Hee Haw is an American television variety show featuring country music and humor with the fictional rural "Kornfield Kounty" as the backdrop.

Hosted by country music artists Buck Owens and Roy Clark for most of its run, the show was equally well known for its cornpone humor as for its voluptuous, scantily clad women (the "Hee Haw Honeys") in stereotypical farmer's daughter outfits.

Other niche programs such as The Lawrence Welk Show and Soul Train, which targeted older and black audiences, respectively, also rose to prominence in syndication during the era.

The series was taped for the CBS Television Network at its station affiliate WLAC-TV (now WTVF)[2] in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, and later at Opryland USA in the city's Donelson area.

The show's name, derived from a common English onomatopoeia used to describe a donkey's braying, was coined by show-business talent manager and producer Bernie Brillstein.

Two rural-style comedians, already well known in their native Canada, Gordie Tapp and Don Harron (whose KORN Radio character, newscaster Charlie Farquharson, had been a fixture of Canadian television since 1952 and later appeared on The Red Green Show), gained their first major U.S. exposure on Hee Haw.

Other cast members over the years included: Roy Acuff, Cathy Baker (as the show's emcee), Willie Ackerman, Billy Jim Baker, Barbi Benton, Kelly Billingsley, Vicki Bird, Jennifer Bishop, Archie Campbell, Phil Campbell, Harry Cole (Weeping Willie), Mackenzie Colt, John Henry Faulk, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Diana Goodman, Marianne Gordon (Rogers), Jim and Jon Hager, Victoria Hallman, Little Jimmy Henley, Gunilla Hutton, Linda Johnson, Grandpa Jones, Zella Lehr (the "unicycle girl"), George Lindsey (reprising his "Goober" character from The Andy Griffith Show), Little Jimmy Dickens, Irlene Mandrell, Charlie McCoy, Dawn McKinley, Patricia McKinnon, Sherry Miles, Rev.

Grady Nutt, Minnie Pearl, Claude "Jackie" Phelps, Slim Pickens, Kenny Price, Anne Randall, Chase Randolph, Susan Raye, Jimmie Riddle, Jeannine Riley, Alice Ripley, Lulu Roman, Misty Rowe, Junior Samples, Ray Sanders, Terry Sanders, Gailard Sartain, Diana Scott, Shotgun Red, Gerald Smith (the "Georgia Quacker"), Jeff Smith, Mike Snider, Donna Stokes, Dennis Stone, Roni Stoneman, Mary Taylor, Nancy Taylor, Linda Thompson, Lisa Todd, Pedro Tomas, Nancy Traylor, Buck Trent, Jackie Waddell, Pat Woodell, and Jonathan Winters, among many others.

Some of the cast members made national headlines: Lulu Roman was twice charged with drug possession in 1971; David "Stringbean" Akeman and his wife were murdered in November 1973 during a robbery at their home; Slim Pickens, less than two years after joining the series, was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor, and, as mentioned above, Don Rich of the Buckaroos was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1974.

"[11][12] Shortly after Presley's death, his father, Vernon Presley, made a cameo appearance on the show, alongside Thompson and Buck Owens, and paid tribute to his late son, noting how much Elvis enjoyed watching the show, and introduced one of his favorite gospel songs, which was performed by the Hee Haw Gospel Quartet.

[13] Hee Haw's creators, Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth, were both Canadian-born writers who had extensive experience in writing for variety shows.

[14] The producers selected a pair of hosts who represented each side in a divide in country/western music at the time: Buck Owens was a prominent architect of the California-based Bakersfield sound and one of the biggest country hitmakers of the 1960s.

The producers also scored a country comedy expert familiar to rural audiences in Archie Campbell, who co-starred in and wrote many of the jokes and sketches, along with Tapp, George Yanok and comedian Jack Burns (who himself had briefly replaced Don Knotts on The Andy Griffith Show) in the first season.

A barn interior set was used as the main stage for most of the musical performances from the show's premiere until the debut of the "Hee Haw Honky Tonk" sketch in the early 1980s.

"[15] Lovullo said his videos were conceptualized by having the show's staff go to nearby rural areas and film animals and farmers, before editing the footage to fit the storyline of a particular song.

16 for the 1970–71 season), it was dropped in July 1971 by CBS as part of the so-called "Rural Purge" that abruptly canceled all of the network's country-themed shows, including those with still-respectable ratings.

The success of shows like Hee Haw was the source of a heated dispute in CBS's corporate offices: Vice President of network programming Michael Dann, although he personally disliked the shows, argued in favor of ratings (reflecting audience size), while his subordinate, Fred Silverman, head of daytime programming, held that certain demographics within total television viewership—in which Hee Haw and the others performed poorly—could draw more advertising dollars.

Peppiatt and Aylesworth's company, Yongestreet Productions (named for Yonge Street, a prominent thoroughfare in their home city of Toronto), maintained ownership of the series.

The success of the two shows in syndication, and the network decisions that led to their respective cancellations, were the inspiration for a novelty song, "The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka", performed by Clark; it rose to become a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in the fall of 1972.

[18] Mirroring the long downward trend in the popularity of variety shows in general that had taken place in the 1970s, ratings began to decline for Hee Haw around 1986.

In the fall of 1991, in an attempt to win back viewers, attract a younger audience, and keep pace with sweeping changes in the country music industry of the era, the show's format and setting underwent a dramatic overhaul.

lang; in attendance were Roy Clark, Gunilla Hutton, Barbi Benton, the Hager twins, Linda Thompson, Misty Rowe, and others.

[20][21] As part of the promotions for its DVD products, Time-Life also compiles and syndicates a half-hour clip show series The Hee Haw Collection.

When Hee Haw went into syndication, many stations aired the program on Saturday evening in the early fringe hour, generally at 7:00pm ET / PT.

Hee Haw continues to remain popular with its long-time fans and younger viewers who have discovered the program through DVD releases or its reruns through the years on TNN, CMT, RFD-TV, and now Circle TV.

On at least four episodes of the animated Fox series Family Guy, when the storyline hits a dead-end, a cutaway to Conway Twitty performing a song is inserted.

[24] Cast members would also perform songs occasionally; and the Nashville Edition, Hee Haw's backup singing group, frequently appeared on the show, portraying regular patrons of the restaurant.

Notable guest stars on Honeys included, but were not limited to: Loretta Lynn, The Oak Ridge Boys, Larry Gatlin, Dave & Sugar, and the Kendalls.