CBS and ABC had a slate of Sunday morning TV shows in the 60s & 70s that were popular but spottily broadcast around the country. Often the shows - consisting of recently cancelled Saturday morning cartoons on CBS and Bullwinkle, Discovery (later Make A Wish) on ABC - would be often preempted by local church broadcasts, especially in the South.
Discovery (the title of the show was followed by the abbreviated year, ie. Discovery '63) reenacted historical events and gave kids a peak into how things worked in the modern world. The series enjoyed a long run on ABC Sunday mornings, from 1963 until 1971, after an unsuccessful weekday run in 1962. The production was hosted first by Frank Buxton and Virginia Gibson, then Virginia Gibson alone, then by Gibson and Bill Owen. I would tell you more about it but this was one of the programs that was routinely preempted by Sunday devotionals in my TV market. Bummer.
Here's the colorful opening to Discovery '68.
This is a commercial for Hot Wheels that you might have seen on Sunday mornings in 1968, man those cars were cool - and made from heavy metal.
Discovery was replaced in the fall of 1971 by another show in a similar vein, Make A Wish, focusing on one subject during the half-hour rather than several as Discovery often did.
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