75 years of WOWT: Here’s Johnny!
Before ‘The Tonight Show,’ Johnny Carson hosted ‘The Squirrel’s Nest’ on WOW-TV
OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - As we celebrate 75 years, we’d be remiss not to make note of our most famous alum.
Johnny Carson, one of Nebraska’s most famous celebrities, spent much of his early broadcasting career here at WOWT before his talents were noticed by Hollywood and he made his way to California — and of course eventually “The Tonight Show.”
On the air every night, Carson’s style — the clothes that he wore — became the “in” thing for men across the country. Eventually, he capitalized on that and started the Carson clothing line.
But before all that, he was a young broadcaster in Omaha.
PHOTOS: Johnny Carson
Carson joined WOW AM radio in 1950 and hosted a morning show on WOW-TV called “The Squirrel’s Nest.”
“The original application — I was 23,” Carson said in a 1984 interview. “I put down all my good qualities: Single. Typing speed: 35. Other business experience: I said ‘selling.”
Carson had just graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“We went on the air Monday at 4. If you asked me now what we did, I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “We did anything to survive. We did turtle races — one of our more exciting things because with turtle races, you could kill a lot of time. We have a forced audience. We corralled people off the street. We sat them in folding chairs, and we started.”
He had a radio show in the morning on WOW-AM and a live TV show in the afternoon called “The Squirrel’s Nest.”
The only recording we could find was one broadcast on Christmas Day in 1950.
“We went shopping late and most of the nice trees were picked over. It’s fairly sturdy. Isn’t that nice.”
Carson said a lot of the material he created during his time in Omaha easily translated to Hollywood. He even turned his long-distance calls to Iowa into a crowd-pleaser.
“I remember getting a bill for 20 cents for a phone call I had made to Council Bluffs. And they wanted to be reimbursed,” he said. “I went to the Douglas County Bank, and I hired a uniformed officer with a gun: ‘Please get a bag and put 20 pennies in it.’”
Carson spent a little more than two years in Omaha. But his impact is still felt here 75 years later.
WATCH: ‘The Squirrel’s Nest’ Christmas Day 1950
WATCH OUR SPECIAL REPORT
We’ll be airing a half-hour special report celebrating our 75th anniversary next month. It will air commercial-free at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 19 — and feature some never-before-seen footage of the people who made this station a success while covering some of the biggest stories to keep you safe.
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Digital Director Gina Dvorak contributed to this report.
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Find more 75th Anniversary coverage — including vintage videos, promos, photos, and more — at WOWT.com/75.
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