Randy Douthit’s Remarkable Career at a Glance

Randy Douthit embarked on his small-screen career in the news business. He is very positive about what the future of the news industry holds. He once said that he still believes that news that is reliable to people is still alive and will not die soon. When Douthit was 23, he got a job with a TV station based in Portland, OR, to act as a morning show director. He would spend his summers there mowing the grass. He notes that working there was rather a tough trial. However, he discovered that he was great at producing and directing. He then joined Seattle Today, which was a mixture of entertainment and news, and later shifted to CNN, where he directed and produced highly significant programs such as Larry King Live and Crossfire.

Randy Douthit connected with a retired family court judge named Judith Sheindlin, who took the chair in TV court as Judge Judy. She would dispense justice from the bench for 25 consecutive years. The show set the bar high for reality programs based on arbitration. Douthit directed and produced Sheindlin since the beginning and moved with her into the modern age at the streaming channel owned by Amazon, known as Amazon Freevee. Judy Justice was among the highly-rated programs at Freevee. Nevertheless, Douthit never strayed far from his roots in the news.

Douthit says that TV news has drastically changed since the 1980s, as there are many stories lately with questionable sources. Therefore, facts and context have ceased being an imperative factor in the news. Douthit notes that the kind of news that survives and thrives are those concerning murders, car accidents, and scandals. Additionally, since TV programmers need advertisers, there is a high temptation even to add obscene content.

Randy Douthit believes that television will move forward. Furthermore, he is thrilled to have the opportunity to create content on platforms that were not even in people’s imaginations when he was a kid.