The Ontario native's career in television started when he was 19 years old on Country Hoedown, a weekly country-music program produced by and aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), where Hunter would spend the rest of his television career. The show was an on-stage revue with a house band and featured various musical guests from both Canada and the United States. Starting out as a rhythm guitarist, Hunter soon became a featured performer on the show, which led to his own daily noontime CBC radio program, The Tommy Hunter Show; it became a television series in 1965.

     Much  of  Country  Hoedown's format  and  tone were carried over into The Tommy Hunter Show. Over its 27- year run on CBC ( 1965-92)-rerun three times a week on the Nashville Network between 1983 and 1991-the show was noted for nurturing Canadian country music, which it showcased alongside big-name American country stars. Hunter wanted to break with the hokey, country-hick feel that characterized such shows as Hee Haw, however, and tried to present country music as "respectable." The result was a program that some labeled a country version of The Lawrence Welk Show. Inspired by television variety-show hosts such as Johnny Carson and Perry Como, Hunter felt that the host should have a relaxed, comfortable style, establishing a certain rapport with the audience. By sticking to his country-purist approach, he was able to establish such a rapport, building up an intensely loyal fan base that planned its Saturday evenings around The Tommy Hunter Show. Over the years, Hunter sustained an ongoing battle with CBC producers who wanted to rely on demographics and make the show more slick. He maintained that targeted programming precluded establishing a real relationship with the audience. His show relied upon the on-stage revue format, which mixed various musical sequences with dance and other country entertainment. Despite attempts to alter the program by incorporating other styles and sensibilities, Hunter persevered in maintaining the show's traditional  country tone. It was this purist approach that would ultimately sound the show's death knell, however, and  a lack of younger viewers and slipping audience  ratings led to its cancellation in 1992.

     As a long-running music television program, The Tommy Hunter Show demonstrates that television's imbrication with popular music dates back long before the rise of MTV and the music video. Hence, while it provided country music fans with entertainment each week, Hunter's program also helped to rearticulate a brand of country music that many associated with Nashville as a Canadian popular-music genre, in a period that saw the rise of a Canadian cultural nationalism that sought to define itself principally by contrast with American culture. Indeed, through the program's year-in, year-out presence on the CBC, the state­ owned broadcaster and self-styled "national network," the country music of The Tommy Hunter Show became a national symbol for many Canadians, and Tommy Hunter a figure of "Canadianness." This ability of television to reach around the generic division of popular music into record or radio formats, then, helped shape a "Canadian country music" genre, which would combine the traditional music of Canadian folk performers with the country music of artists like Tommy Hunter.

     As much as The Tommy Hunter Show displayed how television intervenes into other areas of popular culture such as popular music, it also threw into relief the tensions that arise between them. Behind-the-scenes conflict between CBC television workers and Tommy Hunter, a country musician, derived from their emergence from two separate cultural formations: on the one hand, the world of television production, with its own sensibilities and priorities; and on the other hand, the world of country music, with its distinctive internal organization and logic. CBC personnel wanted to target specific demographic ranges in their audience by "updating" the show with natty set designs and a wide variety of musical styles. But Hunter's desire for austere sets and traditional country music, and his concern for providing family entertainment for a country audience, derived from the emphasis on "sincerity" and "authenticity" that underpin country music's self-image as a genre and define fundamental aspects of the country music world. Indeed, the conflicts behind The Tommy Hunter Show foreshadowed a later reticence toward music videos on the part of the country music industry as a whole, wary of the video-clip format's "slickness."

The privileged role played by authenticity in country music, with its accompanying stress on “ordinary people,” was central to The Tommy Hunter Show. Although based in Toronto, the show went on the road frequently, playing to sold-out audiences across Canada. Hunter’s insistence that the set in each city reflect the locale of the taping illustrated his constant striving to reinsert a local feel into the globalizing pull of television. A harsh critic of the television industry even as a television star, Hunter felt that TV programmers had little understanding of country-music audiences; for Hunter, the institutional imperatives of a mass-mediated country music compromised his audience's position. These views carried over to his recording career. Hunter preferred to record albums independently rather than with major record labels, reasoning that this would allow him to aim at pleasing country audiences, rather than radio stations. And in 1992, following cancellation of The Tommy Hunter Show, he toured Canada with a stage version of the show, playing to sold-out audiences, meeting his fans from the other side of the television screen.

     The only program to survive a wave of rural, family-oriented CBC programming  in  the  1950s and 1960s that included such shows as Don Messer' s Jubilee, The Tommy Hunter Show was a country show produced in an urban environment. It was a family­ oriented show in an age of splintering demographics. It made a country singer into a television star. And in the process it had a profound impact on the Canadian popular-music landscape. By the end of the show's run, Hunter had won three Juno Awards as Canada's best male country singer (1967-69) and become the fifth Canadian to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame's Walkway of Stars (1990) for his music; he received an award from the Broadcast Executive Society as well as a Gemini Award for best Canadian variety show (1991); and he was named to the Order of Canada for his part in Canadian cultural life.