Article 5173 of alt.zines: Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!wupost!udel!news.sprintlink.net!redstone.interpath.net!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 8/23/94 Followup-To: alt.fan.letterman Date: 23 Aug 1994 00:43:37 -0500 Organization: The Colorcast Lines: 301 Message-ID: <33c2a9$ins@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:30875 alt.fan.conan-obrien:2494 alt.tv.talkshows.late:1303 alt.zines:5173 rec.arts.tv:118356 alt.fan.jay-leno:52 From Chicago: Where a good 5-cent cigar is only $4.98 plus tax ... it's --------------------------------------------- LATE SHOW NEWS for Tuesday, August 23, 1994 Issue #27 A weekly electronic sheet by Aaron Barnhart --------------------------------------------- TED'S A HEAD (Part 2) Ted Koppel's _Nightline_ has, like many a creative work, experienced the familiar three stages of life: a time of brilliance, innovation, and the vigor of youth, followed by seasons of restlessness and diminished enthusiasm resulting, finally, in a resurgence of strength, where old thinking is made new again and everyone remarks that the work seems better than ever. In fact, with only minor modifications, this late-night t.v. tale could have been titled The Dave Letterman Story. Ted Koppel was just one in a rotation of hosts for the 15-minute "America Held Hostage" recap program that was piped to ABC affiliates for airing after their late local news in 1979 and '80. From its inception ABC News President Roone Arledge was selling stations on the idea of a late-night magazine, but he had seemingly everyone except Ted in mind as a host until the wacky-haired correspondent wedded his considerable interview skills to an ingenious talk environment hatched in a moment of need. As Koppel revealed in a 1989 interview, one night during the hostage crisis the only guest ABC could secure was the charge d'affaires at the Iranian Embassy, and he would only agree to go on the air so long as he didn't have to leave the embassy grounds. Desperate to fill the time, Ted conducted the first remote interview through the now-famous Chromakey screen, ironically not with a guest halfway around the world but one sitting a few blocks away from the studios. Before long Koppel had the gig permanently, and soon viewers grew accustomed to watching a think-tanker in D.C. bicker with a commentator in New York and a scholar in Paris while the moderator, listening closely, steered the conversation with uncanny dead-on questions. That breakthrough made _Nightline_ a spectacle in and of itself. Of course, it was a news program, but it was entertainment as well -- high drama made doubly riveting by its live, unedited rendition and the accompanying cadences of its silver-throated interrogator. Some shows, like those on the Praise the Lord Club scandal of 1987-88, were more entertaining than newsworthy, though you have to admire the leather of a journalist who could keep both a straight face and his patience while enduring a simpering Jim and a blubbering Tammy Bakker for five straight performances. It was a late-night munchie for a whole new audience that for the most part found Johnny Carson unedifying. And as the show's reputation grew, so did its audience and, significantly, its ad revenues as well. But at some point in the late 1980s, _Nightline_'s host showed signs of drifting away from his own program. He formed a production company, ostensibly to give himself a measure of independence at a time of economic unsurety (ABC was downsizing as a result of its 1985 acquisition by Capital Cities). In fact, Koppel Communications sprang from his frustration with the Q-and-A box that _Nightline_ had put him in. Corporate cost-cutting was nothing compared with having ten good ideas that couldn't be put on t.v., at least not on your program. So that he could have time for his projects, Ted slipped into a Carsonesque routine of three-day work weeks. Stations staged a minor revolt. By 1991 live clearances for _Nightline_ had ebbed to 60 percent for, unlike Carson's network, ABC had no tradition of late-night loyalty and was unable to maintain discipline. This had some impact on the bottom line but what really was taking a hit was Koppel's pride. After returning to five-day work weeks during the Gulf war, Ted made an appearance at the yearly affiliates' meeting where he made a plea. Look, he said, I'm going to make _Nightline_ better than it has ever been, but I need you to start carrying it at 11:35. By then, Koppel had picked up a new executive producer, Tom Bettag, a CBS News veteran who turned out to be the catalyst for Ted's untapped reserve of journalistic fire. With Arledge's blessing, _Nightline_ abandoned its nightly compulsion to fill the screen with talking heads and began its regeneration. Bettag began scheduling more pretaped programming, and Koppel took to the field, assuming the donkey work that was once exclusively the burden of the show's regular correspondent (Dave Marash, but for years it was Jeff Greenfield). Now it was