In the 80's Evening Magazine was a locally produced TV show about bay area trivia. The highlight of the show was the wacky male announcer: Richard Hart. Seem to remember the other host, Jan Yanehiro, being a vindication for the Bay Area. She symbolized the largest population segment in the Bay Area, the Asians, finally breaking into the media.
According to IMDb it was canceled in 1991 and started up again in 1998. Didn't see it again until 2004 when Mike Rowe had arrived on the scene. The Mike Rowe years were the highlight of the show. He was the modern incarnation of the original Richard Hart craziness. He crawled around sewers, stuck his arm in cow vaginae, put his body in unusual and painful positions, and brought in laid back, spontaneous dialog that couldn't have been scripted.
Not surprisingly he lent his voice to the mega hit: American Chopper and eventually got his own show "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel in which he re-enacted a lot of his Evening Magazine stunts. Unfortunately his Dirty Jobs work isn't as spontaneous and light as his Evening Magazine work. The scrutiny and financial risk of a 1 hour cable show simply doesn't allow the same improvisation that he could pull off on a 30 minute local TV show.
When Mike Rowe stopped hosting Evening Magazine in 2004, his replacement was extremely bland and acted more like an engineering manager at a corporation than a light and funny TV host. Not many people want to look at their TV and be reminded of work so shortly after that, Evening Magazine was canceled and replaced by Eye on the Bay.
