Former Crossfire Producer Randy Douthit Opens Up About the Show's Impact and Legacy
- (Photo : Randy Douthit)
Randy Douthit is at the top of the totem pole.
As an executive producer and director, he has an enviable track record of success, with three No. 1 national TV shows to his credit: Crossfire, Larry King Live, and Judge Judy. And it looks like he's heading towards a fourth. Judy Justice is already drawing top ratings for the Amazon-owned streaming channel Amazon Freevee.
It's been quite a ride from being the groundskeeper at a local TV station to arriving at the top of the game.
Douthit was in school, mowing lawns at the local TV station when he was offered a job. He was 19 at the time. He became a director at 23.
"I seemed to have a natural knack for it," he says.
Randy Douthit on What It Takes To Stay at the Top
"Well, I think intuition is an important aspect of it," says Douthit. "You have to be able to read people, you have to be able to see what they want, what they're looking for, and what's interesting.
"What's interesting to me is quite often what's interesting to the audience. We're running in parallel lines, and I was fortunate enough to have a news background in local television.
"At the beginning of CNN, people had their own specialties ... that is, if they were a technical type, if they were a newsroom type, or a stage manager, or whoever, they had their own separate aspects.
"But I was able to employ all those different aspects because I had experience as a director. I had experience in news. I had experience working with people who only knew one aspect, so I became very useful."
The Medium Is the Message
Among those who influenced him, Randy Douthit counts the Canadian professor and media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who coined the expression, "The medium is the message."
Though controversial nearly 60 years ago, McLuhan's theory that television had the effective power to change society has been proven correct.
"Witness American attitudes toward the war in Vietnam. This was very interesting to me," says Randy Douthit.
The Vietnam War was often called the "living room war" because it was so well covered by network television news, it was in your living room every night -and finally, the American people turned against it.
Recalls Douthit, "The public said, 'This is not a war that we should be in.' It convinced the whole country and so we pulled out. So, to me, that's very interesting. Now, you're watching what's happening with Ukraine and Russia live, basically."
Randy Douthit Says Change Is Good
Randy Douthit has seen rapid growth in the evolution of television technology during his time as an executive producer and director.
"Before I went to CNN, I produced a show called Seattle Today and I found that if you produced a
show on location you got a much larger audience ... so I took the entire crew, equipment, and everything and went to Hawaii ... We did three episodes in Hawaii that turned out to be a barnstorming of ratings.
"It was just incredible; everybody wanted to go, plus we were given free tickets to fly there. It was a lot of fun."
The Change to Digital
"Fast-forward to CNN where you're doing interviews via satellite," says Douthit. "Now, you could just use the digital signal and we can send the finished show by email and you can watch the edit.
"Producing for the fledgling CNN was very different. Now, it's seen around the world. Plus, you've got people who are reporting who are guests.
"You don't need that many people on location anymore. If you've got a cameraman who doubles as a tech guy, a reporter getting the story who sends it back home where you have the recording system, and the big producer is making the commands.
"It's very interesting to me."
What's Next?
After decades of experience in the control room, Randy Douthit knows to expect the unexpected. "I can't tell you what's next, [but] something will happen," he says.
"I'm learning new stuff about how to stream and now I understand at least the basics to it.
"Change is good."
