Article: 3367 of alt.zines Path: news.cic.net!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 4/19/94 Followup-To: poster Date: 18 Apr 1994 23:21:53 -0500 Organization: The New York Post Lines: 206 Message-ID: <2ovm91$qvg@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:20577 alt.fan.conan-obrien:528 alt.tv.talkshows.late:966 alt.zines:3367 rec.arts.tv:104614 >From Chicago: We don't travel anywhere without our custom-made luxury buses ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, April 19, 1994 Issue #10 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- 4. ARSENIO QUITS Monday night, following the taping of his syndicated talk show, host ARSENIO HALL told his staff he is quitting his program. The _Arsenio Hall Show_ has been beleaguered by poor press and plunging ratings. Though much of the show's loss of profile can be blamed on a move to a later time slot by many Fox and CBS affiliates in favor of new network-produced late shows, Arsenio did not help his cause. A gushy one-hour interview with Minister Louis Farrakhan brought on the wrath of editorialists and the disfavor of some of his guests. A writer on his show gained notoriety when he felt up as many as 40 male actors who had been told they were auditioning for a "Buttmaster" sketch for the show. And Arsenio, who is producing a pile of shows over on Fox, simply was not spending quality time shoring up his program's weak spots, like its sophomoric humor and eerie-sounding dead air pockets. WBBM-TV, which carries the show in the Chicago market, reports the final broadcast will be May 27, followed by reruns "for an unspecified time." Last month Hall's average rating slunk down to 1.9, below Conan O'Brien's rating. At its zenith in 1989, Arsenio was puncturing the 5.0 mark and bringing millions of viewers to the late-night audience. He'll leave two lasting marks on the industry: he pointed the way to a prosperous post-Carson time slot, and he presented an integrated vision of show bidness the likes of which had not been seen since the sixties. 3. BOOK BITES (take our word for it) Bill Adler has just put out a book, _The Letterman Wit_ (Carroll & Graf, $14.95), "a vastly entertaining volume about one of the most popular personalities in America," says its jacket. For those of you who don't recognize the name, Bill Adler is a promoter and author of the kinds of books that make money not because they're well-written but because they're well-timed. In the early 1960s, during the days of Camelot, an enormously successful comedy album called "The First Family" spawned an industry of copycats looking to cash in on Kennedymania. Adler contributed _The Kennedy Wit,_ a throw-together of anecdotes from JFK's life, peppered with some jokes taken from Ted Sorenson's speeches. It was a bestseller, and Adler had discovered a formula. He followed with _The Stevenson Wit_, _The [Gene] McCarthy Wit,_ and our personal favorite, _The Wit and Humor of Richard Nixon_ (sample: "I eat a lot of cheese. Cottage cheese. I eat cottage until it runs out my ears"). As other icons drifted into the national conscience, Adler had a knack for making a buck off them. He passed on a manuscript called _The Beverly Hills Diet_; when it went gold, Adler, correctly sensing that the faddish weight-loss book-buying public was not the most discriminating bunch, penned _The I Love New York Diet_ and turned *that* into a bestseller as well. (We may have gotten those books switched, but ask us if we care.) When it seemed everybody was watching the Huxtable family, Adler rushed _The Cosby Wit_ to press. Now, it's Dave's turn. Though it has been said Bill Adler likes nothing better than to come into his midtown office, take care of his business early, clear off his desk, light up a stogie, and simply *think* about new books, his output suggests a guy rummaging through the tabbies on the limo ride home. These are books of the hurryup genre, like the Thatcher bios that seemed to be obligatory for every British journalist in the 1980s. While it is true that even a quickie production like _The Letterman Wit_ can be rescued by spare, bright prose and good reporting, this book, sadly, has neither. Its 152 large-type pages are ineptly and cynically written, littered with typographical errors and other condescensions. To gauge just how interested Bill Adler was in Dave Letterman's wit before August of last year, you need only survey the portions of the book that attempt to cover the _Late Night_ years. In them, Adler describes Sandra Bernhard bringing her friend Madonna onto the show "during its early months in 1982" (it happened in '88); alleges that one of Larry (Bud) Melman's "first appearances" was at the Soviet Consulate in New York "urging defection to Soviet tourists" (they