Hugh Downs death: Former Today host and broadcaster dies aged 99

Famed broadcaster Hugh Downs has died at the age of 99.

Downs died on Wednesday of natural causes at this home in Scottsdale, Arizona, his great-niece told The Associated Press.

With tenures on NBC’s Today show and ABC’s 20/20, as well as the game show Concentration, Downs was one of the most recognisable faces on American television.

He once held the record for the most minutes in front of a television camera, according to The Guinness Book of World Records – until 2004, when Regis Philbin passed him.

Downs, who had a friendly, low-key manner on the air, once said in an interview with the Archive of American Television that he didn’t hold out much hope for television as a media.

“I thought TV was a gimmick like 3-D movies and it would just go away,” he said. “I had no idea that the tail would eventually wag the dog and treat me much kinder than radio did.”

Downs’ broadcasting career began at age 18 when he auditioned for a radio announcer job on a whim in his hometown of Lima, Ohio. After serving in the Army in World War Two, he joined the NBC radio network in Chicago and that led to television announcing jobs, including work on the Kukla, Fran and Ollie children’s show and a soap opera.

Bigger television assignments lay ahead in New York in the late 1950s – announcer on Sid Caesar’s Caesar’s Hour and announcer-sidekick to host Jack Paar on The Tonight Show from 1957 until 1962.

Downs had a co-starring role in one of television’s most dramatic moments of the 1960s when the emotional Paar walked off the stage during taping in protest of NBC censoring one of his jokes. Downs, who had known that Paar was going to quit but did not expect a walkout, was called upon to fill in for the rest of the show.

In 1958, Downs became the host of Concentration, a new daytime NBC game show that tested contestants’ memory and ability to solve a picture puzzle. The show was a quick success and Downs was host for 10 years, continuing with the job even after he became an anchor on NBC’s Today morning show in 1962.

Downs spent 11 years on Today, many as co-anchor with Barbara Walters, and interviewed scores of celebrities, politicians and other newsmakers.

He joined ABC’s 20/20 show in its second week on the air in 1978 and was reunited with Walters, who became his co-anchor.

He also contributed special reports to the show, including one on his double knee replacement surgery and others on medicine and geriatrics, a field in which he had a long-running interest.

Each week he signed off the show by saying, “We’re in touch, so you be in touch,” before leaving the show and network television in 1999.

Downs also hosted the PBS series on ageing Over Easy and Live From Lincoln Center.

In his later years Downs was seen on television in an infomercial for a book promoting health secrets.

Downs’ interests included music composition, aviation, astronomy and space exploration. He served as chairman of the National Space Society, a nonprofit organisation that promotes space exploration.

Among the several books he wrote was an autobiography, Yours Truly, Hugh Downs, published in 1960.

Additional reporting by agencies