Tonight I was flipping channels when I ran across a PBS station that showed a man underwater collecting sea urchins. I stopped to watch, but this guy’s annoying voice took me aback.
Me: “I can’t stand that guy’s voice.”
Lisey: “Have you ever seen this guy before?”
Me: “No, what is this?”
Lisey: “That is Huell Howser. He goes all over California doing travel stuff like that, he’s been on t.v. here forever. I think he’s from Tennessee.”
Sure enough, he was born about 15 minutes from where I was born.
Howser became the subject of controversy in the summer of 1979 when he did a story about how the former Tennessee Governor’s Mansion was slated for demolition to make way for a Popeye’s Fried Chicken outlet. He ignored management’s orders to not mention the story on-air. His defiance led to a thirty-day suspension, but before the suspension was over, Howser had secured new employment. He has often since stated that he might still be “looking for more pet pigs around Nashville”[citation needed] if this incident had never occurred.
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His show is on WNPT Sunday afternoons.
It’s like that Tennessee Crossroads show, except less lame.
[…] Tennessee Expatriate Brittney Gilbert recently saw on old Nashville media celebrity on the tube recently and notes his history: Mr. Howser grew up in Gallatin, Tenn., 30 miles from Nashville. He spent most of the 1970’s as the feature reporter for WSM-TV, the NBC affiliate in Nashville. Then one day he did a segment about the proposed demolition of the old Tennessee governor’s mansion to make way for a Popeye’s chicken franchise, and compared America’s treatment of its old buildings to its treatment of old people. […]
Huell Howser was da man on WSMV when I was growing up.
Mmmm… Popeye’s!
Dan Miller made a pilgrimage out to the West Coast for a while as well. and Pat Sajack, but of course he never had to come back.
Maybe they could open a Popeye’s in the new bunker? It could be like a food court. Long John Silvers too.
Tonight I was flipping channels when I ran across a PBS station that showed a man underwater collecting sea urchins.
That’s a terribly haunting sentence. Also I bet your voice is like melting peppermint over sex flavored ice cream.
Huell was on Channel 4 when I was a kid. He provided one of the funniest moments ever on live tv in Nashville when he did a story on this pig named Porky and when he made the sad announcement that Porky had passed. It was like a Nashville version of Chuckles the Clown, except live on tv. Hysterical.
California has been good to Huell. He’s been out there forever.
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