I am a fan of Huell Howser, the roving reporter.
I state this without irony or any attempt to be provocative. I think of him as a kind of natural wonder, practically the last living representative of local television in Los Angeles, and for all I know, in America, that species having largely been crushed under the weight of media conglomeration. And as an ambassador: the man who takes TV to the people and puts the people -- the sort of ordinary people TV ignores almost 100% of the time that Howser isn't on -- on TV.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, July 26, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 0 inches; 18 words Type of Material: Correction
Huell Howser: In today's Calendar, an article about Southland TV personality Huell Howser says he's 58. He's 63.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, August 02, 2009 Home Edition Sunday Calendar Part D Page 2 Calendar Desk 0 inches; 21 words Type of Material: Correction
Huell Howser: In last Sunday's Calendar, an article about Southland TV personality Huell Howser said he is 58. Howser is 63.
And though I think he would object, I regard him as a kind of artist. Like the work of , the French photographer whose 10,000 images of Paris form a detailed picture of life there at the turn of the last century, Howser's video interviews will give future Huell Howsers their best look at life here at the turn of this century, in all its many colors and voices and varieties of dessert. He is like a man from the past and the future all in one, so old-fashioned as to have become absolutely singular and therefore practically avant-garde.
I met him recently at a sidewalk cafe close to his mid-Wilshire apartment to talk about what he does. What he does is as simple as it looks and more subtle than you might imagine. He plays down its difficulty: "It's pretty basic stuff," he said. "It isn't brain surgery." But he also made clear that there is nothing random about the way he works. He has been doing more or less this job since the early 1970s, in Nashville, New York and L.A., and his programs embody not just his ideas about television but an entire worldview.
He has lived here nearly 30 years; the first five he spent working for KNXT (later KCBS) as a features reporter, and for more than 20 years he has worked, as a self-producing, independent contractor, out of KCET. His programs -- he has seven series now in production, including "California's Gold," "California's Green," "Downtown," "Road Trip" and "Visiting" -- are available free to the state's PBS affiliates. For any citizen of Los Angeles under the age of 40, he's a given, as fundamental to the landscape as the La Brea Tar Pits or the Watts Towers.
