Hugh Downs

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances,

but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.

Hugh Downs

Hugh Malcolm Downs
February 14, 1921 – July 1, 2020

Hugh Downs was born in Akron, Ohio, to Edith (née Hicks) and Milton Howard Downs, who worked in business. He was educated at Lima Shawnee High School in Lima, Ohio; Bluffton College, a Mennonite school in Bluffton, Ohio; and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, during the period 1938–41.

Downs worked as a radio announcer and program director at WLOK in Lima, Ohio, after his first year of college. In 1940 he moved on to WWJ in Detroit. Downs served in the United States Army during World War II in 1943 and then joined the NBC radio network at WMAQ as an announcer in Chicago, Illinois, where he lived until 1954.^[11] While at WMAQ Downs also acted, including as the "co-pilot" in the "Uncle Ned's Squadron" program in 1951. He married a coworker, Ruth Shaheen, in 1944, three days after his 23rd birthday. He also attended Columbia University in New York City during 1955–56.

On August 25, 1958, Downs concurrently began a more than ten-year run hosting the original version of the game show Concentration. Also, he hosted NBC's Today Show for nine years from September 1962 to October 1971, plus co-hosting the syndicated television program Not for Women Only with Barbara Walters in 1975–76. Downs also appeared as a panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth and played himself in an episode of NBC's sitcom Car 54, Where Are You?

In March 1954, Downs moved to New York City to accept a position as announcer for Pat Weaver's The Home Show starring Arlene Francis. That program lasted until August 1957. He was the announcer for Sid Caesar's Caesar's Hour for the 1956–57 season, and one of NBC Radio's Monitor "Communicators" from 1955–1959. 

This is one of my earliest TV memories.

Downs became a bona fide television "personality" as Jack Paar's announcer on The Tonight Show from mid-1957, when he replaced Franklin Pangborn, until Paar's departure in March 1962, and then continued to announce for The Tonight Show until the summer of 1962, when Ed Herlihy took the announcing reins. Herlihy held that post until October 1, 1962, when Johnny Carson took over the show, and brought Ed McMahon as his announcer. Downs made his first television news broadcast in September 1945 from the still experimental studio of WBKB-TV (now WBBM-TV) in Chicago, a station then owned by the Balaban and Katz theater subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Downs later recalled that when he went for his first job, he had never seen a television before, and he was unsure whether television would last. Downs became a television regular, announcing for Hawkins Falls in 1950, the first successful television soap opera, which was sponsored by Lever Brothers Surf detergent. 

He also announced the Burr Tillstrom children's show Kukla, Fran and Ollie from the NBC studios at Chicago's Merchandise Mart after the network picked up the program from WBKB.

Downs earned a postgraduate degree in gerontology from Hunter College while he was hosting Over Easy, a PBS television program about aging that aired from 1977 to 1983. He was probably best known in later years as the Emmy Award-winning co-anchor — again paired with Walters — of the ABC news TV show 20/20, a primetime news magazine program, from the show's second episode in 1978 until his retirement in 1999.

Downs was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum in 1984. In that same year, he was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as holding the record for the greatest number of hours on network commercial television (15,188 hours), though he lost the record for most hours on all forms of television to Regis Philbin in 2004.

A published composer, Downs hosted the PBS showcase for classical music, Live from Lincoln Center from 1990–96. Downs made a cameo appearance on Family Guy in addition to other TV shows.

Downs was seen in infomercials for Bottom Line Publications, including their World's Greatest Treasury of Health Secrets, as well as another one for a personal coach. He did an infomercial for Where There's a Will There's an A in 2003. His subsequent infomercial work aroused some controversy, with many arguing the products were scams.

Downs appeared in regional public service announcements in Arizona, for that state's Motor Vehicles Division; for Hospice of the Valley, a Phoenix-area non-profit organization specializing in hospice care, as well as in many public, short-form programs in which he serves as host of educational interstitials.

On October 13, 2007, Downs was one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Downs publicly expressed support for libertarian viewpoints. He opposed the U.S. "war on drugs". He did several pieces about the war on drugs and hemp. On his last 20/20 he was asked if he had any personal opinions he would like to express and responded that marijuana should be legalized.

Good Night Mr. Downs

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa