Can’t get enough of California? Try hopping into this Huell Howser livestream

If you enjoy learning about Southern California, there’s a new way to get your kicks.

You can now tune into a 24/7 livestream of Huell Howser’s Visiting series on PBS SoCal’s YouTube channel. It’s the public television station’s attempt to bring the celebrated personality’s work to a new audience.

About the livestream

YouTube livestreaming is different. In this case, it’s a content feed that runs continuously where you can hop in at any point in the episodes and talk to other people watching it.

The stream mimics the experience of old school TV watching.

A lot of Californians know Howser’s work. But if you don’t, he was a public television producer who died in 2013 known for his sense of wonder, excitement at the everyday people and places he visited, and his real Southern twang.

Among his many shows, he explored rich places across the state with California’s Gold, and brought us closer with human-interest stories around Southern California in Visiting.

The stream only started at the end of June, but it’s already racked up plenty of attention.

“There’s people [saying] checking in from Oxnard,” said Kathy Kasaba, PBS SoCal’s senior director of production management. “Huell’s a legend, and we miss him.”

Howser’s work gained popularity from the early ‘90s and continued to captivate audiences until his retirement in 2012. PBS SoCal is hoping that by putting these classic episodes on another platform, new audiences will follow.

“Huell Howser has always been a draw for Southern California audiences,” said Dan Ferguson, senior vice president of marketing and communications at PBS SoCal. “We are thrilled to offer this viewing option to Huell fans everywhere.”

Huell Howser’s lasting impact

Kasaba used to be the production manager of Howser’s shows. She said there’s a soft spot in her heart for his legacy. She recalled the moment when the stream went live.

“I think I texted someone to say, ‘Watching these and seeing the responses of people just makes me smile,’” she said.

She remembered Howser as a kind man who loved the people living here.

“He would come back into the office and just relay the people he had met, or some exciting experience he had with just the general public,” Kasaba said. “We would just sit there listening to how excited he was about his program.”

Howser’s work spans hundreds of episodes that finds him visiting places at different cross sections of California, from restaurants and small communities to oddities and well-known wonders, all the while having conversations with residents and people who know the places best. And of course, there were always welcomed moments of distractions, where he’d pause to go on a tangent or say hello to a fan just walking by.

Kasaba said all his shows had an impact on the public. She recalled one Christmas lunch where the crew went to eat at a restaurant that was featured earlier in an episode.

“The owner came over, and he said after that show had aired, he had people lined up around the block,” Kasaba said. “Huell was like lining up things right in your backyard that you could go experience here in California for little or no expense.”

Currently, the new PBS SoCal livestream runs Visiting in 40-hour blocks. Twice a week, they swap out four “old” episodes with four “new” ones to keep the experience fresh, according to senior director of digital Bijan Rezvani. At any given moment, the number of people watching typically sits in the double digits, making for lively conversations among viewers.

The episodes can be streamed on demand in other places, but hopping onto the YouTube livestream with fellow Californians is perhaps the best way these episodes should be enjoyed — with each other.

“I think he would be honored that people still are so excited about what he’s brought to them and also humbled,” Kasaba said. “That was really his true goal: To bring California to everyone and to have them share in the excitement and love of what he felt California’s gold really was.”