LATE SHOW NEWS by Aaron Barnhart March 3, 1997, Issue 145: "The Chris Rock Show" ... Anti-Rosie backlash ... Ratings blues ... Andy Richter speaks ... and an ode to Tokyo Shock Boys. ROCK SOUP I've only caught one episode of Chris Rock's new Friday-night talk show on HBO, but it sure looks like a can't-lose. It's not because of the panel: Rock had Johnnie Cochran on as his first guest and spent the session tossing him punchlines in the form of questions, allowing Cochran to shill uninterrupted for a good seven minutes. So when Rock rather clumsily noted, "We were talking in our pre-interview ..." my first thought was *what the hell was there to pre- interview?* Overall, though, the show works. The prepared bits are tailored to Rock's especially wicked take on public affairs (two of his writers are the equally wicked Louis C.K. and Jeff Stilson). Grandmaster Flash is an inspired choice for house musician, and the artist once called Prince did a riveting performance of a song from his "Emancipation." (You can tell Chris is a little new to this racket: at the end of the musical number he is seen being shoved onstage by a stage manager.) Rock's monologue is pointed yet often fall-over funny. Not to play the prude here, but it is nice to see someone using their HBO license to swear sparingly. (Or maybe it's just the fact that he sounds so much like Eddie "Rochester" Anderson -- imagine Rochester saying "fuck" on the Jack Benny show.) I only counted one instance where Rock used the F word to get a laugh -- and he got a big laugh. READER MAIL From time to time I get asked the question: Why don't I cover "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" in LATE SHOW NEWS? After all, Rosie is a frequent guest on late-night television and she has a set that looks a lot like Dave's. Problem: she's not by any stretch of the imagination a late-night performer. Allow me to illustrate that fact with this letter I received from paid professional grouser (for MacUser magazine) Andy Ihnatko: "I'd like to _officially_ begin the backlash against Rosie O'Donnell. ... I've been watching the show sporadically since its beginning. And you know, at first it was refreshing. Rosie is eminently likeable, she knows how to work a room and it's wonderful to be able to watch an AM show whose TV Guide summary does not include any of the words 'Wild Teen' or 'Surprise' or 'Makeover.' But after -- what, six months? -- of this, I think I'm done with R O'D. ... I'm sick of hearing twenty-year-old commercial jingles sung off-key. Boy, it was cute at the beginning, but you know, its nigh-infinite charms seem somehow to have faded. I don't know why, either -- I know most people could listen to Prell jingles all the live-long day. "I'm sick of guests like the guy who once had a recurring role on 'The Love Boat' as Adrienne Barbeau's bashful husband. And not because these aren't good, decent, hard-working American actors: it's that these people -- fresh from directing a dinner-theater production of 'Love Letters' in Pawtucket, RI -- become the objects of dare I say Arsenio-esque ass-kissing. At least when they panel on Conan or Dave, they're allowed to retain their dignity and share some fun stories about working with Gavin McLeod and Larry Linville. On Rosie's Love Seat they're forced to smile weakly as the host moons awestruck over their long and storied careers, when everyone in the audience knows full well that this is the first time since the Bush administration that they've played in front of more than thirty people at a time. "Yes, I know that the Industry needs a place where Alan Thicke can go to talk about the phenomenal personal growth he experienced during his afternoon visiting a soup kitchen while preparing for his movie-of-the-week, co-incidentally airing next Tuesday at 9. And I know that the Industry was delighted to find in Rosie a host who would not only eagerly listen to Alan, but actually *believe* him, too. But perhaps some day during the weekly hirings and firings, Rosie will get a producer who sort of spaces out these 100cc injections of Hollywood Love a tad on the schedule. "I'm sick of that Tom Cruise thing. Come on, Rosie, give it a rest. At least when Richard Simmons keeps going on and on about his infatuation with Barbra, we know he's being sincere! I'm sick of dumb nostalgia. Sometimes she'll get a hot movie star in the chair, and then waste three minutes in a monologue which begins 'Remember gum? They used to have this gum? It was sort of a fruit gum? And it was sort of rainbow-colored? And there was a zebra on it? Remember the commercial for it? Remember the name of the zebra? And 'Shampoo' had just come out? Remember Warren Beatty's hair in that?' Hey Rosie! Remember Thanksgiving? And you'd be at a relative's house? And one of the old ones would start telling you stories about growing up during the Depression? "But first and foremost, I'm sick and bloody tired of all the damned commercials. 