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thatcrazycajunWith thanks to filkertom for passing along the sad news, it is my solemn duty to report that broadcasting has lost another of its truly towering figures. Tom Snyder, radio and TV host whose best-known gig, hosting NBC's—in fact, television's—first late-late night talk show, Tomorrow, made it fun to lose sleep for nine years, has died of leukemia at 71. His deep voice and staccato delivery, not to mention his legendary digressions, might have lent themselves to parody (yes, Dan Aykroyd, I'm looking at you), but no one could argue with his work ethic, his professionalism, his integrity or his uncanny talent for getting people, both famous and not, to open up and be truly revealing.
This was pioneering television, children, in a time when it was widely believed there wasn't all that much pioneering left for television to do. Bear in mind that at the time, broadcast-network TV largely shut down for the night by the time Johnny Carson signed off, in favor of late-late movies, syndicated network-show reruns or the odd infomercial (on those stations that weren't simply showing the old off-air color-bars and signal drone). And while cable TV was around, it wasn't nearly the endless universe of 24-7 channels we know today. (One feature of wee-hours cable in this era was an all-night, full-screen crawl of Associated Press news stories.) This was virgin territory for any network, and NBC and Snyder were first to stake a claim on it.
Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel and all the rest who now occupy that witching-hour time slot (and the guys who work the previous hour, as well) owe a huge debt to Tom and Tomorrow. It had a quieter, more intimate vibe than the Tonight Show, with usually only one or two guests per show, a minimal set—only a coffee table and a chair or three, beyond which one could see naught but darkness—and no studio audience cued to laugh or applaud by a flashing sign. (Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley would also use this one-on-one template to great effect on their own nocturnal PBS gabfests later on.) It also had a way hipper guest roster: from Bono and The Edge of U2 to the members of KISS in full regalia, from John Lennon to Charles freakin' Manson, if Carson's show was Reader's Digest, Snyder's was Rolling Stone.
What made Tom and his show especially dear to me (aside from the fun of staying up so many nights when I wasn't supposed to be, naughty night-owl teenager that I was) were two things: his obvious love of and respect for the genre of science fiction (he frequently had major names such as Asimov, Bradbury and Ellison on his show; witness this clip, courtesy of YouTube, featuring Tom jawboning Harlan, along with Jimmy Doohan and DeForest Kelley among others), and that he was among the first to put "Weird Al" Yankovic on national TV to perform. (Just last night, by purest happenstance, I was watching another YouTube clip of Al on Tomorrow with his longtime bandmate Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz—gods, how young they all look!—thumping their way through "Another One Rides the Bus.") And he even managed to pull it off a second time, as few so successful a first time do, on CBS when it inaugurated The Late Late Show in the 1990s.
Vaya con Dios, Mr. Snyder, and thanks for all the wonderful pictures you sent us flying through the air. I raise a tall, cool colortini in salute to your memory...and wish you a gentle good night and an eternity of pleasant tomorrows, on behalf of a nation of grateful TV-watching insomniacs.
filkertom for passing along the sad news, it is my solemn duty to report that broadcasting has lost another of its truly towering figures. Tom Snyder, radio and TV host whose best-known gig, hosting NBC's—in fact, television's—first late-late night talk show, Tomorrow, made it fun to lose sleep for nine years, has died of leukemia at 71. His deep voice and staccato delivery, not to mention his legendary digressions, might have lent themselves to parody (yes, Dan Aykroyd, I'm looking at you), but no one could argue with his work ethic, his professionalism, his integrity or his uncanny talent for getting people, both famous and not, to open up and be truly revealing. This was pioneering television, children, in a time when it was widely believed there wasn't all that much pioneering left for television to do. Bear in mind that at the time, broadcast-network TV largely shut down for the night by the time Johnny Carson signed off, in favor of late-late movies, syndicated network-show reruns or the odd infomercial (on those stations that weren't simply showing the old off-air color-bars and signal drone). And while cable TV was around, it wasn't nearly the endless universe of 24-7 channels we know today. (One feature of wee-hours cable in this era was an all-night, full-screen crawl of Associated Press news stories.) This was virgin territory for any network, and NBC and Snyder were first to stake a claim on it.
Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel and all the rest who now occupy that witching-hour time slot (and the guys who work the previous hour, as well) owe a huge debt to Tom and Tomorrow. It had a quieter, more intimate vibe than the Tonight Show, with usually only one or two guests per show, a minimal set—only a coffee table and a chair or three, beyond which one could see naught but darkness—and no studio audience cued to laugh or applaud by a flashing sign. (Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley would also use this one-on-one template to great effect on their own nocturnal PBS gabfests later on.) It also had a way hipper guest roster: from Bono and The Edge of U2 to the members of KISS in full regalia, from John Lennon to Charles freakin' Manson, if Carson's show was Reader's Digest, Snyder's was Rolling Stone.
What made Tom and his show especially dear to me (aside from the fun of staying up so many nights when I wasn't supposed to be, naughty night-owl teenager that I was) were two things: his obvious love of and respect for the genre of science fiction (he frequently had major names such as Asimov, Bradbury and Ellison on his show; witness this clip, courtesy of YouTube, featuring Tom jawboning Harlan, along with Jimmy Doohan and DeForest Kelley among others), and that he was among the first to put "Weird Al" Yankovic on national TV to perform. (Just last night, by purest happenstance, I was watching another YouTube clip of Al on Tomorrow with his longtime bandmate Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz—gods, how young they all look!—thumping their way through "Another One Rides the Bus.") And he even managed to pull it off a second time, as few so successful a first time do, on CBS when it inaugurated The Late Late Show in the 1990s.
Vaya con Dios, Mr. Snyder, and thanks for all the wonderful pictures you sent us flying through the air. I raise a tall, cool colortini in salute to your memory...and wish you a gentle good night and an eternity of pleasant tomorrows, on behalf of a nation of grateful TV-watching insomniacs.
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Date: 2007-07-31 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-01 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 12:18 pm (UTC)Sigh.
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Date: 2007-07-31 02:33 pm (UTC)