{"id":5693,"date":"2010-03-19T09:24:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T16:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=5693"},"modified":"2010-03-19T09:24:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T16:24:02","slug":"12-competitors-against-johnny-carson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2010\/03\/19\/12-competitors-against-johnny-carson\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Competitors against Johnny Carson"},"content":{"rendered":"

1.\u00c2\u00a0 Les Crane.\u00c2\u00a0 Novemeber 1964 – February 1965.\u00c2\u00a0 ABC.\u00c2\u00a0 *
\n“The Bad Boy of Late Night Television<\/span>“, Les Crane had a rollicking time in the wee hours of 1 am, where he would take in phone calls and berate the callers.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a shcok formula in his act, and plopped at 11:15 against Johnny Carson, ABC wanted it both ways with him: tone down his act as he did an ordinary talk show, and provide moments of controversy.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps he was not going to last and his “shock” would get old and wear out its welcome, and perhaps it’s a feeble effort to have a 1 am gig moved to 11.\u00c2\u00a0 The difference wasn’t adequately split.\u00c2\u00a0 He appears to have had a solid and good career — claims to have given us Top 40 Radio but there’s a long line for such claims, and more regretfully voiced a spoken voice one hit in the 1970s which was refashioned in 1999 and re-popularized into email spam fame mistakenly under Kurt Vonnegut’s name.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyways, his career highlights, commercially or artistically, apparently doesn’t include this 14 week effort at late night talk variety.<\/p>\n

2.\u00c2\u00a0 Joey Bishop.\u00c2\u00a0 April 1967 – December 1969.\u00c2\u00a0 ABC.\u00c2\u00a0 **
\nI have no good feeler for the cultural context or reads on Joey Bishop.\u00c2\u00a0 He was Carson’s regular guest host<\/span>, than he was his competitor for a few years.\u00c2\u00a0 The youtube clips available are heavy on one of lasting gifts to us all — Regis Philbin, his sidekick.\u00c2\u00a0 Jack Paar clearly favored him over Carson.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess he slumped back to Carson’s guest host role, did some game shows, hung out with the “Rat Pack”.\u00c2\u00a0 Somebody tell me what I’m looking at when I’m looking at Joey Bishop.<\/p>\n

3.\u00c2\u00a0 Merv Griffin<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 August 1969 – February 1972.\u00c2\u00a0 CBS<\/span>. **
\nHe had done his show in syndication and locally before CBS signed him up.\u00c2\u00a0 He did so again after CBS dropped him.\u00c2\u00a0 I gather stations slotted him in late night less often the second time through, and he found his rhthym in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 Years later, Cosmo Kramer<\/span> made use of his show’s trappings and kept the Merv Griffin Show alive.<\/p>\n

4.\u00c2\u00a0 Dick Cavett<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 December 1969 – December 1972.\u00c2\u00a0 ABC ***
\nI think he should have been allowed to roll through most of the decade of the 1970s with his talk show effort.\u00c2\u00a0 He developed a cultural cachet and relevance for the times quite apart from Carson, and the list of his notable shows on youtube is telling.\u00c2\u00a0 His big fault was that he made less money for ABC shareholders than Carson made for NBC shareholders.\u00c2\u00a0 But he’s one of the few on this list that you can sell on dvd.<\/p>\n

5.\u00c2\u00a0 Alan Thicke<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 1983 – 1984.\u00c2\u00a0 Syndication, Metromedia. *
\nWas there any point in launching with an ad campaign about taking on Johnny Carson?\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe Alan Thicke could have had something good working here, but his set up sounds rather counter-productive.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently the show was filmed twice in week in sets of three, and then aired as late as ten days after filming.\u00c2\u00a0 Metromedia’s lunges at fourth television network sure were Mickey Mouse efforts.<\/p>\n

6.\u00c2\u00a0 Joan Rivers<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 Fox.\u00c2\u00a0 1986-1987.\u00c2\u00a0 **
\nI’ve already tapped this one, defended it feigntly.\u00c2\u00a0 Fox needed to make a splash to clear affiliates.\u00c2\u00a0 She did.\u00c2\u00a0 If her ratings weren’t all that good, it could be pointed out she was on a programming island on the best non-network television station<\/span> in each market.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the show itself — a lot of show business glitz, I suppose.<\/p>\n

