Anyone who has watched a Husker football game on TV this fall has likely seen the commercial featuring the familiar, timeless voice of a favorite Nebraska son.
Johnny Carson can be heard in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln advertisement, which seeks to capture the emotional connection between Nebraskans and the university.
Considering that Carson, a 1949 UNL graduate, died in 2005, how did the school resurrect his voice? Did they replicate it through artificial intelligence? Did they somehow spring the famous talk show host from the grave?
“We have that question all the time,” said Aaron Nix, a UNL employee who co-produced the spot.
The audio was actually lifted from “Johnny Goes Home,” a 1982 televised special on NBC in which the celebrated “Tonight Show” host visited his native state.
“A term you hear used frequently is the ‘Midwestern ethic.’ I’m not exactly sure what that means,” Carson says in the …