A Rich Heritage
Growing up on a dairy farm on the front range in the Colorado Rockies, life was always full of adventure.    Our family's favorite television show at the time was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.   Each week I would  watch in wonder as the host of the television show, Marlin Perkins, would hold up a baby lion cub in the safety
of the studio only to send his fearless co host, Jim Fowler, to search for the cub's father
out on the Serengeti of Africa.  My brother and I would often role-play but I always wanted
to be "Fearless" Jim Fowler.    Little did we know that we would get to try our hand at TV
someday.

In addition to being a dairy farmer, my father, Archie Rogers, also worked at the Denver
Federal Center where he became fascinated with the US Geological Survey Department.  
They has great maps of the area of where we would hunt elk in northwestern Colorado. 
This is where my father met a crew from KOA-TV wanting to shoot a series on the
National Forests.   On our first outing my father and his brother, Lew, acted as guides.  By the next time the crew went out my father and  my uncle were in front of the camera chastising the TV crew for treating the forest as a waste receptacle.    For the months that followed we would have encounters  with bears, mountain lions and close encounters with bull elk in rut season.    In 1974  I went in the Air Force and became a meteorologist.  Ironically, it was at Channel 4 in Denver when I decided I wanted to study weather.   The TV weatherman was a guy by the name of Weatherman Bowman.   Although I don't believe he was a meteorologist, my dad
said he really knew his "stuff."  

After 8 years in the Air Force, my wife and I thought it was time to take a civilian job
and settle down so I took a job as the Chief Meteorologist for KRBC-TV in Abilene
Texas.   So in 1983 this became the new home for American Outdoors.    As my
career in television advanced and moved us around the country the show moved
with us.   In 1997 we made the jump to cable and satellite and the show debuted
to a National and International audience on Aurora Cable and Dish Network.   In
2002 we picked up an additional audience on Time Warner Cable and in 2012
millions of viewers in Canada started enjoying American Outdoors.

Today, in 2023, American Outdoors airs to a little over 48 million viewers in the United States
and Puerto Rico.   We cover backpacking, cycling, camping, fishing, hiking and more.

It's been a wonderful journey.  We've seen some majestic mountain tops, we've
dived in 35 degree glacial water and explored the remotest areas of the Amazon Jungle.  
We had some close encounters on what was suppose to be a routine tag-and-release
mountain lion hunt and have filled mountains of videos with bloopers,
falls and equipment failures.   My favorite part was having the opportunity to explore
the great outdoors with my father, brother and uncle and today I enjoy the same with
my children and grand children.  And as great as it has been - the best is yet to come. . .
                              
Along the way, we teamed up with Resource Marketing to launch a comprehensive
eCommerce platform that is a one-stop-shop for all of your outdoor needs and hunting needs.    The oldest outdoor television show in America will bring you a new way to do your shopping.    All of our products that we sell have been completely vetted, tested and we will stand behind them 100 percent.   www.GunStuff.TV
 
For 2023, we are already planning our third trip back to the jungles and our second series on our National Parks which we launched 5 years ago in celebration of our 50th Anniversary to honor my father and my uncle, who a half century ago were not only the last of a dying breed but also pioneers in bringing the American Outdoors into your home.