Koppel visiting the flooded Mississippi river banks, interviewing teenage drug czars in a Jersey City ghetto, and spending a day at Camden Yards on the eve of the baseball strike. More significantly, it was Koppel setting the tone for the reports. From the results one could see why he had wanted a production company in the first place. A grand inquisitor he may be, but Ted also owns a prosaic and humane editing touch one rarely finds in t.v. anymore. It exalts the spoken word and then seeks pictures that might be worthy of the script. It is a patrician view of broadcasting, but what's a little elitism compared with so much of what passes for video journalism, where the powerful imagery too often masks a message that, when it is not simply incoherent, is misleading or even manipulative? A recent example of _Nightline_ at its best was the report from Oriole Park. Rain delays had pushed Koppel and his crew until fifteen minutes before air time, when the game was finally called. Yet the finished broadcast, which gave equal time and respect not only to the players and owners, but the ballpark's 2,000 employees, fans in attendance, and area businesses as well -- the three groups that will suffer most directly from the stoppage -- was polished and literate. At one point, over a picture of rain tarp being removed shortly before game time, Koppel spoke of coming to grips with the strike. "The process involves a gradual peeling away of delusion." It occurs to you that, like any good late-night talk show, this same-day taping has been mapped out minute by minute well in advance. Not least of all, _Nightline_ continues to make news from time to time; perhaps the wonder here is that it is still doing it despite the proliferation of newsmagazines over the past 15 years. After Ross Perot had launched his United We Stand organization, a $15-per-head relic from Huey Long's heyday, Koppel dusted off his 1971 interview with businessman Perot who was talking about launching a patriotic organization called ... United We Stand. The _Nightline_ report that footage appeared on is credited with undermining, perhaps fatally, the Texas billionaire's attempt to insert himself into the next national runoff by means of this shadowy front group. When law enforcement officials extracted confessions from four Arizona men in a highly publicized murder case, grilling them for hours with little regard for _Miranda_ or _habeus corpus,_ Koppel aired damning excerpts from videotapes of the interrogation, causing a national outcry. Then there are the things that only Ted, by virtue of seniority and smarts, can get away with. When President Clinton showed a weakness for town meetings, Koppel arranged one on health care and deftly moderated it. (He also did something fairly scandalous by planting a soft-spoken pro-lifer in the audience who asked if her tax dollars would now be funding abortion.) And as managing editor he can feature outstanding journalism even when, as he puts it, "I had nothing whatsoever to do with it," such as last week's two-parter by producer Jim Allison that chronicled the lives of three young convicts who enter a remarkable rehabilitation program on a remote Massachusetts island. Allison's is an example of spare, sermonless activist journalism that seeks not to sell us on solutions but to help us think about what the real problems are -- sobering truths told to a prison-happy nation, exquisitely timed to the passage of the Clinton crime bill. Comparisons have been made between _Nightline_ and Ed Murrow's work. Perot may well be Koppel's McCarthy, while stories like that of the Tucson Four are reminiscent of "Harvest of Shame," Murrow's classic expose of living conditions among migrant farm workers. Koppel has inherited Murrow's pessimism about t.v., that it will never aspire to its early promise to enlighten, rather than merely entertain the masses. Murrow, sadly, was acquainted with power early on, and never really came to grips with its being taken from him following the McCarthy standoff. By contrast Koppel, who came to America as a teenager and immediately shook off his accent, has shown a resiliency that won him the _Nightline_ post and then drove him to re-establish the show as the best reason for millions of Americans to stay up late. In our earlier report on Ted Koppel (LSN #22) we looked at _Nightline_ as a symbol of the power of mass communications -- power the show's anchor himself has argued is eroding daily amidst the rise of information technology and multi-everything. This newsletter concluded that Koppel, a passionate believer in that power and society's need for it, when he worries about the future of mass media makes an excellent case for concern but a rather poor one for alarm. Broadcast networks still possess the ability to attract the very best at the craft, and there is no better news organization this side of the Atlantic than ABC's, with _World News Tonight_ and _Nightline_ as its flagship shows. Moreover, as choice proliferates, some will take full