Huell Howser, indie producer extraordinaire

Indie producer Huell Howser, who's been associated with KCET for nearly 25 years, "is a kind of natural wonder," writes LA Times TV critic Robert Lloyd, "practically the last living representative of local television in Los Angeles, and for all I know, in America ... " Howser has seven series now in production, including California's Gold, California's Green, Downtown, Road Trip and Visiting, carried by many of the state's PBS affiliates. "I don't have an agent," Howser, 58, told Lloyd. "I don't have a manager, I don't have a press agent, I don't have a wardrobe guy, a makeup guy, a parking space, a dressing room. It's basically me and a cameraman and an editor and a couple of guys in the office. I can go out between now and noon and do a full 30-minute show just talking to people on the street and have it on the air tonight. It's an economic model that's a production model, but it's a model that I believe in philosophically as far as what the viewer should
see."