Shadoe Stevens
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Shadoe Stevens (born Terry Ingstad in 1947 in Jamestown, North Dakota) was the host of American Top 40 from 1988 to 1995. He currently hosts and is the announcer for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS.
Stevens first came to fame in 1957, when a Life Magazine article about him, entitled "America's Youngest D.J." featured a photo of Stevens broadcasting live over Radio Station KEYJ (now called KQDJ). The accompanying article extolled the fact that he had built his own working transmitter in his basement the year before, using scrap parts. However, the article omitted the fact that the spare parts he had utilized had been provided by KEYJ as a promotional stunt, and also neglected to mention that KEYJ was part of a chain of "KEY" radio stations, located throughout the upper midwest, which were owned by his father and uncle.
Nevertheless, young Stevens was a talented D.J. After graduation, he joined the Bill Drake-formatted station WRKO in Boston, in 1968. In the spring of 1970, he moved to Southern California to another Drake outlet, KHJ, where his easy baritone and laid-back style soon gained a following. Before long, he gained significant popularity.
During the 1970s, Stevens gained additional cult following as "Fred Rated," the host of a series of offbeat television commercials for The Federated Group, a chain of home electronics retailers in the southwestern United States. He also contributed several memorably straight-laced readings of absurd material for The Kentucky Fried Movie.
Stevens was the announcer for two incarnations of The Hollywood Squares (the 1986-1989 and 1998-2004 versions) appearing in the middle square of the bottom row and being portrayed as the smartest square on the show for the majority of the time as well as playing Kenny Beckett on the sitcom Dave's World (1993-1997). He appeared as himself on an episode of The Larry Sanders Show when character Hank Kingsley called on him as a substitute announcer, labeling him "a vocal god."
In 2006, Stevens was hired to be The Late Late Show's announcer, a position as noted in the opening paragraph he still holds.
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