The Hugh Downs Centennial

A few words to mark the centennial of the birth of broadcaster Hugh Downs (1921-2020).

Until bested by Regis Philbin, Downs held the worlds record for most hours spent on television. He was best known for anchoring the ABC News magazine program 20/20 from 1978 through 1999. I must confess I didn’t dig him or that show at all, even when I was a kid. Compared with CBS’60 Minutes, which the show was created to compete with, 20/20 seemed lightweight and fluffy. It represented a palpable decline in standards of some sort. Barbara Walters came aboard shortly afterward, and the tone of the show seemed largely about cultural trends and celebrity as opposed to hard news. Younger demographics were definitely the ABC brand, and this program seemed fully in harmony with the same network that brought you The Love Boat and Laverne and Shirley. “Let’s not challenge the audience too much” seemed their unspoken credo. The hard hitting, take-no-prisoners interview style of guys like Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Walter Cronkite, and even Harry Reasoner — this was not what Hugh Downs was known for. I’ll never forgive him for asking some rock critic the bubble headed question “What do you say about the feeling of certain people that Bruce Springsteen is as good a poet — perhaps even a better one — than Bob Dylan?” (My answer would have been A) those people are clearly idiots; no one is better than Dylan; and B) poetry is not javelin-throwing. There is no such thing as “better”.) It struck me as a superficial question, read by a square off a cue card.

Some of what I’ve learned about Downs reinforces my initial impression of him as an unserious person; some of it strikes me as more positive. As to the latter, I’d forgotten for example that he was the host of the PBS classical music show Live from Lincoln Center from 1990 to 1996. He was also a science writer, and served in leadership roles at both the National Space Institute and its successor The National Space Society.

Overall though Down was a personality as opposed to a journalist. He had begun his career as a radio announcer, transitioning to television in the ’50s on shows like Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and Caesar’s Hour. In 1957 he replaced Franklin Pangborn as announcer and sidekick to Jack Paar on The Tonight Show, a post he held until 1962. Overlapping with that gig, he hosted the game show Concentration from 1958 to 1969. He also hosted NBC’s Today Show from 1962 to 1971, which had a similar “light news” format to that which manifested on 20/20. Downs also briefly co-hosted Not for Women Only with Barbara Walters (1975-76), and Over Easy, a PBS show about older people, from 1977-83. He got a master’s in gerontology while hosting this show.

Downs also dabbled in acting. He had a bit part in the movie Roxie Hart (1942) and guest starred in an episode of Riverboat (1960). Later he essentially played himself in cameos, on tv shows like Car 54 Where Are You? and Family Guy, and in films like A Global Affair (1964) with Bob Hope, and Oh God Book II (1980) with George Burns.

 Stay tuned for my upcoming book Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.