Live from Missouri: There’s only one late-night TV show made in the middle of the US

What if someone with the same aspirations as Johnny Carson or David Letterman stayed in the Midwest to bring humor to the world though a late-night talk show?

That’s the experiment Jeff Houghton started in Springfield, Missouri, in 2012. His creation, “The Mystery Hour,” is in its ninth televised season and is aired in 17 markets touching 14 states.

The show, which despite its name is 30 minutes, was set to reach its 200th televised episode this spring before the pandemic shut down production. But Houghton is still cranking out nightly shows at 9 p.m. on Facebook Live, from his Desperation Studios, aka his garage.

The show has won four regional Emmy awards and is syndicated on FOX, ABC and CW affiliates in markets from Bend, Oregon, to Charlotte, North Carolina. The majority of the 17 markets are in the middle of the country, though.

Elsewhere, episodes are available for free viewing at “The Mystery Hour” YouTube channel. That channel also showcases Houghton’s most famous bit, a video his crew produced in December 2015 that went viral and eventually hit 60 million total views, he said.

“Instagram Husband” is a satirical two-minute public service announcement for anyone who has become a “human selfie stick” in support of someone’s social media posting habit. “We used to eat our food, now we just take pictures of it,” laments one of the actors in the video, which brought exposure to the show and has since inspired national commercials by Taco Bell.

Starting small

Houghton grew up in Iowa City and graduated from the University of Iowa, then took his communications degree to New York for an internship at “Late Show With David Letterman.”

While his experience with Letterman was limited to making copies and getting coffee for guests, his New York experience was important. It is where he discovered his love of improv through going to weekly Upright Citizens Brigade shows.

After his internship in New York, Houghton took a job in Minnesota and met a girl from Missouri. Eventually, he moved to her hometown of Springfield and they married. In Springfield, he took improv classes and created “The Mystery Hour” to entertain those who had already gathered for improv theater.

“It was this passion project for me,” he said. “I got done with that first one in November 2006 and I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life.”

The show was performed only for live audiences once a month for five years. In 2011, Houghton felt the need to see if he could make it in Los Angeles. He moved there while his wife stayed in Springfield, with the understanding that he’d come back when she told him she needed him. He took improv classes, did some standup and went on “a million auditions” and as the end of the year neared, his wife asked him to come home.

While back in Springfield that fall, before moving back permanently, he met with a TV station that had lost its affiliation and was looking for original programming. He told them: “I can meet next week but then I’m going back to Hollywood.” Little did they know his version of “Hollywood” was a friend’s parents’ spare bedroom in Los Angeles.

“I had two goals when I went to LA,” Houghton said. “One was to go big, and that didn’t happen. The other was to go through the process of going for it. I needed to break my addiction to security and to build the perseverance to put yourself out there every day.”

He came back to Springfield in December 2011 and in spring 2012 he was working on his first televised episode of “The Mystery Hour.”

Live from Missouri

“Truthfully, I didn’t know anything about putting on a television show. I had experience putting on a live show, though,” said Houghton, now 41.

The first two seasons of the televised show were shot in a small art gallery, which sat about 45 people. Until the pandemic hit, “The Mystery Hour” is taped before a live studio audience of about 500 people at the historic Gillioz Theatre in downtown Springfield. Audience members pay $12 in advance or $14 at the door to attend the Saturday night session offered eight times a year. (Check themysteryhour.com once tapings resume.)

In a typical season, they tape eight times between September to May, usually three episodes each time. The current 24-episode season was cut short due to coronavirus, so Houghton is still at it from his garage.

“We’re all stuck inside for the greater good right now,” he said in an email to fans on Monday. “And if you’re looking for a good, not great, entertainment option — we’ve got one for you.” His guests now appear remotely.

We visited the weekend after Thanksgiving and saw three episodes filmed for the current season. Episode 7 of season 9 featured New York-based stand-up comedian Kenny DeForest, episode 8 featured Craig Antiko, the founder of a New York-based nonprofit that uses donations to erase medical debt for those in financial need, and episode 9 included actor George Basil, from the HBO series “Crashing.”

Each show follows the same formula: an opening segment by Houghton, a live bit sometimes including audience members, a recorded skit, an interview with the guest and a closing segment featuring the musical guest.

There is a crew of 20 to 25 people working on each show, from about 10 on the production team to seven writers plus folks who help book talent and Houghton’s on-stage sidekick Michelle “Mo” Holloman.

The musical guests started out all local but have become more regional. In addition to two local acts, we saw Jackson Stokes, a singer/songwriter from St. Louis, and the October 2019 taping included Brody Caster, a country artist from Douglass, 45 minutes southeast of Wichita. Caster debuted his new single, “Started With A Song,” on this season’s fourth episode.

“We get a lot of regional interest from bands now because they get a really high-quality video of their performance that they can use to get gigs with,” Houghton said.

A late night show where?

As the show’s audience has grown beyond Springfield, they’ve had to work to delocalize on-air guests. Folks in North Carolina likely don’t want to hear from the mayor of a southern Missouri city with a metro area population of about 470,000 residents.

Houghton and his team try to recruit at least one guest each taping session from a coast and work to get regional and local guests who should spark some national interest.

Some high-profile guests they’ve had on the show that you might recognize: Leslie David Baker, best known as Stanley from “The Office,” Jim O’Heir, who played Jerry on “Parks and Recreation,” wrestling legend CM Punk and Paul Scheer, a comedian and actor from “Veep” and “The League.”

Now that “The Mystery Hour” is on in 17 markets, the show gets more interest from publicists and agents. Still, it can take some convincing if the guest doesn’t have Midwestern roots.

“The good news is that anyone who is willing to accept a relatively small paycheck, get on a flight, then get on another flight to get here are fun, good people,” he said. “It weeds out the jerks because they won’t come.”

Houghton started by asking friends of friends he’d made while in LA to be on the show. Every guest who appeared on the show was asked for a list of potential guests.

“I thought I would run out of guests within the year and that was 2006,” he said. “We get a lot of help from people who have been on the show. It takes someone saying, ‘Yes, this is legit.’ People can’t believe that we draw a big crowd and that it’s a quality show.”

Among those who have helped the show make inroads is Dana Powell, a Springfield native who is best known as Pameron, sister of Cameron (played by Kansas City, Kansas, native Eric Stonestreet) on “Modern Family.”

Showcasing flyover country

While he works to attract some big names to be on the show, Houghton also wants to keep the spotlight on the fact that there’s a lot happening between the coasts.

“It’s really rare what we are doing in terms of trying to do a late night talk show not on a coast, not in a big city and that we are self-syndicating,” he said.

He wants to use the stage to overcome the perception those who don’t live in the Midwest have of what is sometimes called flyover country.

He often does a segment on “The Mystery Hour” where he plays America’s Midwest Foreign Correspondent. He was inspired by hearing an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” by host Terry Gross. The reporter was not from the Midwest and had traveled to the Midwest outside of the political season and not during a natural disaster.

“He was talking as if he were making dispatches from this other place and telling her what it was like there,” Houghton said. “It’s just baffling to me that people think this area of the country can be backwards or just has this image of nothingness.”

He also does customized versions of “The Mystery Hour” on location. He did one in Hays in 2012, conducting man-on-the-street interviews with Fort Hays State University students and having local guests and musicians on stage.

“I love going to a place like Hays and making the show about them,” he said. “People in a city the size of Hays aren’t used to that. I like being a part of shining a light on places like that where people don’t realize there are cool people and cool things going on.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Live from Missouri: There’s only one late-night TV show made in the middle of the US."