Article: 3317 of alt.zines Path: news.cic.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!zip.eecs.umich.edu!panix!ddsw1!not-for-mail From: barnhart@MCS.COM (Aaron Barnhart) Newsgroups: alt.fan.letterman,alt.fan.conan-obrien,alt.tv.talkshows.late,alt.zines,rec.arts.tv Subject: LATE SHOW NEWS 4/12/94 Followup-To: poster Date: 12 Apr 1994 00:16:45 -0500 Organization: The New York Post Lines: 183 Message-ID: <2odaru$emp@Mercury.mcs.com> Reply-To: late-show-news@mcs.net NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.mcs.com Summary: Send the message "subscribe late-show-news" to listserv@mcs.net to join the LATE SHOW NEWS distribution list! Xref: news.cic.net alt.fan.letterman:20192 alt.fan.conan-obrien:434 alt.tv.talkshows.late:937 alt.zines:3317 rec.arts.tv:103903 >From Chicago: A Beta town in a VHS world ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, April 12, 1994 Issue #9 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- 4. WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT YOU WOULD EVER HEAR THE WORDS "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY" AND "NBC" IN THE SAME SENTENCE? Remember NBC's ill-advised (and ultimately fruitless) attempt to sue David Letterman over the use of _Late Night_ "intellectual property" on his 11:35 show at CBS? Well, the weasels are at it again, only now they've decided that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Tune in the _Tonight_ show and its beleaguered host Jay Leno, and get ready to see a little relocated intelprop. Notice, for instance, that the single camera shot used for Johnny's, and then Jay's, monologue has been augmented by a bevy of angles straight out of the Hal Gurnee TV Handbook. Now we get to see the audience (a Carson taboo except during Stump the Band), both up close and over Jay's shoulder. There's a roving camera or two, and plenty of shots of the band as they laugh -- well, chuckle -- along with the monologue. (No sighting of a Harley-Cam yet.) Bandleader Branford Marsalis is now miked at all times, in hopes he will begin freshening up the patter the way Paul Shaffer does. Keep hoping, guys. The Jay crew has also learned to shoot remotes. In one short, Jay goes to Blockbuster and makes funny talk with people about their video choices. Unfortunately, the interviews lack any of the dissonance of Dave's pretaped segments and generally leave you wondering why Jay didn't just wander into the studio audience and ask what *they* were renting tonight. Another film clip shows Leno socking Marsalis, then cuts to a dummy flying across the screen -- classic Shaffer schtick. But of all the intelprop taken from Letterman, surely there is none more appalling than this: _Tonight_ show stupid pet tricks. If at 11:35 the Robin Hoods of NBC are redistributing a few pearls of creativity from the rich to the poor, what has happened to its 1:35 a.m. program, _Later_, is the Soviet-style razing of a once- plentiful t.v. franchise. When Bob Costas announced he would be leaving the show that he and Dick Ebersol created in 1988, there was hope the network would find another heavyweight interviewer in his stead -- say, Tom Snyder, who just happens to host a show on cable subsidiary CNBC. Instead the talk format was scrapped for a montage of pitiless comedy, and incredibly mean-spirited stuff at that, hosted by a grinning, 30-year-old Letterman wannabe named Greg Kinnear. In lieu of a monologue, Kinnear opens with "media bites," modeled on his cable show _Talk Soup_, featuring a daily dose of rubes (i.e., people who are dumber, uglier, and less self-conscious than the host of _Later_) found on news footage or infomercials. After a few seconds of footage, Greg reads a punchline and grins some more for the camera. Oh, yes, that's *exactly* what Dave was like in 1982. No doubt the weasels at 30 Rock will calmly point out the new _Later_'s rating of 1.2, which compares with 1.0 for the last full quarter of Costas. Fair enough, but in the long run, both _Later_ and _Tonight_ are going to have to start coming up with original ideas or these shows are dead meat. Which reminds us that last Thursday, while 100 CBS executives and their friends were watching Masters highlights, we were over on NBC, not believing our eyes, as Leno did a "Most Wanted" sketch that matched randomly-chosen audience members with fictitious crimes invented by his writers. Kids, this gag was lifted from the *Carson* era. Talk about your dead meat. 3. LETTERS ... WE GET LETTERS We announced last week that the _Late Show with David Letterman_ has an official Internet mailbox at Lateshow@pipeline.com that is being manned, so to speak, by one of the show's talent researchers, Christine