Jot's Dirty Hands : Christian Kid Shows 1960s / 70s

Jot was a series of five minute short subjects produced and written by Ruth Byers for The Radio and Television Commission of The Southern Baptist Convention. The first batch of thirteen segments debuted in 1968, they were non-denominational but carried a strong religious message.

A condensed episode of JOT:



Jot was meant to teach morals and Judeo/Christian ideals and was distributed to television stations around the country to run alongside the Bugs Bunny, Little Rascals and Hanna-Barbera cartoons shown on their local kid shows.

In the first segment, Jot steals a cupcake from his mom and goes through a psychedelic freak-out of conscience. In most of the morality plays, it's Jot's conscience that speaks loudest, a concept that may be forever lost on modern audiences.

An entire Jot episode


Lessons in obedience, honesty and virtue are reinforced by feelings of guilt when Jot does the wrong thing. This is all balanced with words of wisdom from Jot's parents - and implicit forgiveness from God.

Simple and inexpensive to relatively produce (each episode of Jot cost $15,000 to produce), the graphic style of the cartoons was bold and simple, a style of art only now enjoying a renaissance with the new shockwave cartoons popping up on the net. At the end of each segment, an address was provided for kids to send off for Jot stuff - a Jot booklet and button.

The promotion was a successful one for the Southern Baptist Convention, generating lots of mail and long memories from the kids who watched the cartoons.


READ MORE ABOUT JOT AND OTHER CHRISTIAN SHOWS FOR KIDS IN THE 1960s & 1970s!