Newsgroups: alt.fan.letterman,alt.fan.conan-obrien,alt.tv.talkshows.late,alt.zines,rec.arts.tv,alt.fan.jay-leno,alt.fan.greg-kinnear Subject: LATE SHOW NEWS 8/9/94 Summary: Send the message "subscribe late-show-news" to listserv@mcs.net to join the LATE SHOW NEWS distribution list! Followup-To: alt.fan.letterman Reply-To: late-show-news@mcs.net Distribution: Keywords: From Chicago: History-making home of the Brickyard 400 ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, August 9, 1994 Issue #25 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- THE 12:35 NEWS LATE SHOW NEWS has learned that tonight at 7:30 p.m., CBS is expected to hold a press conference at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City where Tom Snyder will be introduced as the new host of the 12:35 a.m. show to follow _Late Show with David Letterman._ Two and a half hours later, T.S. will originate his program from CNBC studios in Fort Lee with special guest Conan O'Brien. We suspect they'll have some things to talk about. Snydermania is reaching a fever pitch. Tonight on the Letterman show, Howard Stern got Dave to admit that yes, Tom had the 12:35 slot sealed up, though he couldn't give a reason why that would satisfy Howard. (For those who don't know, Stern and Snyder once came to blows when T.S. was filling in for Bob Costas on _Later._) Meanwhile, our net pals Thomas Bartlett and Roy Buergi have cooked up some possible titles for the new program: "Damn It's Late with Tom Snyder," "Snyder, She Wrote," "Mystery Eyebrow Theater 3000," "A Guest After I Finish This Story (Maybe) with Tom Snyder," and our pick to click, "Dateline NBC." DAVE NATION In this arid summer season, Michael Moore's summer series on NBC, _TV Nation,_ has been an oasis for t.v. writers. Mostly they have written about Moore as a feature attraction, a video ringmaster; less flatteringly, as a Dave Letterman wannabe. After all, NBC's entertainment, not news, division is in charge of _TV Nation_; Moore, in fact, reports to Letterman's old boss, Warren Littlefield. And _Late Night with David Letterman_'s first head writer, the alluring Merrill Markoe, is a correspondent, while another ex-writer, Randy Cohen, also works on the show. But by and large, the press has unfairly judged _TV Nation_ as an entertainment program that tries to be newsy. It is, rather, a news program that tries to be entertaining. And it is as a news program that _TV Nation_ will be remembered, long after its mediocre ratings drive it from the air after this summer. Michael Moore is giving some nasty young t.v. producers a forum to vent their anger, and influencing another generation of t.v. watchers who someday themselves will become producers. It will be influential because it is a network newsmagazine that makes no effort to embody _60 Minutes_ earnestness. No potshot is too gratuitous provided the target is worthy. So when one correspondent asks a Southern tycoon what kind of future he foresees for the poverty-wrenched Texas town where he is dumping tons of New York City sewage for profit, we see the question asked, and we see the tycoon sitting there for a full ten seconds, mulling it over. What we don't see is the answer. The last image of the tycoon shows him pursing his lips for about the third time, as if hoping the words will spill out on their own. Perhaps it's a childish piece of editing, but somehow the image is as compelling as that of a tongue-tied Teddy Kennedy unable to tell Roger Mudd why it is he's running for President. Another correspondent, a Brit named Louis Theroux, is so disarming it's hard to imagine his subjects having a clue what they're in for when the editor gets done with them. One person, a spokeswoman for Avon Corporation in Brazil, where the company's sales force is 70,000, admits that a commercial airing on Brazilian t.v. for a wrinkle cream uses "a little trick" to suggest a skin transformation much more miraculous than it really is. This is juxtaposed with the very plain face of an Avon lady from the Amazon, who tells Theroux that sales of the wrinkle cream have gone through the roof in her isolated rural area since the t.v. ad started running. "A lot of people wondered if the ad is real, and a lot of people believe it is reality," she says. "I believe it is reality, because by using the products you can be like *her*" -- and she points to a sexy model on a magazine page tacked to the wall of her barrio. When _TV Nation_ tries to be just silly, as with Karen Duffy's overreaching profile of North Dakota, it stumbles. Merrill's "Pets on Prozac" looks at first like a