He is widely remembered as "Mayor Art," the host of a live children's show, featuring "Popeye" cartoons, that aired weekday afternoons on KRON-TV[3] in San Francisco beginning in 1959 through 1966.

"[7] Each program featured a short science segment; and in between Popeye cartoons, Finley used a hand puppet, "Ringading,"[8] to teach introductory French, Spanish, German, and Italian words and phrases.

The Mayor Art character was partly a way of introducing young people to civic matters, which, in retrospect, revealed Finley's true interests and foreshadowed his later career as a radio talk show host.

When the Mayor Art Show ended in the summer of 1966, Finley joined KRON-TV's news department as a reporter and producer-host of "Speak Out," a weekly political interview program, until 1968.

[7] While living in Canada, Finley contributed many news stories and features from that country and Europe, as byline writer for the San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service.

From 1962 to 1981, the San Francisco Chronicle and scores of other North American newspapers published his syndicated daily panel "Art's Gallery", consisting of 19th Century woodcuts, to which Finley had written humorous modern-day captions.