Article: 5645 of alt.zines Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!convex!news.duke.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,alt.fan.jay-leno Subject: LATE SHOW NEWS 9/13/94 Followup-To: alt.fan.letterman Date: 13 Sep 1994 00:31:27 -0500 Organization: The Colorcast Lines: 243 Message-ID: <353dff$ktj@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:32349 alt.fan.conan-obrien:2827 alt.tv.talkshows.late:1365 alt.zines:5645 rec.arts.tv:120764 alt.fan.jay-leno:86 >From Chicago: Hometown of pop star Madonna ... it's ---------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, September 13, 1994 Issue #30 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart ---------------------------------------------- THE NEW YEAR With the arrival of four new shows this week, late-night t.v. has grown into two distinctive, well-populated segments: the A shift, some of the most profitable programming in television, positioned right after most of the country's late local news; and the B shift, which as far as we can tell are A-shift shows in waiting, playing to smaller crowds and revenues, where the highest compliment is to be videotaped by fans who can't possibly be expected to catch your show and also keep their day jobs. We have been hearing awfully good word-of-mouth for the past week about _The Jon Stewart Show,_ which opened in syndication to 140 markets last night. Just on the strength of the advances, the NBC affiliate in Houston yanked _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ from the 11:35 spot and is apparently hunting around for a show that will better compete with the Stewart show (which is airing on an independent station). This is the first affiliate to formally bounce Conan; no word on whether Buffalo, which had been threatening to do the same, will now follow through. Speculation was that _Late Night,_ extended but not renewed by the network, would be allowed to stick around long enough to see how it would fare against Tom Snyder, who returns to network t.v. later this year. But an unexpected surge by _Stewart_ (produced, incidentally, by former _Late Night with David Letterman_ writer Fred Graver) might hasten Conan's demise. Elsewhere in debutland, we are *not* hearing good things about _Last Call,_ Brandon Tartikoff's syndicated topical panel gabfest. A poster to New York City's Echo BBS reports that one of the show's five (five?) co-hosts recently walked and another was about to before being persuaded to stay. And some of its key air times are unenviable: one thirty-seven in New York, *two oh five* in Chicago (where on Mondays it gets bumped to 2:37 as the ripple effect of prime-time football ebbs). Also new on the air yesterday: syndicated _The Newz,_ which is being positioned as an _SNL_ for weeknight viewers. It will be a half-hour instead of an hour as previously reported. Radio personality Dennis Prager also debuted his Rushish talker last night. The v.c.r.'s are working overtime and we'll have reports to you in the weeks ahead on each of the new late shows. WIN OR LOSE, IT'S ALWAYS GREAT TO BE IN PASADENA Once again, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences puts on a stupefyingly dull awards ceremony. Once more, millions of Americans tune in to see it. This annual sociological pattern brings to mind Dave Letterman's comment that as a boy in Indianapolis he and his family would sit around the tube and watch _The Ed Sullivan Show_ whether they liked it or not. The point wasn't whether it was good, but that it was on the air and everybody was supposed to watch it. Not for nothing, it seems, are the Emmys scheduled for a Sunday night. The problem seems obvious to anyone who remembers, or who has made an effort to learn about, the demise of the experiment of live t.v. (probably with the arrival of Desilu in Hollywood in 1951). We've been enjoying a book written in 1967 by Fred Friendly, then the recently-departed head of CBS News and Ed Murrow's longtime collaborator, who knew even then that the thrill was gone. "The dream of a theater without walls for instant communication, culture for millions and news in depth envisioned by the Sarnoffs and Paleys and Stantons is now a grind house for inferior Hollywood movies of half-hour and one-hour lengths," he wrote. Sunday's Emmy telecast struck us as a perfect display of how Hollywood values have captured the medium that once threatened it. Everybody there, with the joyous exception of Emmy winner Fyvush Finkel, reminded us of those card-reading, multiple-shoot actors who bore the life out of us every spring at Oscars time. In fact, if it weren't for Letterman's winning an Emmy and his acceptance speech, which killed us, this televised plenary meeting might have needed an oxygen tank. Standing with his executive producers Peter Lassally and Bob Morton and his director Hal Gurnee to receive the Emmy for outstanding variety, music or comedy series, Dave did something almost no one else seemed to do all night -- he delivered the goods. (The MTV Awards, aired earlier that weekend, had a little more going for them, but Dave still seemed almost eerily in his element ushering Madonna onto stage and reminding her to watch her language.) Complain all you want that late-night