Trivia / Hee Haw

• Blooper: Flubs and goof-ups were often left in, as they were often funnier than the jokes. Junior Samples was particularly a target of these.
• Channel Hop: Spent three seasons on CBS before finding its niche in syndication.
• Executive Meddling: Ratings for the show fell through the 1980s, as variety shows began to be seen as passé. In 1992, the producers decided to go after a younger audience, resulting in a rename to The Hee Haw Show, more pop-style country music acts, and the replacement of the barnyard and cornfield with a city street and shopping mall, respectively. This killed the show instantly and resulted in Hee Haw Silver (a series of clip shows) running until the show was officially cancelled in 1993.
• Fake American: Don Herron and Gordie Tapp are Canadians - technically they didn't claim to be American, but viewers would assume they are because they fit in with the genuinely Southern comedians and musicians.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The episodes post-1984 rarely aired on such networks as RFD-TV and Circle.
• Long Runner: Ran from 1971 until 1997 in syndication, although it spent most of its final years in reruns.
• Referenced by...:
  • The Simpsons had the knock-off show Yahoo in the episode Colonel Homer.
  • The show is referenced twice on The Critic as Hee Haw: The Next Generation. The first time media mogul Duke Phillips refers to the show by name and claims to have Junior Samples, Jr. on board. The second time the show is seen, but it's simply Hee Haw with the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation as performers.
  • The video for Music/Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins' "Rise Up (With Fists!!)" takes place on a Hee-Haw expy hosted by Sarah Silverman.
• Screwed by the Network: CBS canceled the show after two seasons as part of The Rural Purge. It was the longest-lived "survivor" of the purge, lasting 20 years in first-run syndication.
• What Could Have Been: For several years in the 1970s, Sam Lovillo and others on the production staff worked hard attempting to book Elvis Presley as a guest star. Elvis himself expressed a strong desire to perform on the show but knew that he would need approval – which he then said he'd never get – from his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Had things actually fallen into place, such an episode would likely have been by far the most famous episode and highest rated, with Elvis himself performing the concert of a lifetime – several of his hits, songs he listened to as a youth, covers of both Roy Clark and Buck Owens' songs, and a gospel song or two – and participating in the skits.

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