Modified On January 29, 2010
A Vanity Fair article has wisdom from Joan Rivers regarding the current round of late night wars.
Fox’s The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers was short-lived and widely panned, and is often mentioned in the same sentence as Chevy Chase’s disastrous wee-hours outing. She’s out at Sundance for her new documentary about her life, A Piece of Work, and spoke with West Coast editor Krista Smith about why Leno isn’t funny and why Conan should be grateful to have been fired by NBC.
It’s a video interview. Lots of good stuff. As for Rivers’ show being the same magnitude goof-up as Chase’s: It wasn’t nearly as bad. It was bad for vastly different reasons. And it was Fox… then a fledgling network… not the Fox of today. Had Rivers been given the same chance today, with the new and improved Fox, it would give the good ol’ boys a run for their money. Many people have been grind up in the gears of a new network trying to make a run at NBC’s late night dominance. (Look up Joey Bishop and his late night venture on ABC. The network had been around since 1948, but was only gaining steam for a coupla years before they put Bishop up against Carson. Ask Regis Philbin about it if you ever end up in the same room with him.)
Years later, Fox tried with Chase. The results were legendary. (But hardly Fox’s fault.)
Should Conan decide to go with Fox, we doubt that the failures of Chase and Rivers would have any effect on his ability to deliver a competitive show. But all this history does make one wonder… We saw the premiere of Chase’s show. It was epic.
As for being any kind of source on the most recent late night wars, Rivers should know: She was at the epicenter of the talent/power quake that was the Tonight Show.
The comments are, as usual, filled with the spittle-flecked rants of people who actually have the time to devote to passionate defenses of the players involved… and dark condemnations of their least favorite players. A nice example:
Joan Rivers bad mouthed the good man who so graciously gave her, her start; Johnny Carson. If anyone ever gave her any benefit of the doubt about her slander, this ought to settle that once and for all.
Huh? What ever.
Meanwhile, the NYT is re-running an opus by Bill Carter, the guy who wrote the book on Letterman, Leno and the network battle for the night, it was called, “The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno and the Network Battle for the Night.” Appropriate. Read the giant excerpt here. Click through all seven pages. Or buy the book. We’ve got a copy here at SHECKY HQ… at least we had a copy… hope it’s still around, as used copies are going for $112.50! A great read for anyone in the business. If you can’t afford the C-note, check out NYT’s re-run of Carter’s account.