TVSquad

Willard Scott doesn't do much around the Today show these days; except for an occasional week where he subs for Al Roker, all the semi-retired weatherclown (hey, he was a clown once) really does is his periodic shout outs to the nation's centenarians.

But at this point, I'm starting to wonder if those centenarians are more with it than the man who's giving them the tributes.

Almost every time I've seen Scott lately, he seems to mumble his way through the birthdays. While he's always been known for wacky asides and nonsensical ad-libs, they seem to be getting wackier as time goes on. But worst of all, he often falls behind the rotating Smucker's jar graphic that serves up each centenarian's name, location and photo. I mean, if you're a guy who's survived 100 years, don't you at least deserve to not have your face smiling on national TV while the audience is being told that you love wearing frilly dresses to church?

Long before he was wishing 100 year-old people a Happy Birthday on Today, Willard Scott was a clown. A pathetic, oddly dressed clown.

After the jump is the very first commercial that McDonald's ran featuring Ronald McDonald. Sure, it's easy to dismiss the low-budget look of this ad because of the time it was created, the bad special effects, and the knowledge that later the character would be refined and would look a lot different (and better). But then you look closely and you see that the guy has a freakin' paper cup on his nose. It's like the last minute Halloween costume a father would put together to entertain his kids. He and the other parents think it's hilarious, but the kids are thinking "what's wrong with daddy?"

And does he really need two trays of food, one on his waist and one on his head?

Still, it's a cool look at a different TV era, and it's great to see how McDonald's television advertising started out. Hey, it's better than the "I'm Lovin' It" campaign.

I was never big on clowns when I was a kid. Except for one that is, Bozo.

Larry Harmon wasn't the only person to play Bozo The Clown, but he is the person most identified with the role. A man named Pinto Colvig was the first Bozo The Clown in the mid-1940s on several children's records, and then Harmon was hired to play Bozo in the mid-50s and eventually got the licensing rights to the character and arranged for various people to play the clown on TV in different markets, including Willard Scott in Washington, D.C., Frank Avruch in Boston, and Bob Bell in Chicago. The last show aired on WGN in 2001, and Harmon was involved in a controversy in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame took down Harmon's plaque and recognized Colvig as Bozo. But Harmon never claimed to have created the character, just that he made him what he became.

Harmon died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles at age 83.

Al Roker is in final negotiations to host the NBC celebrity edition of Family Feud, the one that we wrote about recently as a summer series on the Peacock.

Roker, currently the main weatherman and easy-going interviewer on Today (the first three hours at least!), would seem a perfect fit for this job. He's friendly, funny, personable and has a high recognizability/likability rating. He's also busy on the dial with Food Network shows, both producing and hosting. In fact, in 2006 his production company put out Celebrity Food Fights, about competing celebs -- not unlike Family Feud concept -- for Food Network.