Randy Douthit Talks the Tech Effect on TV Producing

Randy Douthit, whether he knew it or not, could see his future.

He first became aware of the power of television on a Wednesday afternoon in 1953 when he saw an unfamiliar object being delivered to his grandparents’ Oregon home. It was a television set, one of only some 20,000 in American homes at the time. When his grandfather plugged it into the wall outlet and turned it on to reveal a picture and the sound of a commentator speaking about America’s war in Korea, Douthit was both astounded and mesmerized.

And thus, the seeds of his legendary career were planted. “I love doing [my job] and therefore I did it well,” he says. “I think if people enjoy doing it, they will also do it well.”

That magical device, the television, had been invented only 25 years before Douthit first laid eyes on the boob tube when Philo Farnsworth sent a black and white sound picture through the walls from one room to another. And yet, for Randy Douthit, as well as for millions of Americans, it felt so familiar, as if it had always been there.

Back in the day, there were only a few channels including CBS, NBC, and ABC, and relatively few programs. The hit shows of the time were I Love Lucy, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Arthur Godfrey and Friends, The Milton Berle Show The Colgate Comedy Hour, Dragnet, and Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life.

Biff Baker, U.S.A. didn’t make the list, though young Randy Douthit might have watched it if he were old enough to change the channel. Maybe his grandfather let him see Sky King.

Today’s multiplicity of networks with more than 500 channels plus streaming services and a vast variety of transmission methods would have boggled 4-year-old Douthit’s mind. But as the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same: Although the names are different, the content (comedy, crime, drama, family, game shows, news) has pretty much remained constant.

I Love Lucy became Modern Family; Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts became American Idol; Milton Berle became Chris Rock; and 12 Angry Men became Judy Justice, the last being produced and directed by that small screen rapt child, Randy Douthit.

By the time he was 23, Douthit went from a captivated kid watching his favorite shows to a behind-the-scenes powerhouse, producing and directing content for TV.

The Internet changed everything, says Randy Douthit

Douthit started his TV career at KGW-TV, a local station in Portland, Oregon, and then on the Peabody Award-winning children’s program How Come? In nearby Seattle, he produced and directed Seattle Today, multiplying the audience by 10 times.

Then he joined CNN, where he was the executive producer and director of Crossfire, the network’s top show. He also produced a weekly news panel program called Capital Gang. Both Crossfire and Capital Gang won CableAce Awards. In 1985, Douthit conceived, executive-produced, and directed the Peabody Award-winning prime-time show Larry King Live. He later joined Quincy Jones Entertainment, where he supervised the development of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He has broadcast from the studio, satellite, trucks and now streaming. He’s at the top of his game now as executive producer and director of Judy Justice, which is streaming its second season on IMDb. He was at the helm of the original Judge Judy show on CBS for 25 years as executive producer and director and now deals with the demands of new technology.

“I think that it’s added to it,” he says. “I mean, when I started, we’d use satellites and that was a big change, to use trucks to send the signal back live. Once that happened, then things became more important. And when things are live, things can go wrong. So, there’s just a lot of stuff to watch out for. In the beginning, it was just in the studio with a guest and then we changed over to trucks and satellites and things definitely changed.”

The changes continue with the streaming version of the popular courtroom antics of former Manhattan family court justice Judy Shiendlin, which has been picked up for a second season on the Amazon Studios owned IMDb TV.

“The Amazon version of Judy is a bit different from what we did at CBS,” Douthit explains. “At CBS, we taped every other week. We did 52 weeks’ worth of shows and we would quite often go quite a while without a break, because we would tape every other week to allow for preproduction booking cases and setting up. With Amazon, it’s a bit different because we tape every week, but it’s just two days a week, but there’s no real downtime for prep. So, we find ourselves working through the weekend.”

This is a man who clearly enjoys his work.

Douthit says, “I guess that I’m like a kid in a playground.”