Longtime U.S. broadcaster Hugh Downs dead at 99

The U.S. broadcaster hosted the sport display Concentration and the ABC Information display twenty/twenty during a radio and tv occupation of more than sixty decades.

His tv function ranged from Nowadays, NBC’s morning news display, to Tonight, working with Jack Paar. In 1985, the Guinness E book of Entire world Information said he had been on industrial tv a report fifteen,188 hrs — a mark that stood right until Regis Philbin surpassed it in 2004.

“I believed Tv was a gimmick like 3D films and it would just go away,” Downs, who had a friendly, reduced-vital way on the air, said in an interview with the Archive of American Television.

“I had no idea that the tail would finally wag the pet and take care of me a great deal kinder than radio did.”

Downs’ broadcasting occupation started at age eighteen when he auditioned for a radio announcer occupation on a whim in his hometown of Lima, Ohio.

Immediately after serving in the Army for the duration of the 2nd Entire world War, he joined the NBC radio community in Chicago and that led to tv asserting employment, like function on the Kukla, Fran and Ollie children’s display and a soap opera.

I believed Tv was a gimmick like 3D films and it would just go away … I had no idea that the tail would finally wag the pet.– Hugh Downs

Even bigger tv assignments lay ahead in New York in the late 1950s: announcer on Sid Caesar’s Caesar’s Hour and announcer-sidekick to host Paar on The Tonight Display from 1957 right until 1962.

Downs had a co-starring role in a person of television’s most dramatic moments of the nineteen sixties when the emotional Paar walked off the phase for the duration of taping in protest of NBC censoring a person of his jokes.

Downs, who had identified that Paar was going to stop but did not hope a walkout, was identified as upon to fill in for the relaxation of the display.

In 1958, Downs became the host of Concentration, a new daytime NBC sport display that analyzed contestants’ memory and potential to resolve a photo puzzle.

The display was a swift good results and Downs was host for ten decades, continuing with the occupation even right after he became an anchor on NBC’s Nowadays morning display in 1962.

Downs invested 11 decades on Nowadays, numerous as co-anchor with Barbara Walters, and interviewed scores of famous people, politicians and other newsmakers. 

A number of Emmy wins 

He joined ABC’s twenty/twenty in its second week on the air in 1978 and was reunited with Walters, who became his co-anchor.

He also contributed exclusive experiences to the display, like a person on his double knee alternative medical procedures and other individuals on medicine and geriatrics, a area in which he had a long-operating fascination.

Each individual week he signed off the display by expressing, “We’re in touch, so you be in touch,” in advance of leaving the display and community tv in 1999.

In his later on decades, Downs was witnessed on tv in an infomercial for a book promoting health secrets.

Downs received Emmys for his function on Nowadays in 1970, for hosting PBS collection on aging, Above Simple, in 1981 and Reside From Lincoln Heart in 1991.

Downs’ passions provided new music composition, aviation, astronomy and area exploration. He served as chairman of the Nationwide Space
Society, a non-gain corporation that encourages area exploration.

Among the quite a few textbooks that he wrote have been an autobiography, Yours Truly, Hugh Downs A Shoal of Stars, his account of sailing a 65-foot ketch across the Pacific and Thirty Dirty Lies About Previous Age.

Downs was predeceased by his wife, Ruth. They had two little ones.