It was definitely carried by a San Francisco station – that’s where I saw it, growing up.
It was even shown here in Boston. That’s right - Boston - where the owls say “whom”. Can you get more Yankee than that?
I wouldn’t say that I watched it on a regular basis but it was a nice alternative when “Masterpiece Theater” went into reruns.
Naw, he fell outta the Ugly Tree and hit ev’ry branch on th’ way down…
You all realize that “Hee Haw” was actually filmed on a soundstage in New York, and written by Dick Cavett and Gore Vidal, don’t you?
Watched it religiously growing up in north-central West Virginia in the late 60’s-early 70’s (and speaking of religious: it was always strangely touching when the audience remained church-silent after the gospel quartet finished singing. It taught me that religious people can enjoy looking at hot babes. After church.
While the chorus of ‘Where Oh Where’ was standard, the opening verse was always a high point – it sometimes featured the week’s guest music star as the cuckold/cuckoldette between Archie and his unfaithful wife. Their face would start out hidden, and they would turn around to be recognized in time to join in singing the chorus.
I also dearly loved the stupid puns told in front of a picket fence, punctuated with one of the pickets swooping up and smacking the joke-teller in the butt.
My personal favorite was with Archie Campbell and the hyper-babelicious Gunilla Hutton:
Gunilla: I crossed myself with some frozen milk.
Audience: What did you get?
Gunilla: Gunilla ice cream. Hee hee hee…
(smack!)
Archie: (leering) I’ll take a dish of that!
(smack!)
I did catch it in the Los Angeles market, so that answers that part of the original question.
I recall noticing the Hager twins on the show, and years later wondering if Sammy Hagar was one of them.
I also remember enjoying the Burma-Shave-esque signs they would show on the highway between segments.
Hee Haw was a CBS network television program from June 1969 to July 1971, when CBS dropped it as part of their effort to de-ruralize their program schedule (The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres) in search of a higher demographic for their advertisers.
Hee Haw has been produced for syndication since then.
Well, I did leave LuLu for you.
It should also be noted that Roy Clark is an amazing musician.
I live in South Carolina and we watched Hee-Haw every Saturday night, so I can’t really add much to the discussion of Yankees watching Hee-Haw.
However, I would like to say that I was the proud owner of a pair of Hee-Haw overalls when I was seven years old. They were covered in a Hee-Haw donkey/hay bale pattern and I loved them. I would have worn them to school every day if my mother had let me.
Of course, that has nothing at all to do with the discussion at hand, but really, when else will I get the chance to talk about my Hee-Haw overalls? 
CT boy here. To this day if I hear a bell ring I will say “Empty Arms Hotel.”
I’m a’pickin and I’m a’grinnin!
Roy Clark can flat out play the guitar.
And when I was seven, I loved the big ol titties on the ladies so much. They were a revelation. Now I’m more of a hair, face and legs man, but that’s besides the point.
As far as I know Hee Haw was somewhat popular everywhere in the 1970s, but in the 1980s it really declined. I think we could probably judge how ‘redneck’ an area was if it retained a Hee Haw audience to the very last season.
Wasn’t country just cool during the 1970s? Not that Hee Haw itself was all that fashionable, but a lot of people wore overalls, faded jeans, and flannel - not to mention the wide popularity of country music and southern rock. In the 1980’s that really went out of style.
I mean now we have “country” music on VH1 with folks like Faith Hill and Shania Twain who wear Versace, and most country singers either avoid corniness or overindulge in the more maudlin aspects. But then, country music was not as much corny as it was campy.
syncrolecyne, you’re right that there’s been a vast change, but country has always had its following. There was a very ‘hip’ country-folk-rock scene in the early 70’s (I’m thinking of the Dylan-descended, Gram Parsons stuff – remember the Stones’ ‘Exile on Main Street’?)
But this scene didn’t mingle much with the mainstream country music from Nashville. I know, because I existed on the fault line: my favorite musicians from that era were the Beatles and Johnny Cash – and I was one of the few I knew who liked them both. Just about all my friends were one or the other – the hippies laughed at the hicks, and the hicks thought all the hippies were on drugs (Elvis’s death did a lot to break that wall down – no, I’m not trying to be funny). In the early 1980’s, you had ‘Urban Cowboy’, and then a little later (the mid-late 80’s) Randy Travis and Reba became mainstream. Later still you had Faith Hill and Shania Twain, people who, however talented they may be, owed a lot of their success to looks and ‘star quality’.
More important, country songs today are happy – they’re singing about prosperity and satisfaction. In this climate, Johnny Cash wouldn’t get a second look from country music starmakers – damn the hypotheticals, look what they did to the real Johnny Cash in 1996.
Bottom line: country as it existed on Hee Haw is not the same kind of music as today’s country, it’s been changed to make it more accessible to a larger market. This does not contradict the fact that there are lots of really talented musicians in Nashville, possibly more so than in the past (I know several accomplished classical players in Nashville who play country for their living). But it’s a vastly different kind of music.
Well, the OP was asking about Hee-Haw airing in Northern urban markets, but thought I’d just add that my part of Alabama was so country that we got Hee-Haw on two different stations (an ABC and an NBC affiliate) and both aired the show at the same time (Saturday at 6 PM). They were technically in different markets, but could be picked up over the air in both areas IIRC. It aired on of them through the last season.
My favorite was Archie Campbell’s stories in the barbershop. It just wasn’t the same after he died and they had some comedic preacher that looked like Ray Stevens telling stories. Of course I was Catholic then, and couldn’t relate to the stories about funny goings-on in Southern Baptist churches. Nearsighted preachers, flea powder in choir robes, and so forth.
I was a fan for years until I got into rock music and puberty hit. The Hee-Haw Honeys were nice but the Solid Gold dancers were more my speed at that age.
When TNN brought back reruns briefly in the mid-90s, it was a nice bit of nostalgia for me. I hated they pulled it for monster truck shows and other such crap.