Hee Haw (TV Series)

Hee Haw is an American television variety show featuring country music and humor with the fictional rural "Kornfield Kounty" as the backdrop. It aired first-run on CBS from 1969 to 1971, in syndication from 1971 to 1993, and on TNN from 1996 to 1997. Reruns of the series were broadcast on RFD-TV from September 2008 to April 2020, and aired on Circle. The show was inspired by Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, but centered on country music, rural rather than pop culture-inspired humor, and with far less topical material. Hosted by country music artists Buck Owens and Roy Clark for most of its run, the show was equally well known for its corn pone humor as for its voluptuous, scantily clad women (the "Hee Haw Honeys") in stereotypical farmer's daughter outfits. Hee Haw's appeal, however, was not limited to a rural audience. It was successful in all of the major markets, including network-based Los Angeles and New York City, as well as Boston and Chicago. Other niche programs such as The Lawrence Welk Show and Soul Train, which targeted older and black audiences, respectively, also rose to prominence in syndication during the era. Like Laugh-In, the show minimized production costs by taping all of the recurring sketches for a season in batches, setting up the Cornfield set one day, the Joke Fence on another, etc. At the height of its popularity, an entire season's worth of shows were taped in two separate week-long sessions, with individual shows then assembled in the editing room. Only musical performances were taped with a live audience, while a laugh track was added to all other segments. The series was taped for the CBS Television Network at its station affiliate WLAC-TV (now WTVF) in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, and later at Opryland USA in the city's Donelson area. The show was produced by Yongestreet Productions through the mid-1980s; it was later produced by Gaylord Entertainment, which distributed the show in syndication. The show's name, derived from a common English onomatopoeia used to describe a donkey's braying, was coined by show business talent manager and producer Bernie Brillstein. The series initially ended its run in June 1993, after 25 seasons. It was soon picked up by TNN for reruns.