Just a few days after announcing he won't run for Atlanta mayor, syndicated radio host Clark Howard has set his sights on a new venue: national TV.
Howard, who calls himself Atlanta's biggest cheapskate, will host a new weekend Headline News show under his own name starting Jan. 3. It will air Saturdays and Sundays at 6 a.m., noon and 4 p.m.
The hourlong program will feature clips from his radio show, which is syndicated to 235 stations nationwide. There will also be segments specially made for TV, including a "money coach" series in which he follows families over a long period of time to see if they heed his penny-pinching pointers.
"It's perfect for our times," said Ken Jautz, executive vice president of CNN Worldwide, who runs Headline News. "People are looking for and needing financial advice."
Headline News also will air 16 daily one-minute bits by Howard starting today. He will provide tips on how to stretch the holiday dollar, such as setting a budget and resisting spending on yourself.
"All I have to sell is that I am who I am," Howard said. "I have this whiny nasally voice. I'm certainly not one of the pretty boys."
He added that people who only know him on the radio often think he's short, fat and bald. "I'm graded on a curve," he said. "They often say, 'Wow! You look OK!' "
Howard, 53, has been on local radio since the late 1980s, first on 640/WGST-AM, then 750/WSB-AM. He went into syndication in the late 1990s and has owned his show since 2002.
His radio program draws more than 3.25 million listeners a week, according to Talkers magazine, ranking him 15th nationwide. Headline News on a typical weekend draws 250,000 to 400,000 viewers during the day.
As a regular contributor to WSB-TV's news operations, Howard is no stranger to TV. But this will be a new test of his national appeal.
"It's an ego thing," he admitted. "If I can teach more people, for me, that's the deal."
He's not the first personal finance guru to make the jump from radio to cable TV. Nashville-based Dave Ramsey, who champions no-debt living, has had a prime time show on Fox Business News for about a year.
Howard hopes his gig on the weekends will be successful enough to parlay into a weekday show as well. He noted that fellow radio host Glenn Beck's payday went sky high once he got a TV gig, first with Headline News and next month, Fox News.
During a rehearsal last week for one of his promos, Howard took out a dollar bill and pulled at it. "Was that too Crazy Eddie?" he asked producer Scott Tufts, referencing a wacky sales guy for a now defunct electronics chain.
"It's just Crazy Eddie enough!" Tufts replied.
CNN retrofitted the WSB Radio studio with a faux brick backdrop and three cameras. Through the fake window is a Photoshop-ed fictional midsize city Howard dubs "Clarkville," which includes a couple of recognizable local landmarks such as the Bank of America tower. That's ironic since Howard has battled Bank of America over its treatment of customers.
"I'm going to get ribbed for that!" he said.
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