Schomer. (If you want to know what Christine looks like, she is the young woman flanking Paul Newman's right side in the audience during both of his _Late Show_ appearances.) We asked Christine how the first week of mail has been going. "Well, it's been quite a week," she writes. "I think it's safe to say I received about 30-50 letters a day. Overall, I am amazed by how genuinely enthusiastic the responses have been -- people seem thrilled that we have made ourselves official." She adds that while she has not been able to catch up with her entire backlog of mail, "we are making every effort to get to all of it, and making sure appropriate staffers are aware of mail related to them." "And one more thing," says Christine. "I LOVE THE NET!" 2. F.Y. EYES Humor trends seem to be shifting: not one of the leads in last month's release _Naked Gun 33-1/3_ appeared on an 11:35 talk show to plug the movie ... Barbara Lippert of _Ad Age_ pens a lovesong to Dave in Sunday's _New York Times_. In a sidebar, Peter Kaufman erroneously notes, "The new Dave can no longer make jokes about how rich Oprah is." Yes he can, and did just last week. Why should he be any less catty toward someone who used to outearn him ten to one now that it's only three or four to one? ... An edited transcript of the Madonna interview is now available by FTP as the file ftp.mcs.net:/mcsnet.users/barnhart/ letterman/madonna-transcript.txt ... _New York Post_ columnist Ray Kerrison writes that the Madonna appearance proves CBS is "just another corporation, hustling a buck in the gutter." In a related item, _Post_ owner Rupert Murdoch announced he was selling the London daily _Sun_ to the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta. 1. THE LINEUPS LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 4/12 Mary Tyler Moore, Rita Rudner, Jackson Browne, rerun We 4/13 Mike Wallace, Jimmy Cliff, Faith Ford, rerun Th 4/14 Sarah Jessica Parker, Patti Scialpa, Jim Abbott, rerun Fr 4/15 Dana Carvey, Meat Loaf, Joan Cusack, rerun Mo 4/18 Don Rickles, Liz Phair Rickles and Phair in one night. Now *there's* your quality entertainment. THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 4/12 Carrie Fisher, director John Waters We 4/13 Chevy Chase, Patty Loveless Th 4/14 Kathleen Turner, Robert Cray Band, Harry Shearer Fr 4/15 Craig T. Nelson, Bjork Mo 4/18 Boz Scaggs LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 4/12 Shirley Jones, Matty Simmons, Koko Taylor We 4/13 Judith Light, Don King, Michael Kinsley ("Crossfire") Th 4/14 Elizabeth McGovern, Holly Cole Trio Fr 4/15 John Waters, Henry Rollins Mo 4/18 BOP(harvey) LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 4/12 Joe Pesci We 4/13 Carrie Fisher Th 4/14 Norman Lear Mo 4/18 TBA -- Thanks to S. Trowbridge THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW, Syndicated Tu 4/12 Elle Macpherson, photog Herb Ritts We 4/13 Dan Cortese, Portrait Th 4/14 Evander Holyfield, NY Boys Choir, Everette Harp Fr 4/15 Sheila E Mo 4/18 TBA Also, don't miss TOM SNYDER on CNBC, airing live Monday-Thursday at 10 p.m. Eastern with a rerun of that evening's show at 1 a.m. Reruns also air at those times Friday through Sunday. Interview of the week: last Thursday's with Ted Nugent. At one point he says to Tom, "I've never taken drugs or any of that stuff, because I don't believe in poison, I don't believe in trends, I don't believe in piercing my nipple, and I don't believe in geeks. Which means that we're blood brothers!" 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. Mo 4/11 Robert Klein, Buddy Biancalana Tu 4/12 Michael Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Roseanne Barr (no kiss) We 4/13 Terry Gilliam, Hank Aaron, Irving Caesar Th 4/14 Eddie Murphy Fr 4/15 Ben E. King, Spaulding Gray Sa 4/16 Dick Cavett, Eddie Murphy, Reuben Blades Su 4/17 John Candy, Eugene Levy, Steve Winwood --------------------------- Entire contents Copyright (C) 1994 by Aaron Barnhart. All rights reserved. Redistribution prohibited without written permission of the author, with the exceptions that a single user (a) may retrieve LATE SHOW NEWS from the archive listed below by anonymous FTP, and (b) may send to another single user by electronic mail where an electronic mailing list such as Majordomo is not employed. LATE SHOW NEWS is available by anonymous ftp from ftp.mcs.net in the directory /mcsnet.users/barnhart/late-show-news. Or get on the LATE SHOW NEWS distribution list. Just send mail to listserv@mcs.net with this one-line message ... subscribe late-show-news to get LATE SHOW NEWS in your mailbox every week. -- Send late-night program news and comments about this electronic sheet to late-show-news@mcs.net