Article 3682 of alt.zines: Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!eff!news.kei.com!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 5/17/94 Followup-To: alt.fan.letterman Date: 16 May 1994 23:56:13 -0500 Organization: The Colorcast Lines: 252 Message-ID: <2r9ipd$g51@Venus.mcs.com> Reply-To: late-show-news@mcs.net NNTP-Posting-Host: venus.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:22531 alt.fan.conan-obrien:807 alt.tv.talkshows.late:1091 alt.zines:3682 rec.arts.tv:108267 From Chicago: Don't give *us* that Lean Cuisine crap ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, May 17, 1994 Issue #14 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- 4. IF IT'S OF ANY CONSOLATION, KRUNK HAPPENS _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ seems to have made a full recovery from the battering it took last fall, with its ratings now regularly surpassing the 2 mark, up from an early 1.5 rating (_Late Night with David Letterman_ had averaged 2.5), and the show's writing starting to get some notice. Even Studio 6A's previous occupant professes to like it. ("You guys do an incredible amount of comedy," Dave told Conan during a guest spot on Feb. 28, "and the volume and quality of the stuff just knocks me out. There's nothing like this show on television, and I really, really appreciate that.") _Late Night_ has a couple of other things going for it. The Max Weinberg 7, headed up by Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band drummer, blows the roof off the dump every single night. And the host is neither a bad interviewer nor a control freak, which means he can be spontaneously goofy in a way Dave can't, as when Conan leaped up to dance the Robot with director Matty Rich the other week. Reasons indeed for cautious optimism. Many reviewers who called for _Late Night_'s cancellation only weeks after its launch were apparently intoxicated with the power they thought they wielded in driving Chevy Chase's talker off the air. But O'Brien's show was neither as visible as Chase's nor as heavy laden with expectations, and quite honestly, never so awful. Besides, as we now know from Bill Carter's book on the Letterman-Leno _Tonight_ show competition, there simply was and is no option for the network other than to entrust the 12:35 franchise to Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of _Saturday Night Live._ Not only did Michaels at the eleventh hour bail out the NBC weasels who lost Letterman, he also capitalized on the rare open programming window to find a new vision for _Late Night,_ something most people agreed it needed, and a new host to match. "Conan is fresh," Lorne told a Canadian magazine last summer. "He'll try really hard. And he's not mean-spirited." Thus Michaels served notice that not only would Dave not be duplicated, it was the furthest thing from anyone's mind. As he told another interviewer, "Comedy is too important to be left to professionals." Coming from the man who discovered Chevy Chase in 1975 while standing in line with him to see a show, we see no reason for second-guessing Michaels's instincts. Already Conan has got enough of a personality to serve as grist for the show's promethean comedy mill. One of its favorite devices is the fictitious "outtake" from last night's program. We see the host supposedly acting against form, bawling out a guest during the break for making a dumb comment, or swearing like a sailor (in front of Dick Clark!) to show the value of the censor-proof epithet "krunk." Or in a tribute to geeky metamedia, we review "technical flaws" from the show: so in one cutaway the wallpaper behind Conan changes patterns, then in the next Andy is replaced by a pot roast, and finally a black host is shown interviewing a four-legged guest. Funny stuff -- but not entirely unexpected when you consider that O'Brien was possibly the hottest writing talent in t.v. at the time he was offered _Late Night._ Fox flashed seven figures at him to stay on with _The Simpsons_ and produce other shows for the network. And to his fellow comedy writers, he appears to have been treated as a king among men -- the guy who could make laugh-makers laugh. Many of them declared last summer that if any writer should have his own comedy talk show, it should be Conan. But what if it turns out this performer's greatest asset is his writing? It's a question NBC does not need to answer right now. Like any program, _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ is judged by its bottom line, and this year that figures to be pretty good, with the college audience growing steadily and the talent being so cheap. But what about next year? Begin with the sidekick. Andy Richter is clearly a talented performer, as demonstrated in various comedy and improv roles here in the Windy City. But with the exception of his hilarious gay soap opera "Lakewood" (which, take our word for it, is too silly to be controversial), material featuring Andy has fallen flat. And since no one is about to let Conan be upstaged by his second banana -- a very real possibility if Andy is turned loose -- the writers are in the same bind as their ancestors on the old _SNL_ who had a genuine star in Garrett Morris but, in deference to the other big egos on the set, fecklessly assigned him an interminable series of Uncle Remus-Aunt Jemima roles. (Don't even mention Richter's role in guest interviews. During those segments he might as well be a pot roast.) More troublesome is the fact, as netters who attended show tapings have pointed out, that Conan still needs his brow mopped during the commercial breaks. He is struggling to become a performer. It's not that he's not funny -- in fact NBC chose him as the first guest for its new one-hour chat forum on America Online. (Sample question: "What time do you tape?" Conan: "We're taping right now. Frankly, the audience is bored and angry - but I feel you people come first.") We can see the qualities that made him so attractive to Lorne Michaels. But the question must, and we predict will, be asked in the coming months: wouldn't O'Brien have gotten just as much credit, and a lot less grief, had he been chosen *producer* of the show and Michaels gotten someone else to be host, which was the original plan? For when it is judged on its host's career ambition -- not to write, not to produce, but to perform -- _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ is simply not up to snuff, even for a 12:35 show. A trifle right now, you say. Perhaps, but mark our words: when he is no longer the latest thing on the air and quite possibly is being upstaged by a silver-throated wonder nearly twice his age, that flop sweat had better disappear ... before Conan does. 3. MEDIA BITES Some of us Letterman-watchers have been waiting inevitably for the media consensus about Dave's show to turn ugly. We thought perhaps the backlash had started with Richard Zoglin's negative piece in _Time_ in March but no, most of Zog's meaningless quibbles were steamrolled by Barbara Lippert in her epic _New York Times_ paean to Dave. After that lovesong appeared, one jokester said that if Letterman were a stock, this would be the time to sell. How true: yesterday the _Washington Post_'s Tom Shales, arguably the most influential and unapologetic fan of the program, published a gratituously, and ominously, nasty review of the L.A.-based _Late Show_ broadcasts. Shales kvetched about the lousy guests and compared Dave unfairly to Friday's surprise guest, Johnny Carson, who he sneered "never had to grimace and mince about and punch the air to get laughs during his monologues. Reclaiming the chair that Carson had sat in Friday night, Letterman said, 'It's still a little warm. I wish a little of that would rub off on me.' Yes, Dave, that would be nice." Our friend S Trowbridge detects a clue to Tom's sudden hostility in his reference to Letterman's "monomaniacal campaign of ridicule against fat people" (let's just say that Tom Shales is neither a strong guy nor a genius). This piece, coming so unexpectedly from a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, may turn out to be the sneeze that gave the Dave-happy media a cold. For such an allegedly crappy program, _The Arsenio Hall Show,_ or at least its audience, has become the object of Hollywood's affections. Now it seems everyone wants to compare *their* new after-hours talk show to the Night Thing (which goes into reruns after the May 27 finale). The godfather of all weaseldom, Fred Silverman, is teaming up with Witt-Thomas-Harris Productions, who brought you _Soap,_ to promote a new syndicated late show featuring VH-1's Caroline Rhea. Silverman says Rhea is perfect for "the young, female-skewing late-night audience" that stayed up for Arsenio. Meanwhile, Paramount has all but announced publicly that they will create a replacement to the Hall show featuring Jon Stewart. They'll keep his MTV talker on the air until they're sure the syndicated show won't be stinko. Stewart is described as smart, cool, likable, etc. -- *just* like Arsenio. We'll see. In the meantime, the most interesting post mortem we've seen yet is from Hall's bestest friend Eddie Murphy, who told _USA Today_ that some blame for the show's demise rests with the fad-happy black viewing audiences that inexplicably stopped watching the program after its early strong seasons. 2. F.Y. EYES On Jay Leno's first night from New York, we were amused to see guest Mike Myers's name flashed over a shot of the Statue of Liberty that was stolen from _SNL_'s opening credits ... _Entertainment Weekly_ says ticket requests to the Letterman show are continuing to dwarf the number of available seats, so that the wait for tickets, which at the start of the season was only three months, is now double that ... A two-alarm fire last Wednesday at cable channel CNBC's broadcast headquarters in Fort Lee, N.J. forced Burbank-based Tom Snyder to take over prime time by himself, holding court for three-plus hours, live, without seeming to break a sweat. Among the many guests who agreed to drop in at the last minute were Letterman writers Gerard Mulligan and Rob Burnett, in L.A. all week for the big shoo ... Another NBC cable net, America's Talking, which debuts July 4, has slated for its late-night slot a show called _Bugged!_ that offers "primal scream therapy" to frustrated callers, audience members and guests ... NBC is considering a new affiliate in Buffalo, partly to retaliate for the current affiliate's decision to pre-empt _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ for _Last Call_ when that program debuts this autumn ... And how 'bout that new buzz phrase Dennis Miller is trying to teach us? During his half-hour Friday night HBO program, as he closes the second of two sermons that bookend his show's topical segment, Miller has taken to delivering this cynical benediction: "Aw, fuck it -- who wants pie?" 1. THE LINEUPS LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 5/17 James Carville, Sonic Youth We 5/18 Carol Burnett, Wayne Cotter Th 5/19 John Kruk, Mariah Carey Fr 5/20 Eddie Murphy, Tony Bennett Mo 5/23 Rick Moranis, Isiah Thomas, Jimmy Buffett THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 5/17 Cindy Crawford, Julio Iglesias (from New York) We 5/18 Michael J. Fox, Kathie Lee Gifford (from New York) Th 5/19 Bill Cosby, Farrah Fawcett (from New York) Fr 5/20 Model Paulina Porizkova, Blue Man Group (from New York) Mo 5/23 Eddie Murphy, Jon Secada, "mentalist" Craig Kardas LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 5/17 Julia Sweeney, Michael Chiklis, Jonathan Richman We 5/18 Jay Leno, Caleb Carr Th 5/19 James Coburn, Marshall Crenshaw Fr 5/20 Farrah Fawcett, Ed Asner Mo 5/23 TBA You didn't think Jay would miss his big chance to be on Conan's show, did you? LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 5/17 Timothy Leary We 5/18 Gloria Steinem Th 5/19 Dave Thomas Mo 5/23 Al Michaels -- Thanks to S Trowbridge THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW, Syndicated Tu 5/17 Gloria Steinem We 5/18 Arrested Development Th 5/19 Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jamie Foxx (+ Everette Harp on sax) Fr 5/20 James Garner Mo 5/23 Damon Wayans 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 5/16 Rodney Dangerfield, Dennis Miller, Roseanne Cash (6-19-86) Tu 5/17 Shelley Winters, Tom Dreesen (4-27-83) We 5/18 Pat Paulsen (2-2-82, the second-ever show) Th 5/19 Kathleen Turner, John Cleese (4-3-84) Fr 5/20 Harry Shearer, Shaun Weatherley (8-19-85) Sa 5/21 Bill Cosby, Sharlene Wells, Lisa Birnbach (9-19-84) Su 5/22 Lauren Hutton, Rob Schneider (12-21-88) --------------------------- 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. 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