Hugh Downs

About Hugh Downs

Hugh Malcolm Downs (born February 14, 1921) is a retired American broadcaster, television host, producer, and author. He served as anchor of 20/20, host of The Today Show, announcer for the Tonight Show with Jack Paar, host of Concentration game show, host of the PBS talk show Over Easy and co-host of the syndicated talk show Not for Women Only. He is not related to the well-known CBS broadcaster of the 1940s, Bill Downs.

Hugh Downs was born in Akron, Ohio and 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 to 1941. He 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 briefly in the U.S. Army in 1943 and then joined the NBC radio network at WMAQ in Chicago as an announcer, where he lived until 1954. He married a coworker, Ruth Shaheen in 1944. He also attended Columbia University in New York City during 1955–56.

Downs made his first television news broadcast in September 1945 from the still experimental studio of WBKB-TV (now WBBM-TV), a station then owned by the Balaban and Katz theater subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. He became a TV 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. In March 1954, Downs moved to New York 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. Downs became a bona fide television "personality" as Jack Paar's announcer on The Tonight Show from July 1957 until Paar's departure in March 1962, and then shared hosting until Johnny Carson took over in October 1962. In August 1958, he concurrently began an eleven-year run hosting the original version of the game show Concentration. He hosted NBC's Today Show for nine years from September 1962 to October 1971. He co-hosted the syndicated television program Not for Women Only with Barbara Walters in 1975 and 1976.