>From Chicago: Hey Captain, that isn't O'Hare Airport, that's Lake Shore Drive! It's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, March 8, 1994 Issue #4 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- 4. LOOK, PAUL. THE GIRLS ARE HERE. HI, GIRLS! We had a good chorkle a few months ago at Danny Duncan Collum's article in the religious-left organ the _National Catholic Reporter_ (9/17/93) that asserted Dave's was and would forever be a "guy show." Collum felt the show's fascination with cameras and gadgets was geared toward a male audience, though one could just as well say that their satirical presentation (Thrill-Cam, hydraulic press) was designed to win the hearts of technology haters, i.e., women. The _NCR_ piece also trotted out Dave's renowned goofiness with female guests on the show, as if it were an indisputable sign of his chauvinism. Maybe, but we thought his equally well-known threshold of embarrassment was much lower than the average sexist pig's ought to be. Anyway, the Collum article and our reaction to it were equally credible at the time, when no one quite knew what the ratio of men to women watching the new show would be. But thanks to Matt Newman we now have in our possession actual viewer ratings, broken down by age and gender, for the late-night shows for Jan. 31- Feb. 7 and Feb. 7-Feb. 13, the fortnight preceding the Winter Games. They show women and men in both the 18-34 and 18-49 categories watching Dave in almost equal numbers. To be fair, Jay Leno has *more* female than male viewers by about a 3:2 ratio. Like Dave, Ted has gender parity among the 18-49 group. In absolute numbers, however, it's Dave all the way, with a 4.1 rating among 18-49 women to Jay's 3.2 and Ted's 2.7. (The age and gender breakouts are lower because they represent percentages of all t.v.'s in America, not the percentage of, say, all women 18-34 watching late-night shows.) Overall, in the last two weeks before the Olympics, Dave, Ted, and Jay scored 6.7-5.6-5.7 and 6.9-6.0-5.6 ratings. *During* the Olympics, _Late Show_ ratings were 52% higher than _Tonight's_ overall and 92% higher among the under-50 crowd. 3. GRINNING STUPIDLY LIKE A MAN WITH NO COMPREHENSION THAT HE HAS BECOME AS ANNOYING AS HIS COLLEAGUE DICK ENBERG WHO ON SUNDAY COULD NOT STOP REMINDING THE WORLD THAT IT WAS "SHAQ" O'NEAL'S TWENTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY ... THIS IS _LATER_. We honestly wish we weren't writing this kind of review of the first week of Greg Kinnear's appearances on the NBC show he inherited from Bob Costas. One week is a mighty short time to judge any program. We want Michael Jordan to succeed in baseball and are willing to withhold judgment on his hitting for now. (Though _Sports Illustrated_ just put him on the cover with the headline, "Bag It, Michael!", which, if you know anything about _SI,_ means Jordan is now a cinch to make the Sox and bat .300.) Nor did we hold any particular grudge against Kinnear and his _Later_ staff for their announced departure from the Costas format of intelligent conversation. People who have complained that this is the wrong format for the 1:35 a.m. time slot are missing the point. NBC has replaced a super-late-night show with a tape-delayed late-night show. It has an afternoon studio audience and a next-day viewing audience. This is a show that the network clearly expects to have a higher v.c.r. rating than live viewership. As you no doubt have heard, it is also a show designed to build enough of an audience to justify rewarding Mr. Kinnear with a chance to restore the 12:35 _Late Night_ franchise to its former glory. But we have to say *something* after the dismal sight of the first five nights of the new _Later._ Though we cannot read the minds of the executive geniuses at 30 Rock, we would have to say the chances of Kinnear's promotion are not good. It is actually possible this early in the show's life to say it might be worse in the long run than _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ (another 30-year-old host who has no background in standup comedy or broadcast interview). It's not the format of _Later_ but the way in which it's executed, not what Kinnear has left to learn about t.v. but what he's already absorbed and mastered, that cast such a cloud over his project so early. Basically this is a Letterman ripoff attempting to cultivate a certain mean-spirited humour to set it apart from the other shows. In doing so it suffers from two potentially fatal flaws. One is that so far, much of the pre-produced comedy has been remarkably lame. Wednesday's show opened with a taped Lettermanesque encounter between host and guest where Phil Hartman, acting intoxicated, physically assaults Kinnear to little or no comedic effect. The next night, Kinnear cut off his best interview of the week (with the verbally self-sufficient George Carlin) to show some of the "outtakes" from the week's filming, a slo-mo montage of weird and violent images -- Greg gets attacked by a dog, Greg's artificial limb falls off, etc. -- nothing particularly original or outrageous. The other problem is that while Kinnear reminds you of Letterman's eccentricities, he doesn't embody them. In fact it's hard to say *what* he embodies. He kind of reminds us of Paul Lynde, reading those scripted punch lines to Peter Marshall's double-entendre questions on _The Hollywood Squares._ By contrast, there was never any need to write nastiness into the old _Late Night_: it naturally crept in, spontaneous and dead-on, fueled by the insecurity that, as Dave himself once said, "ninety percent of the time I'm dying out there." Since Kinnear seems to be relying completely on pre-produced material for his laughs, this makes for a very uncomfortable ten minutes of interview (and even that may be a generous time estimate). The smirk, the video bites, and the one-line followups that are his advertised strengths from _Talk Soup_ seem gratuitous and inappropriate for an interview show. Conan O'Brien, for all of his interviewing trials, is so obviously fresh-scrubbed (and has buffoony Andy Richter to play off of) that even the blackest humour on his show is tinged with goofy innocence. The problem maybe stems from the fact that, as one critic put it, the Letterman show is an historic show in more than one sense of the word -- just as the Paar show was and is historic. You don't go out and try to imitate it. Yes, we've seen Jay Leno's staff start to ape the camera angles of the _Late Show_ and even start to feature stupid human and pet tricks. But try reinventing it, as Kinnear consciously or not seems to be doing, and whatever other weaknesses you have will be magnified mercilessly. 2. MR. PHILBIN, MR. SNYDER ... MR. SNYDER, MS. GIFFORD ... MS. GIFFORD, MR. SNYDER ... TV Guide is reporting this week that CBS has, in fact, been talking to Tom Snyder since "a few weeks ago" about hosting a late-night interview show immediately following the _Late Show_ at 12:35 a.m. We must admit to lingering doubts whether this might not just be another embroidering on that episode of _The Larry Sanders Show_ where Dave himself spreads the rumour that he will be asking Tom to host such a program. But on the other hand: CBS is of course eager to convert the Letterman show's success into a follow-on, Worldwide Pants-produced winner. And there's the chance to swipe yet another bailiwick from NBC. Three times in the past twelve years NBC has given up on intelligent programs with small if loyal viewerships: the old _Later,_ _NBC News Overnight_ with Linda Ellerbee and Lloyd Dobins, and of course, the _Tomorrow_ show with Tom Snyder. CBS, which had never been able to field a successful entry at 11:35 until last year, certainly would accept modest ratings success at 12:35, especially if accompanied by the good p.r. from rescuing that beloved brand of late night television. (As the writer Bill Carter points out, had things worked out differently, Dave would be on NBC, winning the ratings war, but Jay Leno would be at CBS, delivering decent audiences and becoming a hero at the network for doing so.) Then again, we spotted this weekend an Associated Press feature reviving rumours that venerable talk-show host Regis Philbin would get the 12:35 slot instead. The article includes quotes from Regis, who would neither confirm nor deny he was talking with CBS, nor say whether or not he'd accept an offer if one was tendered. He simply said that, as someone who helped create a now-wildly successful morning show at a time slot where many had failed, he could envision doing the same in the late night. Also, he hinted that he may be running out of creative energy for the morning-show format. Interestingly, both Snyder and Philbin cite contract obligations as a chief reason why they can't jump to CBS -- by coincidence each says he has 17 months left on his contract. (_TV Guide_ says Snyder has only 11 months left.) We are impressed by the numbers of people watching all three of the major nighttime shows and the offerings that follow them (see number 4, above). And so we concur with the observation that if good t.v. is created, viewers will materialize. 1. THE LINEUPS (with help from S. Trowbridge) LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST 3/8 Tom Selleck, Pete Townshend, rerun of 11/11/93 3/9 Bryant Gumbel, Taylor Dayne, Dave Attell, rerun of 11/24/93 3/10 Billy Crystal, Los Lobos, rerun of 11/16/93 3/11 Jerry Lewis, Rod Stewart, 7-year-old sportscaster Sparky Mortimer, rerun of 9/29/93 3/14 Aretha Franklin, Kevin Spacey ("The Ref"), Alan King THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST 3/8 Paul Hogan, Branford and the band 3/9 Meg Tilly, The Impressions 3/10 Geena Davis, Drew Carey, The Juliana Hatfield Three 3/11 Steven Wright, senior weightlifters 3/14 John Caponera ("The Good Life") LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST 3/8 Camille Paglia 3/9 Supermodel Kathy Ireland, David Broza 3/10 Monty Hoffman 3/11 Ed Begley Jr., Tommy Davidson 3/14 Nancy Glass ("American Journal"), the Greenberry Woods LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST 3/8 TBA 3/9 TBA 3/10 Paul Hogan [A] 3/14 TBA THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW (Syndicated) 3/14 Magic Johnson The E! entertainment television cable network broadcasts reruns of _Late Night with David Letterman_ "seven Daves a week" at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Monday through Friday, reruns can also be viewed at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern. The following schedule was taken from the E! update line. Please note that the 10 p.m. listing is no indicator of the rerun that will air at 1 and 7 p.m. that day. Hell, sometimes it's not even an indication of what will show at 10 p.m. Tue 3/8 Marjorie Vincent, Jack Hanna, Bruce Hornsby (9/11/90) Wed 3/9 Richard Lewis, Aaron Neville, Marilu Henner (10/30/90) Thu 3/10 Robin Williams, Texas Tornadoes, Pamela Reed (12/18/90) Fri 3/11 Billy Dee Wms, Jane Pauley (2/12/91) Sat 3/12 Jeannine Turner, Larry Holmes (2/18/92) Sun 3/13 Glenn Close, Patrick Ewing (5/19/92) --------------------------- Send Letterman news and comments about this electronic sheet to letterman@mcs.net Entire contents Copyright (C) 1994 by Aaron Barnhart. You may redistribute this article only in its entirety, so long as a fee is not charged for retrieving or viewing this article other than on-line time. LATE SHOW NEWS is available by anonymous ftp from ftp.mcs.net in the directory /mcsnet.users/barnhart/letterman/late-show-news. If you have e-mail only and can't get this sheet off Usenet, send mail to letterman@mcs.net to be added to the LATE-SHOW-NEWS mailing list. -- Aaron Barnhart letterman@mcs.net