Hugh Downs, a genial and near-constant presence on TV for decades, whose career included stints on NBC’s “Today” show and the ABC newsmagazine “20/20,″ has died at age 99.
FILE - This Jan. 12, 2012 file photo shows Hugh Downs at the "Today" show 60th anniversary celebration in New York. Downs, a genial and near-constant presence on television from the 1950s through the 1990s, has died. His family said Downs died of natural causes Wednesday, July 1, 2020, in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 99. Downs was a host of the ‘Today’ show on NBC, worked on the ‘Tonight’ show when Jack Paar was in charge, and hosted the long-running game show "Concentration.
“The Guinness Book of World Records” recognized Downs as having logged more hours in front of the camera than any television personality until Regis Philbin passed him in 2004. He was an announcer in Chicago, which was a television incubator in the 1950, for “Kukla, Fran & Ollie” and “Hawkins Falls,” which he said was television’s first soap opera. In 1954, he went to New York for “The Home Show.”
“My loyalty was with the person tuning in,” he said. “It was expedient. If I lost my credibility, what use would I be to a client?” His interest in problems of the aging — he even earned a postgraduate degree in gerontology — was highlighted in his Public Broadcasting Service series “Over Easy” as well as many of his “20/20” pieces.“We all suffer in our culture from the idea ... that youth was the big thing,” he said.
“I’m 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 be just the anchor.”
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