Those of you weaned on the Internet, where you can get daily updates of all your favorites, such as Arrested Development and Aimee Mann, might be surprised to learn that concert itineraries were once a staple of the early days of television when various kiddie show hosts from coast to coast went over each date, city, state and venue in fascinating detail.

Now the golden age of TV lives again within the pages of a new book, The Greatest Itineraries by Randle Patrick McMurphy (Harper Press – 349 pages), an in-depth examination of children’s television show hosts and the concert data they dispersed daily on TV sets throughout the land.

Starting with an introduction by NBC’s Tom Brokaw, who began his own broadcasting career by hosting a fifteen minute segment on Los Angeles TV in 1958 called I’m With The Band, where the future television news anchor brought the rock n’ roll generation up-to-date on the schedules for Chuck Berry, Johnny Mathis and Dion, The Greatest Itineraries quickly progresses to the San Francisco scene of the 1960s where television hosts such as Captain Shroom and Colonel Zig-Zag expanded the minds of young viewers with concert schedules for The Dead as well as Elvin Bishop and Big Brother & The Holding Co.

To be sure, McMurphy hypes the medium’s clean-cut hosts, such as Detroit’s Roger Roadie and Miami’s Gertrude Groupie, and glosses over the era’s scandals, like when Philadelphia-based host, Stupor Sales, encouraged kids to reach into their fathers’ wallets, and pull out those “little pieces of cardboard imprinted with names like Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones,” and mail them directly to the TV station.

The Greatest Itineraries also covers the kiddie-show/concert data concept’s demise in the 1990s, when shows such as Tommy The Ticket Master and Tour Accountants in Space failed to capture the imagination of a new generation of concert fans who quickly turned to yet another new medium, the Internet, for dates for their favorite bands such as Pearl Jam and Korn.

Like other books about local kiddie concert info hosts, such as The Life & Times of Woody Woodstock, or the dark, yet stylish, Angels of Altamont, The Greatest Itineraries harkens back to a simpler time. A time when all a kid needed for after-school entertainment was a mug of moo juice, a few Oreos and the dates for Jerry Lee Lewis and Neil Sedaka displayed on the TV set. After reading The Greatest Itineraries, you’ll come to appreciate how television inspired the baby-boom generation to grow up to become the well-adjusted men and women that made this country what it is today.