7.\u00c2\u00a0 David Brenner.\u00c2\u00a0 1986 – 1987.\u00c2\u00a0 Syndicated.\u00c2\u00a0 *
\nThe low point apparently came when his guests didn’t show up for a program, so he extended his monolouge for an entire program and post-hoc labeled it a Daring New Experiment in Television.\u00c2\u00a0 Brenner went on with a good relationship with Cason, who didn’t take his shot against him personally.<\/p>\n

8.\u00c2\u00a0 Ross Shafer<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 Fox.\u00c2\u00a0 1988. *
\nSlot him into this mix because he was settled on at the end of this run as host.\u00c2\u00a0 Falling low in the ratings, he filled his show out with gimmicks — all kind of interesting enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Though why would I want to watch a Reunion of the Gilligan’s Island cast when I could just go ahead and watch Gilligan’s Island?<\/p>\n

9. Pat Sajak.\u00c2\u00a0 CBS.\u00c2\u00a0 * 1989-1990.
\nI both see what CBS thought it was doing, and appreciate the Mediocrity of the purpose.\u00c2\u00a0 Carson had been a game show host who could provide a breezy late night format.\u00c2\u00a0 Sajak?\u00c2\u00a0 He’s a game show host with some of the same skill!\u00c2\u00a0 Why, once Carson retires, he’ll be right there for people to turn over toward.\u00c2\u00a0 And so with his promise to “not looking to raise the level of TV”, he delivered the lack of interesting programming that he promised to deliver.<\/p>\n

10.\u00c2\u00a0 Arsenio Hall.\u00c2\u00a0 Syndication.\u00c2\u00a0 1989 – 1994.\u00c2\u00a0 ***
\nToo obsequitious to his guests, too preening to female guests, and for the life of me I don’t remember any skit he did.\u00c2\u00a0 But for a moment he filled this vacuum, a vacuum excentered by his spot in syndication.\u00c2\u00a0 He moved into his host of Fox affiliates, buffered by a good selection of ABC and CBS.\u00c2\u00a0 The schedulinig advantage fell apart when the vacuum became glut — CBS signed Letterman, Fox screwed things up with Chevy Chase, but before then Hall threw out a lot of academic scholars, forcing his audience to think a tad.\u00c2\u00a0 He provided ample peiod pieces for VH1 reminisces: it is Milli Vanilli for the first time singing and not lip-syncing the song their name was attached to.\u00c2\u00a0 And Bill Clinton on the saxophone.<\/p>\n

11.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick Dees.\u00c2\u00a0 1991.\u00c2\u00a0 ABC.\u00c2\u00a0 *
\nMy brother used to tape various interviews with Star Trek actors, mixed in or at the end of his taped Star Trek collection.\u00c2\u00a0 So I have one image of Rick Dees interviewing — probably William Shatner, and doing a riff on how his show is “No Budget!”\u00c2\u00a0 (Similarly, a Jonathan Frazen appearance on Chevy Chase in recorded — where Commander Riker appears to be high, but I imagine all of Chase’s guests ended up that way.) I kind of don’t know what ABC thought they had with Rick Dees.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe they threw him up with the “Just Because” school of thought — fill time.<\/p>\n

12.\u00c2\u00a0 Dennis Miller.\u00c2\u00a0 Jan – July 1992.\u00c2\u00a0 syndication. *
\nDennis Miller has certainly had a long and varied career.\u00c2\u00a0 He rejuveniated a Saturday Night Live staple — “Weekend Update” — with a large supply of obscure pop cultural references.\u00c2\u00a0 He took his supply of obscure pop cultural references to his dreamed about late night talk show (supposedly a more eclectic guest line up — at the time he sold that idea by offering up that he had as a guest the pre-veep selection Al Gore) — and since there is apparently only a limited audience for that, it took him onto cable.\u00c2\u00a0 Then Monday Night Football saw good use for his obscure pop cultural references and hired him for a year in service for football play.\u00c2\u00a0 Since about 9\/11, he has used his supply of obscure pop cultural references in service to the Republican Party, which I guess badly needs them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1.\u00c2\u00a0 Les Crane.\u00c2\u00a0 Novemeber 1964 – February 1965.\u00c2\u00a0 ABC.\u00c2\u00a0 * “The Bad Boy of Late Night Television“, Les Crane had a rollicking time in the wee hours of 1 am, where he would take in phone calls and berate the callers.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a shcok formula in his act, and plopped at 11:15 against Johnny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5694,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5693\/revisions\/5694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}