Somewhere in an alternate television universe, Johnny Carson’s new late-night challenger in 1983 wasn’t Alan Thicke. It was Three’s Company star John Ritter.
That, at least, was master television programmer Fred Silverman’s original plan.
By then, Silverman had run all three major broadcast networks, putting All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and MASH on the air at CBS, and Charlie’s Angels, Three’s Company, and The Love Boat at ABC. At NBC, he’d taken a chance on another talk-show prospect named David Letterman, giving him his first network television show.
Silverman had already seen Ritter demonstrate his hosting chops. He once convinced the actor to spend four hours answering phones for a local United Cerebral Palsy fundraiser. Ritter enjoyed himself so much that he agreed to host the first nationally televised UCP Telethon in 1978, ultimately spending 20 straight hours on the air.
Ritter approached the assignment like he was, in his words, “hosting a party.” Silverman apparently saw the makings of a late-night host.
By 1983, the veteran TV exec had left the network business and become an independent producer, free to pitch shows to his three former employers. One of his first big swings was a late-night show for ABC built around Ritter.
It would have put one of television’s most popular sitcom stars directly opposite Johnny Carson.
There was one fairly substantial problem: ABC still needed John Ritter in primetime.
Three’s Company had finished the previous season ranked No. 6 in the Nielsen ratings, and Ritter remained under contract. Turning him into a late-night host would have meant jeopardizing one of ABC’s biggest hits in hopes that he might become something even rarer—a genuine Carson competitor.
Silverman, however, didn’t give up on the larger idea.
“I had a feeling, based on an awful lot of research, that there was a substantial portion of the late-night audience that was disappearing—moving to independent stations, to cable and away from the networks,” Silverman told the Florida Times-Union. “And that audience was a younger audience.”
Out of the running to host the show himself, Ritter had an idea about who should.
He suggested Alan Thicke, a Canadian television personality who had hosted his own talk show north of the border, written for Richard Pryor, and produced the cult syndicated comedy Fernwood 2-Night. Silverman watched a tape of Thicke’s Canadian show and decided Ritter was onto something.
If Silverman couldn’t have Ritter behind the desk, he’d take Ritter’s pick.
Thicke of the Night would go on to become one of late night’s most infamous flops.
Sold in syndication to 125 stations covering roughly 85% of the country, the show lasted just eight months before being canceled in 1984, despite an impressive comedy roster that included Richard Belzer, Arsenio Hall, Charles Fleischer, Gilbert Gottfried, and Fred Willard.
Three-time Emmy Award winner Jeremy Stevens, who worked on the show’s writing staff, suggested in a 2006 interview with the TV Academy that the problem was the man at its center.
“I don’t think Alan was bad in the show, but I don’t think he’s got the charisma,” Stevens said. “I don’t think he’s a talk show star.”
Whether Ritter would have fared any better against Carson is one of those tantalizing questions television history never got to answer. But without him, Thicke of the Night likely would never have existed at all.
