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Long before the arrival of things like Facebook and push alerts, there was another way to promote The Local Station. Enter Dino 4, a sneaker-sporting dinosaur and the TV station’s unofficial mascot. But over the years this once highly visible face of the station faded from public view into relative obscurity, leaving its fate up to our imaginations — until now.
Our newsroom recently set out in search of this fabled creature. This trip down memory lane took us deep into the recesses of Channel 4 as we unearthed fossils of a bygone era, like the costume (which, let’s be honest, has seen better days). To help us chronicle the elusive dinosaur’s origins, we enlisted the memories of station lore keepers and viewers like you.
This is the history of Dino 4.
As with most things, necessity was the mother of Dino 4′s invention. Just ask Ann Pace Sutton, WJXT’s former vice president and station manager who was heavily involved in the character’s creation. Sutton says the character was developed at a time when Channel 4′s reach and viewership eclipsed the competition.
All that was left to do was to capitalize on that success. But in order to go forward, the station had to go back in time.
“It was a very serious news channel,” Sutton remembers. “The station needed, from a sales standpoint, some levity. We needed to have some fun, and we needed to sell fun.”
And what better way to accomplish that than with a marketing campaign?
Meteorologist George Winterling, a beloved figured in the Jacksonville community, was tapped to be the face of the campaign. The idea was to get families outside for the summer of 1989 to explore 20 local points of interest. If they collected 12 stamps in their passport and mailed it in, they’d be entered into a contest. The grand prize? A trip to Washington, D.C.
That meant sending Winterling and a crew on a series of shoots zigzagging across Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia. His itinerary would take him as far north as St. Simons Island, as far west as Live Oak and as far south as Marineland.
There was only one thing missing.
“He needed this companion,” Sutton says. “He needed a sidekick.”
Since many of the points of interest involved with the campaign had historical ties, art director Ron Nepa came up with a whimsical dinosaur character to display on the marketing materials, Sutton says, but the character’s identity had only begun to take shape. In fact, she only coined the character’s name moments before walking into a high-level meeting to pitch the campaign.
“I literally was walking up the stairs to the conference room and the name Dino 4 came to me, and I pitched it and they loved it,” Sutton recalls, adding: “There’s nothing like a deadline.”
The marketing campaign would be known as George Winterling’s Dino 4 Tour. It wasn’t long before the station ordered a costume from Sally Industries, a Jacksonville-based amusement ride manufacturer, and the subject of Nepa’s concept art took the form of an actual mascot.
Sutton says the character truly came to life once Chuck Cooper stepped inside the costume and donned the mask.
“He was whimsy, he was adorable, he was inviting,” she says. “He was a kid magnet.”
Cooper, the TV station’s courier and maintenance man, was a logical choice to portray the character for a few reasons. For one, he was no stranger to odd jobs, from routine building upkeep like replacing light bulbs to running various errands. For another, the costume was designed for someone of his stature. Standing at 5-foot-8, Cooper was the perfect fit.
“Anything that wasn’t under somebody’s job description, they’d go: ‘We’ll get Chuck to do it,’” Cooper says.
Producing the Dino 4 Tour meant making 40 treks across the area that summer, two trips to each of the locations they shot, along with countless other stops along the way.
Cooper admits the costume took some getting used to, like the modifications he made to keep the tail from chafing or the costume’s cleaning regimen. Or the addition of a dino-scort, who made sure the tail didn’t get damaged or knock anyone over.
Luckily, air conditioning was one thing Cooper didn’t have to worry about.
“There was a battery-operated fan in the head that took 9-volt batteries, and this fan just kind of whirred around in your head and it kept you cool," he remembers. “And of course you stayed hydrated.”
Besides the challenges of wearing and maintaining the costume, Cooper had to negotiate how to portray a character he described as happy, friendly, adventurous, mischievous, loving, and caring — all without using his voice. His go-to crowd-pleaser was walking on his hands.
“Dino 4 couldn’t talk,” Sutton says. “Chuck was faithful to all the Disney-like criteria of being unknown. Just like Clark Kent, you could never know who he was, so he could never talk.”
But what was supposed to be a role Cooper played for the summer quickly grew into so much more. “It was for the contest,” he says. “But then other things came up, and it was like, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s do this.’” Soon he became the de facto face of the station’s community outreach, making appearances at everything from the Jacksonville Auto Show to the Gate River Run.
Being Dino 4 gave Cooper remarkable opportunities from 1989 to 2008, like conducting the Jacksonville Symphony for a song at the Florida Theater while in costume and an oversized tuxedo. Or serving as grand marshal for the Gator Bowl parade. There were times that brought him to tears, like an emotional visit to Wolfson Children’s Hospital, along with some moments he’ll always treasure.
“This little 5-year-old boy comes and lays right in the stomach part of the costume and just sits there. The mother was amazed because she said he would never go around the Disney World characters. And he just laid there,” Cooper says of one appearance at the Jacksonville Landing. “That was the sweetest thing ever.”
Dino 4 even left a lasting impact on some of you. During our research for this story, we stumbled across Ed Waters, a longtime Jacksonville resident and descendant of the man Edward Waters College is named after. He remembers seeing the character on TV years ago. “I tell my grand boys about you,” Waters told an in-costume Scott Johnson.
Another viewer, William O’Brien, says Dino 4 was his favorite character while growing up. He shared this memory: “I remember receiving (an award) from Dino 4 when I was about 4 years old! I forget what the segment was called, but I remember getting the (award) for running to my grandma’s house to tell her and call 911 for my dad who had seizures.”
But like all good things, Dino 4′s time came to an end. The mascot was mothballed in 2008.
While the mascot was shelved, there’s no question Dino 4 played a key role for WJXT over the years, whether that meant helping with a sponsored campaign, a feature story or just a good cause. The character was such a hit, it resulted in a short-lived spinoff at WDIV-TV, our sister station in Detroit — though that mascot was later returned and rebranded as Dina Four.
“We were a news operation with a capital J on our chest and there was no levity. I mean, I did a lot of (promotional) campaigns — I took the anchor people out to Colorado, we had fun and our anchor lady made snow angels — but those never compromised their journalistic reputation,” Sutton says. “We needed a PR arm, and Dino 4 helped make that happen.”
And while the sun has set on the character (for now, anyway), its legacy still lives on in the memories of its creators and longtime Channel 4 viewers.
It’s your turn
We’re collecting viewers' memories of this lovable character and unofficial station mascot. So if you can, tell us what you remember about Dino 4. Share your stories by filling out the form below: