RELATED: Carl Reiner, comedy legend and creator of ‘Dick Van Dyke Show,’ dies at 98“I’ve worked on so many different shows and done so many shows at the same time,” Downs said in a 1986 Associated Press interview. “I once said I’d done everything on radio and television except play-by-play sports.
Then I remembered I’d covered a boxing match in Lima, Ohio, in 1939.”Downs began his broadcasting career at the age of 18 as a $12-a-week announcer on a small Ohio radio station.
When television came along, he at first looked on it as a gimmick, but quickly realized “it was probably a juggernaut, and I’d better be in on it.”AdvertisementHe was an announcer in Chicago, which was a television incubator in the 1950, for “Kukla, Fran & Ollie” and.