical Ark was syndicated to 22 television stations in markets throughout the United States. During the early 1970s, Captain Noah and His Magical Ark attracted a larger local audience in the Philadelphia region than Sesame Street and Captain Kangaroo combined. Background Started as a religious-oriented program, Captain Noah and His Magical Ark became a daily children's program in 1970. The show aired from 7:00 a.m. to 9 a.m. on weekdays and for 30 minutes on Sunday morning leading out of ABC Sunday-morning cartoons and into the Al Alberts Show. The show also featured four cartoon shorts per day during the week. These included Gumby, Popeye (the made for TV cartoons from the 1960s only), Porky Pig (pre-1940 and post-1947 episodes), and Bugs Bunny (post-1948 episodes). In 1975, when ABC began their morning show Good Morning America, WPVI-TV opted to preempt that in favor of Captain Noah and His Magical Ark. Starting in September 1976, WPVI began running the 7:00 a.m. hour of Good Morning America and scaled Captain Noah back to the 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. slot. The format remained the same. While Captain Noah, a former Lutheran minister, was the main "host" of the show, Mrs. Noah was the puppeteer and a trained singer. Famous Philadelphian entertainer Larry Ferrari provided the music. Favorite puppets included Maurice the Mouse, Mumwup the Monster, and Wally the Walrus. In 1978, when the Popeye cartoons moved to WTAF-29 (now WTXF, Fox-29) and the Warner Brothers cartoons moved to Channel 17 WPHL-TV (later to 48 WKBS and then back to WPHL), WPVI dropped the weekday edition of Captain Noah and began running Good Morning America in its entirety. Captain Noah continued as a