Article: 5967 of alt.zines Path: news.cic.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!zip.eecs.umich.edu!yeshua.marcam.com!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 10/4/94 Followup-To: alt.fan.letterman Date: 4 Oct 1994 00:52:23 -0500 Organization: The Colorcast Lines: 228 Message-ID: <36qqin$r3s@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:34064 alt.fan.conan-obrien:3255 alt.tv.talkshows.late:1441 alt.zines:5967 rec.arts.tv:123688 alt.fan.jay-leno:130 >From Chicago: Where we've secretly placed all one thousand four hundred twenty-six Nielsen households ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, October 4, 1994 Issue #33 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- THE RATING GAME Last Tuesday night, _The Tonight Show_ observed its fortieth anniversary with a new set and a visit from the man who started the phenomenon, Steve Allen. Now regardless of what Tom Shales has told you, Steve Allen invented _Tonight_ and not his boss, Pat Weaver, a man Allen's successor, Jack Paar, once described as "a very popular NBC executive who didn't invent programs but wrote great memos." Paar himself modestly takes full credit for ushering _Tonight_ into the modern era of "conversation and personalities," but what Steverino did also got folks to stay up late and that ought to count for something. (The idea that Weaver invented the program by "getting big stars to appear on TV cheap," as t.v. writer Shales would have it, is absurd. He is confusing Allen with Paar. The genius of Allen's _Tonight_ show was that even if nobody showed up, Steve could interview audience members, read his mail, noodle on the piano, or perform sketches and still be a nearly endless pleasure to watch. If you've seen the original _Tonight_ live or on kinescope, you know that it was the forerunner of personality radio, a running extemporaneous performance featuring a sane man surrounded by nuttiness, something Allen took to new heights in 1962 when Westinghouse convinced him to revive his late-night act for their syndicate. It was this show that brought the world the human tea bag, his mud bout with a female wrestler, and other earth-shattering and later-copied televents.) Anyway, Steve Allen was on the show last Tuesday, and not only did he bring old footage from the program he couldn't wait to be released from -- a move he claims never to have regretted, but we don't believe it -- he also reprised his old straight man's role for a lunatic, who that night was John Evans, a professional balancer who warmed up by steadying Steve on his, the balancer's, head. Earlier, Leno had pointed the forklift that would hoist his guest above Evans's head, turned to Steve and said, "Why don't you sit down here?" To which Steverino, who was in fine form all night, said, "Why don't you go to hell." The 40th anniversary show also was the maiden episode for Jay's new set, which as promised is a denser, clubbier venue than any NBC has used for late night programming since Johnny Carson was doing _Tonight_ in New York thirty years ago. Leno delivers his monologues from a perch not three feet from the closest row of the studio audience, whose seats now wrap around the stage on two levels, ballpark-style. The giant expanse that used to be center stage has been compressed and shoved off to the right of the host, and is sheathed by a faux long-exposure mural of the L.A. freeway that we must admit is attractively gauche. With the space between host and band nearly collapsed (there is room for a standup comic to work), the three constant elements of the show -- stars, music, response -- are virtually joined at the hip. Already Jay is folding a staple of his nightclub act, the question-and-answer period, into his monologue time. He can afford to: in case you haven't watched lately, the first break in the program typically occurs between 50 and 52 minutes after the hour, apparently to encourage viewers to stay up past the monologue. In sum, one can now visibly see the determination of NBC to win back the time slot it commanded for 39 of the past 40 years. And when overnight results from Leno's five nights in Las Vegas showed the first weekly win for _Tonight_ over Letterman's _Late Show,_ the network was entitled to think good things. As it turns out, the early share advantage (16 to 15) did not hold up in the national ratings, ratings that CBS took the unusual step of purchasing from A.C. Nielsen before the computer was ready to release them, simply so it could counter NBC's gloating. Leno scored an impressive 5.1 but Letterman beat him soundly with a 5.5, or 17% of all sets in use to Jay's 15% (and by the way, Ted Koppel beat them both). Further complicating matters is the fact that Jay put on a special show during a week when Dave was doing his usual routine, and that many big-city markets are currently seeing their CBS affiliates turned