When Tom Snyder returned to late night television as host of CBS’ The Late Late Show on January 9, 1995—thirty years ago today—the veteran broadcaster began with a dig at one man: Johnny Carson.
Why? The answer stretches back decades:
“It was the best of Toms, it was the worst of Toms.” So wrote the great television critic Tom Shales in the Washington Post at the end of 1981, the year that saw the departure of Tom Brokaw and Tom Snyder from their respective hosting duties of Today and Tomorrow on NBC. The former would go on to host the NBC Nightly News. The latter was bumped by a young comic by the name of David Letterman.
Snyder had, for eight years, hosted the program best known for coming on after Carson. While The Tomorrow Show had nowhere near the prestige of The Tonight Show, few on the air were as singular as Snyder.
“There has not been quite so magnificent and exasperating a creature of television since, perhaps, Jack Paar, who nearly 20 years ago whispered his own ‘goodbye’ as host of the Tonight show,” Shales wrote at the time.
In the critic’s estimation, NBC was to blame. The network had “ruined his program.” NBC President and CEO Fred Silverman was “dumb” for changing the show by adding “rock stars and a studio audience, which shattered the splendid intimate rapport Snyder had built with the proverbial folks at home.”
Then there was Snyder’s relationship with Carson. How Carson felt about Snyder, who hosted Tomorrow from 1973-1981, can be summed up in a single story, told by the former’s attorney and “best friend,” Henry Bushkin, in his memoir, Johnny Carson. One night in 1979, Bushkin writes, he and a group of friends that included Carson and Ed McMahon, were seated for dinner at the famed Los Angeles restaurant Chasen’s, where they were celebrating the show’s recent success at the Emmy Awards. Snyder, to Carson’s annoyance, was seated across the restaurant and bought them a round of drinks.
“Johnny had long harbored a serious dislike for Snyder, based on nothing but his performances on TV,” Bushkin remembered. “He thought Snyder had no talent and was an officious bore.” Well, after a couple drinks, Johnny soon “turned into Mr. Hyde.” The evening ended with Carson going over to Snyder’s table, lunging across it, and missing an attempted grab for Snyder’s throat.
Per Bushkin, the fight was broken by McMahon, who placed himself in the middle of the scrum and suggested they all head off to another party, where a more “jovial” mood commenced. Within two years, Snyder would be off the air. Yet upon the commencement of The Late Late Show, it was not a personal dislike to which Snyder referred, but a professional one.
Just two years earlier, in 1993, Snyder began hosting an eponymous talk program on CNBC. He found at least one major fan: David Letterman, who that same year launched his Late Show on CBS, a network that suddenly found itself really truly in the late night business following a long history of unsuccessful attempts. By the end of the following year, Letterman, whose contract with CBS included ownership of the show following his, invited Snyder to take over the time slot following his program.
Snyder began the January 9, 1995, broadcast with an introduction befitting a legend: “Welcome back everybody, I’m Tom.” Reference to an existing rapport. No last name needed. Far different than the way young gun Craig Ferguson introduced himself when he took over the program ten years later.
An excited Snyder starts to talk about the logistics of getting the program up and running, noting they’d been working in the studio for six weeks. But then Snyder stops himself. It seems, he has something to get off his chest:
“In the eight-and-a-half years that I was on the air at the other network,” he says, “never once did Johnny Carson say, ‘And now stay tuned for Tom Snyder.’”
No innuendo. No referring to Carson as “the host of the preceding program,” or just “The Tonight Show.” Snyder just goes for it. “I thank David Letterman for that courtesy tonight,” he added. “What a wonderful courtesy to be plugged by the program preceding yours.” And thus, he was off.
On this opening episode, Snyder is seated in a comfortable chair, nothing else around him, set against a backdrop of Los Angeles in the evening. Snyder urges his viewers to set their VCRs. He excitedly shares that they will be simultaneously broadcasting on television and radio, with a live phone line. “The great thing is, we’ve never done this before and it might just blow up in our faces later on,” he says, “And you’d have the video tape at home to show it.”
He introduces several members of the show’s production staff, all of whom are longtime Snyder collaborators: behind camera number two, Ray Figelski, who joined NBC in 1966 and for five years served as Carson’s technical director. He shouts out stage manager Mark Kennedy, “who unfortunately believes that he is, in fact, the reincarnation of Ed McMahon.” And the operator of camera number one, Michael Schwartz, who, Snyder jokes, asks every time an author appears on the show, “Does anybody else want the book?”
Snyder then urges his audience to settle back and relax (no mention of colortinis or pictures flying through the air this episode). What follows, though, is the Shalesian ideal of late night: relaxed, intelligent conversations with no live audience, introduced with a bit of smooth jazz. His first guest is Candice Bergen, then in the middle of her seventh season on Murphy Brown.
Bergen is asked by Snyder to comment on several recent news stories: the Gingrich controversy (more below), “the O.J. Simpson affair, Tanya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, all these things that we have been bombarded with here over the past eight, nine months. How do you, as a television viewer who plays a newswoman, look at all this stuff?”
“I look at it as a citizen who is sometimes mind-boggled, and outraged, and offended at the handling of certain topics by the media,” Bergen responds, elaborating on her process of integrating real life into the program. “And I try to be as informed as I can.”
The host then welcomes the parents of newly elected Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Kit and Robert. But the elephant in the studio is this: just days earlier, Kit had caused a controversy during an interview with Connie Chung, then host of Eye to Eye on CBS.
Chung asked Gingrich what her son thought of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. Gingrich said she could not share how her son felt on the air. Chung then urged her to whisper how he felt, “just between you and me.” Gingrich, holding a cigarette, leaned forward and whispered to Chung that her son thought Clinton was “a bitch.” The moment caused a controversy, both for the comment and from those who believed that Chung had lulled her guest into a false sense of security and violated an off-the-record agreement for ratings.
Snyder (remember, now a CBS man), gives little attention to the controversy itself. Instead, the trio discuss an invitation by Clinton for the two to visit the White House. The couple appreciate the gracious gesture. Snyder, in the interview, then shows off his trademark bluntness. In perhaps a slight reference to Kit Gingrich’s earlier interview with Chung, he brings up her smoking, “I guess you haven’t read the Surgeon General’s report.” To which she responds, “Well, that wouldn’t do me any good.”
The show then pivots to phone calls, a segment during which Snyder accepts one from Dottie in Collegeville, Pennsylvania: it’s a name and voice of a regular caller he instantly recognizes. “I followed you over,” Dottie excitedly shares before asking a question. The call ends with Dottie wishing Snyder good luck. “Dottie, I’m glad you called, thanks,” Snyder says. “I’ll do the best I can.”
When the reviews were filed, critics celebrated the return of a pro’s pro to the air.
“David Letterman can rest easy,” Todd Everett wrote in Variety. “On the strength of Tuesday’s opener, he’s getting exactly what he paid for in selecting Tom Snyder to follow his own program: Mostly intelligent talk delivered by the kind of pro broadcaster who could hold down an entire network for several hours, unprepared and virtually single-handed.”
Tom Shales, naturally, was thrilled, penning a long profile of Snyder in the Post upon his return. As Leno and Letterman were ascendant, Shales celebrated the return to the air of a broadcaster still connected to the previous generation. “Snyder has the ability to make you feel nostalgic about his show even while you’re watching it,” he wrote.
“Snyder pitches and punches now like Nolan Ryan and George Foreman; he’ll show those whippersnappers a thing or two.”
he was good, watched him, even though I preferred when 12:30/5 became comedy spots