weren't Soviet tourists, and the gag took place during Letterman's and Melman's *fourth* season on NBC); completely flubs the story of the Martha Raye lawsuit; confuses Paul Shaffer with Anton Fig; and on three separate occasions refers to Letterman's NBC program as _Late Show._ Actually, this book, including its godawful cover art, would not be out of place on the old NBC Bookmobile. Its language is interminably bland and missing even a trace of irony, with "zany wit," "the craziest thing in town," and "boffo laughs" used to describe the show. Don't be suckered by the book jacket's boast, "The author interviewed many of Letterman's friends, colleagues, and business associates -- as well as some of the most astute observers of the television industry -- for the book." _The Letterman Wit_ is largely if not entirely a cut-and-paste job based on a few old magazine interviews and the out-of-print _David Letterman Story_ by Caroline Latham, which comparatively reads like a PhD thesis. In short, whatever kind of fan you are, a recent convert or a diehard who pines for the mean old days, _The Letterman Wit_ will be an unsatisfying and perhaps infuriating read. Bill Carter's _The Late Shift_ may cost nine dollars more but it is a vastly superior product (and anyway, will be in quality paperback before you know it). We thought that this book might be the poor man's _Late Shift,_ but now we realize that would be unflattering to the working poor. It's more like the homeless person's _David Letterman Story_. At least we know what Margaret will be buying Dave for Father's Day. 2. F.Y. EYES Ivan Reitman will produce the upcoming HBO telefilm based on Bill Carter's _The Late Shift._ Good choice: a man whose last film production was entitled _Dave_ ... Conan's writers are staying up too late. On Friday's show a taped piece depicted actual guests from prior nights committing acts of violence on the host. Besides being a premise straight out of Kinnear, it wasn't funny, and the closer, in which the Allman Brothers Band seem to be *enjoying* setting Conan on fire, ran unpleasantly too long ... CBS Broadcast International is bragging that the _Late Show_ is "now already sold in over 20 countries" ... Some L.A. radio personality named Dennis Prager is apparently going to get his own syndicated late show ... And a t.v. spot now running on NBC promoting tomorrow's second annual CNBC confab gab with the cable channel's entire "Talk All-Stars" lineup includes the name of Jane Wallace, who recently left the network, but ominously excludes that of Tom Snyder, who *hasn't* left, at least not yet. He's scheduled to be Dave's guest next Monday, and some of us are hoping the question of whether he'll be host of the 12:35 show on CBS is settled by then. 1. THE LINEUPS LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 4/19 Jack Lemmon, Ellen DeGeneres, Lyle Lovett *and* Al Green! We 4/20 Dennis Hopper, Jessye Norman Th 4/21 Raquel Welch, Candlebox Fr 4/22 Ray Liotta, Jake Johannsen Mo 4/25 Future CBS employee Tom Snyder, Reba McEntire THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 4/19 Henry Kissinger, John Lithgow, the cast of "Grease" We 4/20 Marilu Henner, Rob Wasserman and Bob Weir, Ralph Macchio Th 4/21 Drew Barrymore, Pavement, Harry Shearer Fr 4/22 TBA Mo 4/25 Bruce Cockburn LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 4/19 MTV VJ Duff, Meat Puppets, sportswriter Mike Lupica We 4/20 Charlatans, Carol Channing Th 4/21 Pam Dawber Fr 4/22 Kristen Hersh, Duane Martin Mo 4/25 Moira Kelly, Kenny Rogers (won't be singing), Richard Thompson (will be) LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 4/19 Marilu Henner, rerun We 4/20 George Carlin, rerun Th 4/21 Roseanne Arnold, rerun Mo 4/25 Fran Drescher The Carlin guesting is worth a look. George is always a great interview, this time despite Greg's best efforts to fuck it up. -- Thanks to S Trowbridge THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW, Syndicated Tu 4/19 Digital Underground We 4/20 Jodeci Th 4/21 Me'Shell NdegeOcello, Everette Harp (as usual) Fr 4/22 TBA Mo 4/25 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. 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 4/18 Robin Williams, Carol Liefer (8/7/86) Tu 4/19 Carole King, Richard Lewis (8/26/82) We 4/20 Jay Leno, Robert Mitchum, Randy Newman (10/10/85) Th 4/21 Andy Kaufman, BB King (11/17/83) Fr 4/22 Eddie Van Halen, Valerie Bertinelli, Sandra Bernhard (6/27/85) Sa 4/23 (pre-empted for some lame Streisand thing) Su 4/24 Andrea Martin, Teresa Russell (9/9/88) Special thanks this issue to Jennifer Eyler and Kathleen Creighton. --------------------------- 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 message only ... 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