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Versatile Tennessee-based children's entertainer Tom Tichenor got his broadcasting start on the 1940s series Wormwood Forest, which aired from the studios of legendary Nashville radio outlet WSM. Among the characters introduced on this series was a garrulous, tale-spinning dog named Poindexter. When Tichenor entered local television in the 1950s, it was with a puppet version of Poindexter, who soon became one of Nashville's most popular video personalities. In 1958, educational station WKNO in Memphis spotlighted Tichenor's puppet menagerie in a daily, 15-minute kiddie program called Tales of Poindexter. Filmed kinescopes of this delightful series were placed in national syndication by the ad hoc NET network (the precursor to today's PBS), remaining in distribution well into the 1960s, by which time Tichenor was best known as the creator of the colorful puppets seen in the hit Broadway musical Carnival.