On March 27, 1972, ABC-TV broadcast a half-hour documentary on Humboldt entitled "A Small Town in Iowa." The program was written and produced by Andy Rooney and narrated by Harry Reasoner, a Humboldt native. The show portrayed Humboldt as a kind of paradise that struggled to keep its most talented youth from leaving for larger cities, and asked, "what is it about paradise that's turning the bright kids off?" The answer, according to Reasoner and Rooney, was that "what seems to be missing is more a shortcoming of ours, than of the small town. It is that those of us with ego and ambition are not usually happy performing in front of an audience the size a small town provides."