talk shows are scripted to the hilt, that even the ad libs are prepared (a la _The Hollywood Squares_) and that they hardly reflect the promise that _Playhouse 90_ and _See It Now_ held 40 years ago. Still, how is it that the one guy who's done nearly 2,200 shows in real time, with none of the retakes and drop-ins afforded to the entertainment shows that dominate the Emmy ceremonies, also happens to be the only guy who seems to remember that he's not just getting an award, *he's on television*? BREAKING LATE NEWS Fans of _TV Nation,_ which we've praised as the advocacy news counterpart to the old _Late Night with David Letterman,_ will enjoy this analysis from our pal Andrew Johnston regarding its future prospects: "The BBC ponied up 40% of _TV Nation_'s budget, and it turned out to be a hit in the U.K., so they definitely want more episodes. The fact that almost half the show's budget is already taken care of will make _TV Nation_ a tempting pick-up for another network should NBC not exercise their option to use it as a mid-season replacement. It got *incredible* demographics among males ages 18-35 as well, which means a lot, and it did better than any Tuesday 8 p.m. show for NBC in years." And indeed _TV Nation_ creator Michael Moore tells _TV Guide_ that "two other networks and a pay-cable network are interested" in continuing the show. Best of all, British money should ensure the continued input of our favorite correspondent, Louis Theroux. But what of former Dave fave Merrill Markoe, who was missing from the final summer episode? ... Per-Gunnar Eriksson has been watching _Late Show with David Letterman_ since it began airing in Sweden about a month ago on cable's Z-TV. He says another channel, Satellite TV3, is beaming a _Late Show_-of-the-week every Saturday. Already the shows are having the unintentional effect of inviting comparisons with homegrown Swedish talk shows that have obviously borrowed techniques and affectations from the Letterman show ... Turning from the foreign to the unorthodox, Terry Knab reports that viewers in Rapid City, S.D. get a rare treat: Dave at 9:35 in the evening. Channel 15, KCLO-TV, is a retransmitter of Sioux Falls's KELO-TV (Channel 11), which airs _Late Show_ at 10:35 p.m. -- across the Mountain/Central time zone line from Rapid City ... _MacWeek_'s Sept. 5 issue shows off a new product for Mosaic, the killer World Wide Web browsing program, and in the illustration shows the new product tuning into -- Jeff Hoffman's _Late Show_ web page at http://bingen.cs.csbsju.edu/letterman.html ... And Jay Leno last week gave his audience a sneak peek of his new studio, being built next door to his current set in Burbank. It features an amphitheatre design that, from the looks of it, will seat the same number of people, only in the round. The new set was inspired by the _SNL_ soundstage that Jay used for his New York shows in May. THE LINEUPS (with S Trowbridge) LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 9/13 Barbara Bush, Emmitt Smith, Roger Daltrey We 9/14 Phoebe Cates, Nanci Griffith, Cynthia McFadden Th 9/15 James Carville Fr 9/16 TBA Mo 9/19 Vendela Tu 9/20 TBA THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 9/13 John Larroquette, Suzanne Somers, the Dynamite Lady We 9/14 Dick Van Dyke, Spin Doctors, John Henton Th 9/15 Melanie Griffith, Thomas Hayden Church, James Woods Fr 9/16 Rob Morrow, Trisha Yearwood, George Clooney From Las Vegas: Mo 9/19 Martin Short, Luther Vandross, the new Miss America Tu 9/20 Brett Butler, Vince Gill We 9/21 Roseanne, Courteney Cox, Steve and Eydie Gorme Th 9/22 Charlie Sheen, Wayne Newton, George Wallace LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 9/13 Meg Tilly, Joe Torry, Farmers Almanac editor Jud Hale We 9/14 Martin Sheen, Yasmine Bleeth, Dave Edmunds Th 9/15 Dennis Rodman, Eve Plumb, The Subdudes Fr 9/16 Don Novello Mo 9/19 Charlie Sheen, Melissa Gilbert Tu 9/20 Collective Soul LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 9/13 Harvey Fierstein We 9/14 TBA Th 9/15 Jay Leno Mo 9/19 TBA Tu 9/20 Suzanne Somers Coming soon: Guest lineups for THE JON STEWART SHOW. 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_ ... when it feels like it. E! is currently in a holding pattern until the fall season starts and it can unwrap a fresh set of Dave reruns. These all aired earlier this season on E!. However, in the case of at least one of the reairings, time has worked wonders on our perspective. (All times are Eastern.) Tu 9/13 at 1 & 7 p.m.: Jane Curtin, Friends of the Crew (10-5-89) Tu 9/13 at 10 p.m. and We 9/14 at 1 & 7 p.m.: Ted Koppel, Bob Hope (9-30-85) Th 9/15 at 1 & 7 p.m.: Jeff Altman, Spelling Bee Champ (2-5-87) Th 9/15 at 10 p.m. and Fr 9/16 at 1 & 7 p.m.: Billy Crystal, Museum of the Hard to Believe (9-5-84) Fr 9/16 at 10 p.m.: Shelley Winters, O.J. Simpson (9-8-89) Yes, E! is milking the Simpson thing for all -- or at least for what -- it's worth. We even saw a press release from them bragging about it. THANKS EMMY: Harrison Wyman. BREAKING: Stephen O. Pace, Herb Klumpe III, Andrew Johnston. ALSO: Donz5@aol.com. --------------------------- Entire contents Copyright (C) 1994 by Aaron Barnhart. All rights reserved. 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