Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1523663
man said. "The worst time to go out and try to get sponsor- ship from the OEMs. We did our little motorcycle show that was held together with scotch tape and beat CBS every week and tied Wide World of Sports a few times." KNBC was so encouraged by the show's ratings that it wanted to extend the contract. Unfortu - nately, by the fall, the manufac- turers had not provided enough advertising budget to keep the show going. "It was nervous breakdown time trying to meet the tight weekly deadlines, and ulti - mately, I lost a lot of money but earned a great deal of experi- ence from it." After a stint with CART, Huff- man continued doing commer- cial and voice narration work for radio, TV, and even video games. In the mid-2000s, he gave one of the all-time great interviews DMXS Radio has ever had, encouraged by the hosts to do stuff like conjuring up ordering from a McDonald's drive-through in his over-the-top Supercross announcer's voice. For an entire generation Huff - man was the Voice of Super- cross and was ahead of his time with his innovative TV show. Tributes and condolences have poured in by the thousands on social media. He is survived by his wife KC Huffman, daughters Kimberly Frowiss and Camela Juskaitis and a granddaughter Aislinn Torrance. CN with Terry Boyd, Erv Braun, Todd Jendro and the crew. They went out of their way to be nice to me." While Huffman is well known for his announcing skills, what some people may not know is that Larry produced one of, if not the first motorcycle TV magazine show, a program called "Motorcycle World" that ran on KNBC in Los Angeles for 13 weeks during the summer of 1983. The show's concept came about when Huffman produced a half-hour show for Hester Communications to promote its Daytona Beach Motorcycle Show during Bike Week. The program, which featured Kenny Roberts and Freddie Spencer, aired on WCPX, the Orlando CBS affiliate, and drew a remarkable 9.0 Nielsen rating. "We ad-libbed most of the program with my wife holding the cue cards," Huffman said. "But I was convinced when I saw the ratings there was a place for a motorcycle show on televi - sion." Back home in California, Huffman produced "Motorcycle World" with a skeleton crew and had many top racers as guests, including Mike Bell, Brad Lackey, and Rick Johnson. He initially went on the air at a San Diego public access station and shopped the pilot around with little interest until KNBC took the bite. "Unfortunately, it was the middle of the summer," Huff - just to drink the water." You get the picture. His tenure as the Voice of Su- percross didn't have a storybook ending. Huffman was caught up in the political upheaval Supercross went through after Mickey Thompson's murder, and he said he was blacklisted after the 1988 season. The memory of how things were handled was still a bit painful for Huffman. "The next year, I asked if I could get some passes for Ana - heim, and I was turned down," Huffman said. "I wanted to bring some friends, but they wouldn't even offer me a discount on tickets." Huffman stayed involved in the sport, doing a lot of work for Suzuki in the late 1980s. He would do the occasional Speed - way race, but pretty much faded from the scene in the 1990s. Huffman was very well received when he was asked to make a comeback to do select AMA Supermoto races, including the year-ending race in Long Beach in 2006. In 2008, Huffman was one of the guests of honor at Anaheim II for Throwback Night, a retro salute to the legendary '80s rac - ing that helped establish Super- cross. Larry was the announcer that night in Anaheim in 1986 when David Bailey and Rick Johnson had what is still con- sidered to be one of the greatest Supercross battles of all time. "The Live Nation folks treated me like royalty," Huffman said. "That was a lot of fun working P154 CN II GUEST