harmless feature, purporting to show how the mind-soothing drug cures domestic animals of compulsive syndromes. But what it also does is undermine, nicely mind you (and so apt that it does), the wonderfully sincere endorsement of millions of Americans by showing how Prozac turns aggressive animals into hapless goofs. Markoe alone is worth tuning into this show; she has an amazing brain that you see in action as she riffs off the comments of her interviews. However, it's the silliness that has gotten the attention of many of _TV Nation_'s reviewers, who helpfully point out that the deadpan video style of Moore is reminiscent of Letterman. Leaving aside for a moment that Moore has been making movies for years, there is a big difference in approach. Dave would never chum around with Dr. Jack Kevorkian, take him out for a picnic, and bring up uncomfortable subjects ("My folks asked me not to bring up their ages with you," Moore jokes at one point). Nor would he ask the Mexican representative of a major U.S. corporation, on the factory floor, what the Spanish translation was for, "As soon as you get your arm out of that thing, you're fired." Do not underestimate the rage running throughout _TV Nation._ That rage covers a multitude of the show's own sins. Its creativity is premised on the condemnation, not only of the system but, more importantly, of the way in which media have been used to prop up exploitative and corrupt activities. It has already made a specialty of damning the p.r. flack. In fact, Moore's implicit indictment of such a powerful medium for trivial, apolitical ends sets him opposite to Letterman and hints at the pessimism of Edward R. Murrow in his later years. Whether this point of view can be marketable so near to full strength on broadcast t.v. remains to be seen. Maybe it will be as Lorne Michaels described the brand of humor his show and Letterman's institutionalized. "Like everything else," he once said, "brilliant people do it, then less brilliant people, then everyone does it and you get tired of it." F.Y. EYES _Late Night with Conan O'Brien_ is now on the Internet. Send your bouquets to Conanshow@aol.com or drop in on alt.fan.conan- obrien, which is where we overheard Conanshow informing someone that the winners of _Late Night_'s college band contest will appear on the program August 19 ... NBC has scheduled a 40th Anniversary _Tonight_ show special for Sept. 27 ... _People_ reports that _SNL_ is talking to Chris Elliott about joining the cast for its 20th season ... Multimedia Entertainment, which distributes Rush Limbaugh and other syndicated t.v. talkers, is starting an all-talk cable network in October ... And Howard Stern just told Dave that he's quitting radio when his contract with Infinity Broadcasting expires at the end of 1995. One can only presume the king of all media is heading for the tube full-time. THE LINEUPS LATE SHOW, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 8/9 Peter Gabriel, 8-year-old ventriloquist Spencer Horseman We 8/10 Harland Williams Th 8/11 Richard Lewis, Joe Cocker, Steve Buscemi Fr 8/12 Charles Grodin, Andre Agassi, Lee Marek aka "Mr. Science" Mo 8/15 Tom Arnold, Alex Trebek, Wendy Liebman Tu 8/16 Julie Brown Wonder if Alex has any incriminating video from those 1970s game shows Dave did. (Alex, we cried the day _High Rollers_ died.) THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 8/9 Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Kinsley, David Wilcox We 8/10 Judge Reinhold, Cyndi Lauper, Jeff Foxworthy Th 8/11 Pauly Shore, Leon Redbone Fr 8/12 TBA Mo 8/15 Hannah Storm, Joe Williams, Sinbad Tu 8/16 Geraldo Rivera, Linda Gray LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 8/9 Pat Morita, Nick Cave We 8/10 Stone Phillips, Stuttering John Th 8/11 TBA Fr 8/12 Al Roker, LaToya Jackson Mo 8/15 Mary Matalin, Ray Romano Tu 8/16 Milla LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 8/9 Howie Mandel We 8/10 Michael Moore Th 8/11 TBA Mo 8/15 Bob Costas (!) Tu 8/16 TBA -- Thanks to S Trowbridge 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 8/8 Martin Short, Candice Bergen (11-12-87) Tu 8/9 Don Rickles, Billy Scrifter, Facia (8-4-88) We 8/10 Ira Ciccone, Nelson Sardelli (5-30-84) Th 8/11 Jerry Seinfeld, Linda Ronstadt, Charles Grodin (9-21-83) Fr 8/12 Catherine O'Hara, Nanci Griffith (9-13-89) Sa 8/13 Jay Leno, Pam Shriver, Darlene Love (12-16-86) Su 8/14 Paulina Poriskova, John Waters, Bonnie Raitt (10-16-86) --------------------------- 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. 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