'The Rosie O'Donnell Show' is a nonstop barrage of product placements and testimonials. PR people, bless their hearts, just keep sending her little things out of the kindness of their hearts, and Rosie is fascinated by each and every damned one of these gimgaws. Okay, admittedly, if the friendly folks at M&M/Mars had sent *me* a wallful of M&M's, sure, I'd try to keep the flow of freebies coming at all costs. But is there *any* limit to how many products she can plug during any given minute? Evidently Rosie's determined to find out. ... "The phrase which R O'D has used over and over again to describe her show has been 'Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas for the Nineties.' What everyone fails to remember is the key fact that those shows did, as a point of fact, suck." Oh, but that's *your* opinion, Andy. What the ratings bear out is a simple fact: the same things that engender feelings of disgust and enmity in some viewers are exactly the things that endear Rosie to her ever-growing legion of fans. Daytime TV viewers' tastes can be inscrutable, but this we know for sure -- they often clash with the tastes of late-night viewers. Which is why LATE SHOW NEWS leaves Rosie, and Oprah and everybody else in daytime, alone. (P.S. Mike Douglas's show did *not* suck!) BREAKING LATE NEWS VH1 will televise the All-Star Garage Band Jam performance that raised $5 million last October for the City of Hope, a clinical cancer research institute, Saturday at 1, 4:30 and 8 p.m. Eastern. Among the many fabulous rock stars are Bryan Adams (doing "I Fought the Law"), Melissa Etheridge (doing "Stay With Me" better than Rod did!), Sheryl Crow, and Don Henley. Why do I mention it? It's hosted by Paul Shaffer and Max Weinberg's also in the band. And Bill Maher was the emcee at the October event, though it doesn't appear he made the VH1 cut ... From the lecture circuit: Mary Tyler Moore speaking in, where else, Minneapolis, where she was asked why she seems to get along so well with David Letterman. Her response: "Well, honestly, it's because he reminds me of my father. He's aloof, intellectual, has a great sense of humor, and (here she held out her palm, arm stiff) he doesn't want to talk to you" (thanks Barbara Braun for the account) ... And Andy Richter gave his first-ever talk last month at Virginia Tech. His topic: "How to be a TV sidekick and other worthless crap." Reader David Horton says the presentation went about two hours, included clips from the show and a Q-and-A session, and was attended by 300, most of them, says David, "fanatic males who watch the show and 'Cabin Boy' a bit too much" ... Ratings for "Saturday Night Live" are up 41 percent over a year ago, which is a nice way of saying it's done bleeding viewers. The humor doesn't appear to be up 41 percent over last year, but I'm only one man ... Letterman's "Video Special III" finished a lackluster third behind John Stossel's half-baked news report on freeloaders on ABC and the second half of a sorority-death weeper movie on NBC (identical, by the way, to a fraternity-death weeper movie that aired on CBS 20 years ago, proving once again that TV does not put out garbage, because you don't *recycle* garbage) ... Fast-taping reader Brad Beam caught a TV report on KDKA in Pittsburgh in which Letterman hints he might actually be taking Latrobe, Pa.'s shameless bid for the "Late Show" home office seriously. Quoth Dave: "The fine folks of Latrobe have certainly gotten our attention." ADMIN MATTERS First, if anyone is still sending mail to me c/o my old e-mail address @mcs.net or @mcs.com -- stop now. The account is expiring. Use barnhart@echonyc.com instead. It has been the originating address for LATE SHOW NEWS for some time now. Also, in the past week I've gotten two angry letters from people demanding to know why I have subscribed them, apparently against their will, to the LATE-SHOW-NEWS mailing list. Each time, the message has left me puzzled ... until I went to check the LSN list itself and made a curious discovery. Each of the complaining addresses corresponded to very old addresses on my list. (You may recall we moved LSN to American University's list server two years ago; all of the addresses on the list at that time got a telltale mark. These two subscribers were among the names with that mark.) So what explains the sudden