Jim Scoutten has been reporting and hosting stories on the firearms industry for nearly 20 years. His popular "Shooting USA" series was named best outdoor program by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Scoutten’s TV debut happened right here in the islands as a newscaster for KITV. We look back at Jim Scoutten this month and see what he is up to today.
Scoutten was born in Charleston, W.Va., but raised in central Iowa. When he was growing up, people told him he had a great voice and when people called his house, they often assumed they were talking to his father.
"My voice was 50 percent inherited," he said.
Scoutten studied journalism, English and advertising at Drake University, and while attending the Brown Institute of Broadcasting in Des Moines, he got a job with an all-news radio station, WWTC, in Minneapolis.
For two years, Scoutten worked at WWTC reporting the news and interviewing important figures such as former Vice President Hubert Humphrey and U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale. In 1977, he got an opportunity to move to the islands when his wife, a Western Airlines flight attendant, was transferred to Honolulu.
Before the move, Scoutten sent demo tapes of his radio work to island stations and was hired by Earl McDaniel, general manager of KGMB radio. The station at the time was home to the legendary Aku (Hal Lewis) along with Michael W. Perry, Dave Denver and Doc Casey. "Les Keiter then was doing baseball re-creations nights on KGMB/K-59," Scoutten recalls. "That was amazing, using wire info to re-create play-by-play. I’d never seen that done before I got to KGMB."
After a year, Scoutten decided to give television news a try and was hired by news director Don Rockwell at KITV in 1978. He anchored the station’s weekend news with Diane Ryan and Chris Allen and served as a producer, reporter and assignment editor. A highlight was interviewing former President Richard Nixon at Honolulu International Airport.
Scoutten’s second son, Mike, was born at Kaiser Hospital in 1980. "He was welcomed with a live interview I did with Michael W. Perry from the recovery room," he said.
After two years at KITV, Scoutten made a big career move to the then-ABC affiliate in Phoenix, KTVK. "I stepped off the plane from Hawaii, landing in Phoenix, thinking I left paradise for the desert," he said.
He spent five years as the weekday anchor in Phoenix before moving on to work at TV news stations in Beaumont, Texas; Savannah, Ga.; and Seattle. In the early 1990s, he moved to Nashville, Tenn., and fell in love with the area. "I love the people. It is one of the most hospitable places. You feel southern hospitality day in and day out every day," Scoutten said.
While there, he produced and hosted a video series called "Inside Country Music," interviewing the Oak Ridge Boys, Randy Travis and an up-and-comer at the time, Garth Brooks.
Scoutten’s many years in the news business as an anchor, reporter and producer prepared him well to become a special-interest reporter. He covered motorsports and did automotive reviews on TNN’s "Road Test Magazine" and later "Motor Trend Television." He also served as a senior producer, writer, field reporter and host of "Car and Driver Television." The program earned international automotive media awards for excellence in broadcast reporting and a gold award for best national automotive series.
In 1993, he became producer and host of the "American Shooter" series, which became the highest-rated outdoor program in history, with more than 1 million viewers tuning in to each episode. For the past seven years he has been executive producer and host of "Shooting USA," produced by Tier One Media. The show can be seen locally Wednesdays at 10 a.m., 2:30 and 6 p.m. on the Outdoor Channel.
On the Net » www.shootingusa.com
A.J. McWhorter, a collector of film and videotape cataloging Hawaii’s TV history, has worked as a producer, writer and researcher for both local and national media. Email him at flashback@hawaii.rr.com.
