NEW YORK (AP) – Hugh Downs, the cool and versatile presenter who became one of the most familiar and welcome faces on television with over 15,000 hours in news, games and talk shows, died at the age of 99.
Downs died of natural causes Wednesday at her home in Scottsdale, Arizona, said her great-niece, Molly Shaheen.
“The Guinness Book of Records” recognized Downs as the one who had logged more hours on camera than anyone else on television until Regis Philbin topped it in 2004.
He worked on NBC’s “Today” and “Tonight” shows, the game show “Concentration”, co-hosted the ABC magazine show “20/20” with Barbara Walters and the PBS series “Over Easy” and ” Live From Lincoln Center. ” “
The signature of his signature at the end of “20/20” told viewers: “We are in contact, so you are in contact.”
“I have worked on many different shows and done so many shows at the same time,” Downs said in a 1986 Associated Press interview. “I once said that I had done everything on radio and television except game-by-game sports. Then I remembered that I had covered a boxing match in Lima, Ohio, in 1939. “
Downs began his broadcasting career at the age of 18 as a $ 12-a-week broadcaster on a small Ohio radio station. When television appeared, at first he saw it as a trick, but he quickly realized that “he was probably a monster, and he better do it.”
He was a broadcaster in Chicago, which was a television incubator in 1950, for “Kukla, Fran & Ollie” and “Hawkins Falls,” which he said was the first television soap opera. In 1954, he went to New York for “The Home Show”.
In 1961, Newsweek described him as “a gluttonous reader with a top-notch brain that keeps him curious and exercises like an award-winning poodle.”
His reputation was such that he even earned the right to approve any commercial he was assigned to read, striving to keep dubious claims away.
“My loyalty was to the person I was tuning into,” he said. “It was convenient. If I lost my credibility, what use would I give to a client?
He showed his early side again in 1997, when he took a “20/20” vacation day instead of being part of a show that included an interview with Marv Albert after the sports commentator was caught in a creepy scandal of sexual assault.
On Twitter on Thursday, CBS News political correspondent Ed O’Keefe noted: “He retired from ’20 / 20 ‘in 1999 and died at age 99 in 2020. Sweet symmetry. Rest easy, Hugh Downs. One of the best.”
Downs had a particular interest in science, once he launched a monologue on the Paar show about the science behind water skiing. This caused Paar to joke, “Well, Hugh, when you drown, you will know why.”
His interest in the problems of aging, including a postgraduate degree in gerontology, was highlighted in his series of the Public Broadcasting Service “Over Easy”, as well as in many of his pieces “20/20”.
“We all suffer in our culture from the idea … that youth was the big deal,” he said.
“There has been a kind of loss of respect for older people, and we lose the wisdom of older people. We lose the ability to see that deterioration and decrepitude do not necessarily go hand in hand with age. “
His work on “20/20” also showed his adventurous spirit, such as the moment he rode a killer whale, and again put on a breathing apparatus to swim near a great white shark. There was a dangerous expedition to the South Pole in which one participant almost died.
“I am interested in science, the environment, medicine and certain personalities,” he said. “I just do the stories I want to do. I don’t want to just be the anchor. “
Downs began his job as Paar’s second banana in 1957, after a stint as a presenter on NBC’s “The Home Show”.
In a highly publicized incident in February 1960, Paar went off the air in a dispute involving the network cutting a joke by Paar’s “water toilet” (toilet bowl) that censors disliked. Downs was praised for calmly telling the audience “I’d like to think this is not final” and keeping the show live until closing time.
Downs later said he expected Paar to return to the stage at any time “with some hit or something. He did not. But Downs said he was finally grateful for the boost his career gave him.
Paar finally returned to the show a few weeks later.
Paar’s departure from “Tonight” in 1962 paved the way for Johnny Carson. Downs, meanwhile, began his nine-year career as a presenter on the “Today” show. Walters was a colleague of “Today” for part of that time. She admired Downs and praised his generosity and collegiality.
He modestly expressed his views in the 1995 book “The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961”: “In a way, the less talented or deployed, the less chance you are of overexposure. That may be why the one that I have been on the television network more than anyone in the world. “
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