disenchantment of these longtime subscribers? Well, it seems the list server doesn't always detect when a subscriber's e-mail account has gone out of business. Usually it does, but it's not perfect. So in the case of these two supposed old-timers, they were in fact brand new on the scene. They'd just happened to request e-mail accounts identical to two old, dead accounts were still on the LSN rolls. (Needless to say these were generic sounding addresses like tjohnson@netcom.com or tekwarfan@aol.com.) The gang at AU is testing a new version of the list server that will do a more intelligent job of identifying and discarding deadwood. In the meantime my advice to you is to quit LSN before signing off an account. You're free to drop me a line if you can't do it yourself. By the way, if anybody out there got subscribed to LATE SHOW NEWS through inheritance, and wound up *liking* it, would you let me know? It'd make my week! Tom Heald's THIS NIGHT IN HISTORY Mo 3/3: In 1950, Tim Kazurinsky is born. A regular cast member of "Saturday Night Live" from 1981-84, Kazurinsky frequently delivered sexual information as Dr. Jack Badofsky during "Weekend Update." Tu 3/4: In 1968, "The Dick Cavett Show" premieres on ABC daytime. It moves into prime time in May 1968, and finally into a late-night slot in December 1969. We 3/5: In 1982, while working on a movie script with his friends, John Belushi tries something new: a "speed ball." The mixing of heroin and cocaine has a cumulative effect on the brain, slowing down his breathing and finally causing complete respiratory failure. Instead of going ahead with a prepared show on rising unemployment, "Nightline" (against the wishes of Ted Koppel) tries in vain to book one of Belushi's friends to appear on the show. The best they can do is a TV Guide critic and -- Milton Berle who *once hosted* "Saturday Night Live." In a conversation five minutes before airtime, Berle asks Koppel "What the f*** am I doing on your show?" The answer: "Well, you're it, Milton. You're all we've got." Th 3/6: In 1923, Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Ed McMahon!!! Fr 3/7: In 1995, for the first time in the history of either "Late Night" or "Late Show with David Letterman," a new show is aired on a March 7. The show featured Tito Puente, Bill Cosby, Luke Perry, two cab drivers named Buke Hedikiran and Charlie Bates (or Connelly), a beaded seat cushion, an electric pickle, and a ladder to the balcony. Although later submitted as an Emmy nomination, it lost to an episode of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Sa 3/8: In 1993, "Beavis And Butt-Head" debuts on MTV. Su 3/9: In 1929, Joe Franklin is born. Franklin was not only the originator of the television talk show, but is also in the Guinness Book of World Records as host of longest-running talk show in television history. [Thanks to Dave Tanny, Mike Cader, Ted Koppel and Matt@belushi.com. Special thanks to Donz5, who was somehow *not* mentioned in the Letterman tribute issue of the Hollywood Reporter...] Questions, comments, and your resume to host NBC's "Later" next week may be sent to Tom Heald at . AND FINALLY TONIGHT ... The NBC Network Weasels denied Dave his clips And the Tokyo Shock Boys made us all laugh -- but sick. So imagine the wackiness that would surely ensue If we only could switch the careers of the two? Plucking Peacock -- the Shock Boys would be happy campers And the NBC weasels would wear exploding Pampers. I think the Shock Boys could run NBC with some practice And we all know where the network weasels can put the cactus! (Marilyn Sargent) THE LINEUPS (with Sue Trowbridge) LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS Mo 3/3 Debi Mazar, Duncan Sheik Tu 3/4 Robin Quivers, Adam Arkin, James We 3/5 Chevy Chase, Mary McCormack, Phish Th 3/6 Mary Steenburgen, fire performance artist Ray Wold Fr 3/7 Ted Danson, Famke Janssen, Mitch Hedburg Mo 3/10 Cybill Shepherd, Joe Montana, Joan Osborne (R 10/16/95) Tu 3/11 Garry Shandling, Sting, Nigel Mansell (R 2/28/94) We 3/12 Eddie Murphy, Tony Bennett, Wayne Cotter (R 5/20/94) Th 3/13 Fran Drescher, Grant Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Madonna (R 2/13/95) Fr 3/14 Roseanne, Martin Lawrence, Brooks and Dunn (R 11/29/94) THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC Mo 3/3 James Woods, Gina Gershon, Me'Shell Ndegeocello Tu 3/4 Arsenio Hall, Billy Bob Thornton We 3/5 Cuba Gooding Jr., Anthony Clark, Michelle Kwan Th 3/6 Dennis Miller Fr 3/7 Howard Stern, James Carville, Jewel Mo 3/10 Diane Keaton, Stephen Dorff, Deana Carter Tu 3/11 Mia Farrow, Craig Ferguson We 3/12 Phil Hartman, Laura San Giacomo Th 3/13 