Your colon: Tonight only on The Spirit of Arkansas

I see where CBS News' Harry Smith underwent a colonoscopy on live TV this morning. Thank goodness Katie Couric was there to supervise things. (By the way, would Uncle Walter Cronkite have ever gone along with such silliness?)



This reminds me of a bizarre promotion run by KATV channel 7 back in the late 1980s. I worked for about two years in the KATV newsroom running their A-Net radio network. It was fascinating to see TV news being done up-close while still remaining apart from the operation.

As part of the station's ongoing effort to prove it cares about you, the viewer, more than the other local stations, KATV spent several months working on the issue of colon cancer.

The station aired a series of stories about people who survived cancer because of early detection, and it aired public service announcements featuring then-hot-shot anchor Greg Hurst (at left) asking that people write in for a free colo-rectal cancer screening kit. Thousands of Arkansans wrote in for the kit, which consisted of a card on which you were to smear a "stool sample." You then folded the poop-covered biohazard into an envelope and mailed it back. A lab would screen each one for any evidence of blood in the stool.

As you can imagine, there were lots of filthy jokes about this whole program among us cynical newspeople. Like don't volunteer to help Greg answer his fan mail. Ha.

One post script: Though at the time we laughed at Hurst's willingness to go along with this sort of pseudo-journalistic activity, the pretty-boy anchor ended up at WABC in New York City from 1989 to 1997. He currently anchors for KHOU in Houston, Texas.

Stay classy, Houston.