advantage of the alternatives to mass media, but many will not, and will continue to demand basic services from the broadcast networks. Whether the webs will remain up to the task remains to be seen. But it is clear for now that tabloid t.v. need not win the day, as Koppel fears it is doing. Piles of resources may be squandered on junk like _Inside Edition_ and _Hard Copy_ but they pale next to what a few people at the peak of their craft, backed by the resources of a network and fired by a vision of broadcast excellence, can accomplish. "When we return," we'll look at the effect _Nightline_ has or may have on American politics and society. BREAKING LATE NEWS Conan O'Brien's contract with NBC has been extended, not renewed, extended, for an undisclosed length of time ... Merrill Markoe profiles talk-show guests on tonight's edition of _TV Nation._ No word on whether they are daytime or late-night shows ... Jay Leno's father passed away on Wednesday ... So far only Steve Allen and Leno, the show's earliest and most recent hosts, have agreed to appear in the September's "40 Years of _Tonight_" special on NBC. Jack Paar won't do it and, according to a network rep, Johnny hasn't been asked ... Calvert De Forest, Sirajul and Mujibur flew into Sioux City, Iowa last week to christen the old City Hall as "the official Home Office" of _Late Show with David Letterman._ Later, Mujibur threw out the first pitch at the local minor-league game, but with a twist: he was inserted as the starting pitcher for the Sioux City Explorers, threw exactly one pitch (wild), and was replaced with the real starting pitcher. Sioux City was the last CBS market where Dave's show wasn't aired on any station, though many viewers have reported no trouble with the signal from nearby markets in Iowa and South Dakota ... Bobcat Goldthwaite pleaded nolo contendere and will get slapped on the wrist for livening up the Leno show earlier this year by igniting a chair ... And CBS will use the half hour immediately following Dave's show the week of Sept. 12 to preview some of its prime-time programs debuting this fall. THE LINEUPS LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, CBS, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 8/23 Robin Williams, John Mellencamp, 4-year-old geography expert Jonathan Estrada, rerun (show #2 on CBS) We 8/24 Al Gore Jr., Kim Basinger, Chris Isaak, rerun Th 8/25 Rerun TBA (we hear it might be the Madonna one) Fr 8/26 Johnny Carson, Bette Midler, Traffic, rerun from L.A. Mo 8/29 Allman Brothers, Steven Wright Tu 8/30 TBA THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO, NBC, 11:35 P.M. EST Tu 8/23 Paul Reiser, Stevie Nicks, Kalika the sea lion We 8/24 Richard Benjamin, Suzanne Somers, Tim McGraw Th 8/25 Robert Downey Jr., Susan Norfleet Fr 8/26 Richard Lewis Mo 8/29 Eddie Murphy, Jon Secada, Craig Kargas, rerun from N.Y. Tu 8/30 Penny Marshall, Dennis Hopper, Crosby, Stills & Nash, rerun LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, NBC, 12:35 A.M. EST Tu 8/23 Mazzy Star, D.B. Sweeney We 8/24 Nick Bakay, Barenaked Ladies Th 8/25 Adam West, Weezer Fr 8/26 David Alan Grier, Tracy Austin, Dom Irrera Mo 8/29 Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa, Frederique van der Wal, rerun Tu 8/30 Michael Moore, Isaac Hayes, Louie Bellson, rerun Both Jay's and Conan's Monday reruns are picks to click. LATER WITH GREG KINNEAR, NBC, 1:35 A.M. EST Tu 8/23 Crosby, Stills and Nash We 8/24 Kirk Douglas Th 8/25 Tori Amos Mo 8/29 Ellen DeGeneres, rerun Tu 8/30 Montel Williams, rerun -- 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 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 11 p.m. on Sundays. There are also re-airings of previously aired reruns (usually the one from the night before), weekdays at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m. only. The following schedule was taken from the E! update line. Mo 8/22 Beverly D'Angelo, Fred Willard, Eric Clapton (5-7-85) Tu 8/23 Alec Guinness, Tito Puente (2-26-86) We 8/24 Diane Brill, Bill Hicks (8-22-85) Th 8/25 Art Donovan, Geena Davis (12-22-88) Fr 8/26 Martin Mull, Quincy Jones (12-11-85) Su 8/28 Sam Kinison, Tom Brokaw (2-10-89) --------------------------- 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. LATE SHOW NEWS is available by anonymous ftp from ftp.mcs.net in the directory /mcsnet.users/barnhart/late-show-news. You may also browse LATE SHOW NEWS via the World Wide Web at the following URL: http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~jl8287/late.news.html Or get on the LATE SHOW NEWS distribution list. Just send mail to listserv@mcs.net with this message only ... subscribe late-show-news to get LATE SHOW NEWS in your mailbox every week. LATE SHOW NEWS is made possible with the generous assistance of MCSNet Services, Chicagoland's largest public access Internet provider, offering reliable service at great rates. Mail info@mcs.net for more details. -- Send late-night program news and comments about this electronic sheet to late-show-news@mcs.net