Hee Haw

Hee Haw was a long-running television variety show hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark and featuring country music and humor with rural "Kornfield Kounty" as a backdrop. It was taped at WLAC-TV (now WTVF) and Opryland USA in Nashville. The show's name was derived from the sound a donkey makes when it brays.

Related Topics:
Television - Variety show - Buck Owens - Roy Clark - Country music - WTVF - Opryland USA - Nashville - Donkey

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The show started on CBS as a summer 1969 replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It was dropped by CBS in 1971, along with fellow country shows The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres. It started airing new programming in syndication, and continued in basically the same format for 20 more years (though Owens departed in 1986).

Related Topics:
CBS - 1969 - The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour - 1971 - The Beverly Hillbillies - Green Acres - Syndication - 1986

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The show was well known for its beautiful, voluptuous, scantily clad women in stereotypical Southern farmer's daughter outfits and its campy humor. Hee Haw was a quintesentially American show, which appealed to a rural audience, and is virtually unknown outside of the United States. Despite being one of the most succesful syndicated televsion shows in American history, many urbanites and those living in the suburbs of large cities are and were unfamiliar with the show, while virtually everyone living in rural America was and is familar with Hee Haw.

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By 1991, a continued decline in its audience led to a dramatic change in setting, to a more urban location combined with more pop-oriented music. The new format lasted a single season, during which the show alienated many of its traditional viewers. In its final 1992 season, the now renamed Hee Haw Silver featured Clark hosting a mixture of classic clips and new footage.

Related Topics:
1991 - 1992

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After the show's syndication run ended, reruns aired on The Nashville Network until 1997.

Related Topics:
Rerun - The Nashville Network - 1997

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Original cast member David "Stringbean" Akeman was murdered in 1973. Other cast members over the years included:

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Barbi Benton,

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Archie Campbell,

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Don Harron (whose character, newscaster Charlie Farquharson, later appeared on The Red Green Show),

Related Topics:
Don Harron - The Red Green Show

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Hagger Twins,

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Gunilla Hutton (as Nurse Goodbody)

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Grandpa Jones,

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George Lindsey (reprising his "Goober" character from The Andy Griffith Show),

Related Topics:
George Lindsey - The Andy Griffith Show

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Minnie Pearl,

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Lulu Roman,

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Misty Rowe,

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Junior Samples,

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Gailard Sartain,

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Roni Stoneman,

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and

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Gordie Tapp,

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among many others.

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