Today in history – “Scooby-Doo’s” debut

CAIRO – 13 September 2017: September 13 marks the first debut of “Scooby-Doo, Where are You?” on CBS with its first episode, "What a Night for a Knight."

The idea of Scooby-Doo began when the executive in charge of children's programming for the CBS network Fred Silverman wanted to revitalize his Saturday morning line up and please watchdog groups.

At first, he showed “The Archies”, based on Bob Montana's teenage humor comic book Archie, which was met with great success particularly because of its music including the most successful Billboard number-one hit of 1969 "Sugar, Sugar."

After that, he was eager to expand his works and contacted producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera to create another show around a teenage rock-group as a cross between the popular radio drama, “I Love a Mystery” and the sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.”

“I Love a Mystery” revolved around three friends who ran a detective agency and travelled the world in search of adventure, while “The Many loves of Dobie Gillis” had teenagers as leading characters who were the inspirational basis for Scooby-Doo’s main characters.

Consequently, Scooby-Doo began to take shape under the title of "The Mysteries Five." At first it featured five teens (Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda, and Linda's brother "W.W.") and their dog that were solving mysteries involving ghosts, zombies and other supernatural creatures. The show is the brainchild of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, and artist/character designer Iwao Takamoto.

Then, Ruby and Spear wanted to make the dog a central character in the series and they had to choose between making it a large goofy Great Dane and a small feisty dog. They picked the former, yet they feared that it would be similar to the comic strip character Marmaduke.

Takamoto made many changes to the dog, giving it overly bowed legs, a double-chin, and a sloped back, among other abnormalities.

By the time, the show was ready for presentation by Silverman who transformed the name of many characters: Geoff and Mike were merged into one character called Ronnie (later renamed Fred), Kelly was renamed to Daphne, Linda was called Velma and Shaggy (formerly W.W.) was no longer her brother. In addition, the name of the show changed to “Who's S-S-Scared?”

When Silverman presented it to CBS executives, they thought it would be scary for children. Silverman turned to Ruby and Spear, asking them to make it more comic and less frightening. Silverman was later inspired by the ad-lib "doo-be-doo-be-doo" he heard at the end of Frank Sinatra's interpretation of Bert Kaempfert's song "Strangers in the Night" renaming the dog "Scooby-Doo".

“Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?” had 25 episodes and received great ratings, prompting CBS to renew it for a second season in 1970.