over to Fox Television. (This is also the reason the 32-city overnight scores tilted in NBC's direction.) For instance, in Atlanta you can't watch Dave at 11:35 because the old CBS Channel 5 is now in the clutches of Rupert Murdoch. So Larry Tisch has been forced to gobble up a VHF station, WVEU (Channel 69!), and pour $100 million into it so it will at least look respectable when it gathers round the table with its rich cousins at the next network-owned-and-operated affiliates' banquet. Once that happens, and Dave is restored to his god-given time in Atlanta, and in Milwaukee, and in Detroit, we forecast that ratings will settle into place much as they did last year. BREAKING LATE NEWS Elsewhere as we play the rating game, _SNL_'s season debut was seen by 9.5% of U.S. viewing homes, for a 26 share, about what it scored last year at this time before slumping to a season-average 7.1% and 21 share ... The Williamses, that Tulsa couple plucked from 53rd Street to co-host the Letterman show last week, are in their 40s with three grown kids. He's a hairstylist, she a manicurist ... Don Fitzpatrick reports that when WFAA in Dallas begins airing _Nightline_ at 10:35 pm in January, it will be the highest number of live clearances the show has ever enjoyed -- 145 stations representing 74.2 percent of the country. Letterman enjoys 90 percent clearance and Leno 99 percent ... Merrill Markoe has been guest-hosting a radio program in L.A. and talking up her October 10 appearance on _Late Show_ where she will plug her new book and exchange awkward pleasantries with former live-in and co-conspirator Dave Letterman ... Alert reader David Kraft wants to know why Dave is showing up night after night with his middle finger in a bandage. Your tips, guesses, and lies welcomed here ... Paul Shaffer will be appearing at a Dan Aykroyd Blues Brothers concert October 15th at Carleton University in Ottawa. Jim Belushi is also expected to jam ... And Madonna recently was quoted as saying, "There's a whole generation of women -- Courtney Love, Liz Phair, even Sandra Bernhard [who brought Madonna on stage for one memorable _Late Night_ show in the '80s] -- who cannot bring themselves to say anything positive about me even though I've opened the door for them. They slag me off any time anybody asks what they think of me. It's kind of like what a child does to their parent, they denounce you." THE LINEUPS (with Sue Trowbridge) LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 10/4 Mickey Rourke, Bonnie Hunt, champion frisbee dog We 10/5 Quentin Tarantino, Sammy Kershaw Th 10/6 Sarah Jessica Parker, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Alan Zweibel Fr 10/7 Tim Allen, 71-year-old free throw record holder Dr. Tom Amberry, music from Live Mo 10/10 John Travolta, Merrill Markoe, Barry Manilow Tu 10/11 Bruce Willis, Garry Marshall, Mario Joyner THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 10/4 Marlee Matlin, Jerry Rice, The Temptations We 10/5 Jay Thomas, James Carville and Mary Matalin, Kathy Ladman Th 10/6 Dan Quayl, Melissa Gilbert, Jack Gallagher Fr 10/7 Alan King, Mark Beeson, Claudia Shear Jay Leno has always claimed that he tuned in the _Ed Sullivan Show_ that storied night in 1964 not to watch the Beatles but to catch Alan King's standup act. Mo 10/10 Richard Dean Anderson, Jimmy Buffett Tu 10/11 Arnold Palmer, Anita Baker LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 10/4 Harry Smith, Judybats We 10/5 Chuck Woolery, former Bosox Bill Lee, Violent Femmes Th 10/6 Bonnie Hunt, Mira Sorvino, Ron Lynch Fr 10/7 Matt Groening, music from Vaughn Mo 10/10 Christopher Matthews, God's Child Tu 10/11 Wes Craven, Colin James LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 10/4 Ed McMahon We 10/5 TBA Th 10/6 Director/producer Robert Evans Mo 10/10 TBA Tu 10/11 Bonnie Hunt It appears to be The Hunt's Red hot October. THE JON STEWART SHOW, Syndicated Tu 10/4 Fran Drescher, Mark Messier, L7 We 10/5 Faith Ford, G Love & Special Sauce Th 10/6 Quentin Tarantino, Cynthia Gibb, Mighty Mighty Bosstones Fr 10/7 Sarah Jessica Parker 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_ "six Daves a week" at 10 p.m. Eastern time weeknights and 6 p.m. on Saturdays. There are also re-airings of previously aired reruns (usually the one from the night before), weekdays at 11 a.m. The following schedule was taken from the E! update line. Mo 10/3 Super Dave Osborne (7-14-89) Tu 10/4 Martin Mull, Buster Poindexter (8-12-88) We 10/5 Ivan Lendl, Ziggy Marley (9-29-86) Th 10/6 Sarah Jessica Parker, Robert Wohl (2-8-91) Fr 10/7 Brooke Shields, Merv Griffin (11-11-82) Sa 10/8 John Chancellor, Pat Metheny, Howard Stern (4-25-90) THANKS Adam Curry, Glen Gower, Daniel Taylor, Russ Thorp. --------------------------- Entire contents Copyright (C) 1994 by Aaron Barnhart. All rights reserved. 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