Collective Soul LATE LATE SHOW WITH TOM SNYDER, CBS Mo 3/3 George Segal, Pat Boone Tu 3/4 Ron Reagan Jr. We 3/5 Joe Pantoliano, Olivia Goldsmith Th 3/6 James Woods, Leslie Abramson Fr 3/7 Teri Garr Mo 3/10 Anthony Edwards, Nadine Strossen (R 11/21/96) Tu 3/11 Anne Rice, B.B. King (R 10/18/96) We 3/12 Rita Wilson, private eye Charlie Parker (R 11/18/96) Th 3/13 Preempted due to coverage of NCAA Basketball Fr 3/14 Preempted due to coverage of NCAA Basketball LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC Mo 3/3 Ray Liotta, David Blane, Donna Hanover (R 1/08/97) Tu 3/4 Marisa Tomei, Eugene Levy, The Reverend Horton Heat (R 1/10/97) We 3/5 Don Rickles, G. Gordon Liddy, John Hendricks (R 1/21/97) Th 3/6 Steven Wright, Rebecca Romijn, Junior Brown (R 1/22/97) Fr 3/7 Suzanne Somers, Rich Hall, Luscious Jackson (R 1/29/97) Mo 3/10 Mary Tyler Moore, Eric Bogosian, Billy Burr (R 2/4/97) Tu 3/11 David Brenner, Salma Hayek We 3/12 Janine DiTullio Th 3/13 Lolita Davidovich, Freedy Johnston Fr 3/14 Sarah Jessica Parker, Jason Bateman, William H. Macy LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN RERUNS, CNBC Mo 3/3 Kevin Bacon, Bonnie Hunt, J.R. Havland (R 12/12/96) Tu 3/4 Mary Tyler Moore, Eric Bogosian, Billy Burr (R 2/4/97) We 3/5 Rod Steiger, John Leguizamo, The Cardigans (R 2/5/97) Th 3/6 Fran Drescher, William Shatner, Paul Lukas (R 2/6/97) Fr 3/7 Pierce Brosnan, Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Palmer (R 2/7/97) LATER, NBC Mo 3/3 Greg Giraldo with Henry Jaglom Tu 3/4 Greg Giraldo with Joely Fisher (R 1/7/97) We 3/5 Ahmad Rashad with Ted Danson (R 1/14/97) Th 3/6 Ahmad Rashad with Richard Lewis (R 12/9/96) Mo 3/10 Nely Galan with Judith Regan Tu 3/11 Nely Galan with Liz Torres We 3/12 Suli McCullough with guest TBA Th 3/13 Suli McCullough with guest TBA Mo 3/17 Hazelle Goodman with Deepak Chopra Tu 3/18 Hazelle Goodman with Laura Innes POLITICALLY INCORRECT WITH BILL MAHER, ABC Mo 3/3 Special One-on-One with Anne Rice Tu 3/4 Wes Craven, Bobby Slayton, Dick Morris, Bobby Slayton We 3/5 Leslie Abramson, Lawrence Otis Graham, Zubin Mehta, Harry Shearer Th 3/6 Tom Hayden, Annie Potts, Jeff Cesario, Cal Thomas Fr 3/7 Billy Bob Thornton, Stanislaw Burzynski, Karen Finley, Judith Reichman CHARLIE ROSE, PBS Mo 3/3 Amy Irving, Jeanne Triplehorn, Lili Taylor; Jewel Tu 3/4 John Gregory Dunne, flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal We 3/5 Egyptian for. min. Amre Moussa, Richard Lewis, NPR's Terry Gross Th 3/6 Lauren Bacall, author Allegra Kent Fr 3/7 (previous interviews TBA -- it's pledge time!) THE DAILY SHOW, Comedy Central Mo 3/3 Debi Mazar Tu 3/4 Carol Alt We 3/5 Jackie Collins Th 3/6 Bruno Kirby HOWARD STERN, E! Mo 3/3 What's My Color?, Lenny Kravitz Tu 3/4 Mira Seagal (I), Kelly LeBrock (I) We 3/5 Mira Seagal (II), Kelly LeBrock (II) Th 3/6 Stut. John at VH-1 Fashion Awards, Rubber Baby Fr 3/7 Susan's Playboy Evaluation, Gay Rich and Eric Seefranz DIE HARALD SCHMIDT SHOW, SAT.1 Di 3/3 Karl Moik, Juergen Domian Mi 5/3 Dieter Pfaff, Ulrike von der Groeben Do 6/3 Oropax, Herbert Herrmann, Jessica Stockmann Fr 7/3 Britta von Lojewski Also on late nights: NIGHTLINE, ABC CHARLES GRODIN, CNBC CARSON'S COMEDY CLASSICS, Family Channel MAD TV, Fox SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, NBC SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, Comedy Central THE CHRIS ROCK SHOW, HBO ====================================================== AARON BARNHART IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR The archive is fixed -- use the old method again. --------- Coming Up: Save a trip to the archive. Simply go to on the date of publication shown below: ... "Feds" and "EZ Streets" (We 3/5) Archived: ... TV Law (essay on "Law & Order" and "The Practice") ... A very funny fellow (Bill Cosby profile) ... "Angst and Angels" (essay on "Millennium" and "Touched by an Angel") *coming this week* ... "Pilot of the airwaves" (Tom Snyder profile) ... "CBS claims it's happy courting older viewers, buuuut ..." (feature) ... "Tuning in to digital TV" (hyperlinked page-one feature) ... and literally dozens more. I'm starting to think I get paid by the column inch. How to find my articles in the Star archive: (1) Go to . (2) Under the "Additional search criteria" heading, type Aaron Barnhart in the "AUTHOR" entry blank. (3) Click the Search button. Entire contents Copyright 1997 by Aaron Barnhart. All rights reserved. Distributed by e-mail and BBS to over 10,000 readers weekly. Late Show News is made possible with the generous assistance of ECHO, New York City's premiere online service. Send news for and comments about this newsletter to aaron@tvbarn.com