Now He’s Selling Country Music : Host: Chuck Long makes the switch from a home shopping channel to his own country and Western program.

Chuck Long pushes up his sleeves, scoots forward on his sofa, splashes a huge grin on his wholesome, freckled face and gestures toward an imaginary object on a table. He’s going to relive a few moments from 1986, when he co-hosted a cable television shopping show in New York City.

“Ladies, it’s your birthday, and it’s time to be good to yourself. It’s been a rough year and you’ve been working hard, and you certainly deserve this beautiful cubic zirconia necklace. Don’t sit around waiting for your guy to buy you a gift because he’ll probably forget. . . .”

Long has dozens of these routines--for fur coats, bath scales, microwave ovens, toy dump trucks and ceramic candle holders--and his spiels attest to his natural sales ability.

“It didn’t matter if you liked the product or not,” Long, 28, said of his stint on “The Shopping Line.” “Your job was just to sell.”

These days Long is promoting a product that he feels passionately about: country music. And, as always, he’s promoting himself.

Long, who lives in North Hollywood, hosts and produces “Chuck’s Country,” a half-hour country and Western music show that runs Fridays at 8 p.m. on United Cable Systems, a Van Nuys-based operation. The program’s second season began in September.

Long hopes to sell his show to a national cable network and he has attracted the attention of some national executives.

“I was very impressed with his talent and knowledge of the music,” said Stan Hitchcock, owner of Country Music Television, a Nashville-based station that reaches 11 million homes nationwide. “His personality fits the new, young country image that’s so popular now.”

Long put together a 10-minute special that is airing periodically on CMT through December.

“Chuck’s Country” features performance vignettes, country music news and interviews with country music celebrities and up-and-coming singers. And, of course, it features Long.

A native of Decatur, Tex., Long has been performing all his life. But it wasn’t until “The Shopping Line” that he felt confident as a host. With only a few minutes to prepare his pitches, Long hawked dozens of items for 3 1/2 hours a day.

“That show encompassed everything I knew about performing--hosting, acting, having a sense of humor and improvising,” Long said. “No matter what they threw me--without a TelePrompTer or cue cards--I could hold my own weight.”

“The Shopping Line” was canceled after six months, Long said, because the show’s supplier moved to a bigger shopping network. So Long moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a TV host and actor. And this is where he conceived the idea for “Chuck’s Country.”

“I was looking for a VEY-hicle,” Long said, allowing his Texas drawl to make a rare public appearance. (He spent six months in diction therapy to learn to disguise his twang.)

He planned to make a pilot and then try to sell the idea to one of the national country cable networks in Nashville. Last year, he gathered a crew of 12 friends, including actors, directors and camera people, and persuaded United Cable Systems to let his crew use the studio for free.

He covered the rest of the expenses--including set materials, videotape and promotional materials--with $4,000 of his own money. Friends designed and built the show’s in-studio set, a high-tech barn with a two-tiered fence and a backdrop of the Arizona desert.

“Nobody was doing anything like it,” said Zarina Mudgett, public access coordinator for United Cable. “Chuck had a very good idea and a very strong direction. When he came to me, I knew he would go far.”

Long asked United Cable for permission to air a season’s worth of episodes so that his crew could work out the kinks of the show before pitching it to Nashville. The company allowed him free studio time but charged for other costs, including the use of lighting and editing equipment. The crew produced 12 episodes for about $3,000 each. Crew members volunteered their time, and Long borrowed money from his parents to help foot the bills.

Meanwhile, he supported himself through residuals from commercials and TV appearances and from substitute teaching duties at Dixie Canyon Elementary School in Sherman Oaks.

The “Chuck’s Country” crew includes two co-hosts, two reporters, four directors, a news anchor, a studio producer, a production manager and a camera person. But many of the jobs overlap. “No one’s a prima donna,” said Dea McAllister, one of the co-hosts. “Everyone picks up a tripod. We’re a unit, a family.”

About midway through the season, Long got partial sponsorship from country music station KZLA and a chain of Western clothing stores. And he got Bob Guerra, KZLA’s operations manager and program director, to do a country music news segment on “Chuck’s Country.”

The crew shot several shows on location at country music festivals around the country. They interviewed celebrities such as Eddie Rabbitt, Tanya Tucker, and members of Alabama as well as local singers such as Dave Durham of Van Nuys and his Bull Durham Band.

Even if Long doesn’t make it to Nashville right away, he believes that Los Angeles has enough country music fans to make his show a success. “When we started, I didn’t know if there was a country music audience out there,” he said. “But we’ve gotten such a good response when we go to concerts and clubs. I know people are watching.”

Long says “Chuck’s Country” is different from other country music shows because it targets fans in their 20s and 30s. “We try to bring in a younger audience without alienating the older, die-hard country fans,” Long said.

“I’m a representative of what’s happening in country music right now. I grew up with a lot of different musical styles. You don’t have to grow up in a barn and sit around drinking beer to like country music.”

Long grew up in Decatur, a town of 5,000 people about 60 miles northwest of Dallas. His hosting career began the summer after his freshman year at the University of Texas in Austin. With the help of a friend, he wrote, directed, edited and produced a weekly half-hour life style show called “All Around Wise” for a cable station serving Wise County. He raised $10,000 from local banks, car dealerships and pharmacies to buy camera and lighting equipment, some of which he still uses.

Through college, Long hosted specials for various cable stations and during his junior year, he hosted a country music interview talk show for his college TV station. That’s when he got hooked on the country music scene.

“I like the entertainers so much,” he said. “There wasn’t an attitude at all. Country entertainers are so down to earth, so accessible.”