In 2006, the late-night ecosystem was thriving. And relatively stable—at least on the three big broadcast networks.
Leno and Letterman were still going head-to-head at 11:30. Jay had the edge in the ratings, but he’d also announced in 2004 that he would be stepping aside in 2009 to make way for Conan. We all know how that eventually turned out, but there was calm before the storm.
At 12:30, Conan was regarded as the future, as he held down the slot on NBC that he inherited from Dave and where he had established himself over a decade earlier. Meanwhile, over at CBS, Craig Ferguson was proving to be a solid lead out from Letterman. And at ABC, Jimmy Kimmel was still following Nightline but on increasingly steadier legs more than three years into his run.
That left the Fox network on the outside looking in.
Ironically, Fox was audaciously launched 20 years earlier on October 9, 1986, with a new late-night show as its very first offering to establish the new network and shake up the time period.
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers made headlines, largely focused on the enmity between Johnny Carson and his popular permanent guest host who set out on her own to establish a rival franchise. And again, we all know how that turned out. Rivers was off the air by May of the following year.
Immediately following Rivers’ departure, Fox’s late-night lineup became a laboratory for new talent and even new formats. Various guest hosts including Jeff Joseph, the late John Mulrooney, and Arsenio Hall were taken for a test drive. (Arsenio subsequently went on to great success with his Paramount syndicated talk show.)
The time slot even became home to the short-lived Wilton-North Report for a few weeks, notably featuring a writing staff that included Conan O’Brien. Eventually Fox’s Late Show was hosted by Ross Shafer before finally going off the air on October 14, 1988. Almost exactly two years after Rivers’ debut.
Fox’s next major swing at the time period was even bolder… and even more disastrous. Exactly one week following the premiere of Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Fox entered the raging late-night wars in a big way. With great fanfare, on September 7, 1993, The Chevy Chase Show stumbled out of the starting gate… and never found its footing. Once more, we all know how that turned out. The show was axed after only 29 episodes.
Cut to 2006. Fox decided its next attempt at late-night talk would take a different approach. Instead of an hour-long show five nights a week, they would try a weekly half-hour on Saturday nights, following Mad TV.
And instead of engaging a high-profile celebrity to anchor a show, they would hire and develop somebody new and give them a chance to grow an audience over time. Hey, it worked for NBC when they picked Conan O’Brien to replace David Letterman. Enter Spike Feresten, another talented comedy writer who had little to no public profile as a performer.
Feresten had a similar career trajectory to O’Brien. He also began his writing career at Saturday Night Live and had The Simpsons on his CV as well. His late-night pedigree was further burnished by a tenure with Letterman. But ultimately, his defining credit was spending multiple seasons as a writer for Seinfeld, where he wrote episodes like “The Little Kicks,” “The Muffin Tops,” and—most famously—“The Soup Nazi.”
On September 16, 2006, the debut episode of Talkshow with Spike Feresten kicked off the series playing to the strengths of its creator and star. Multiple short, smart, pre-produced comedy pieces, delivering lots of laughs while leaning just enough on Feresten’s quick wit to introduce him to the audience as a personality.
That first show opened with a meta mockumentary about Fox’s late-night history, beginning 30 years before Rivers’ inaugural episode. Feresten’s sketch introduced the fictitious “Donny Riffle,” portrayed by comedian and writer Jeff Cesario, as the founding father of Fox late night.
But following an incident that was eerily identical to the legendary Ed Ames tomahawk throw on Carson’s Tonight Show, Riffle was taken off the air, leading to a decades-long curse plaguing the network in the time period.
What followed for the remainder of the half hour all felt cut from the same sharp, satirical cloth.
In one segment, Feresten deconstructed the tried-and-true traditional “man on the street” segment where the host interacts with real people.
Except in Feresten’s case, he was clearly angling for annoyance with bits like “Can Dunkleman Touch Your Sea Bass?” (An ingenious use of Brian Dunkleman, the one-time co-host of American Idol.)
Back at the desk, Feresten pointed out that the show’s skyline backdrop was a reflection of the rough part of town in which the show was produced: instead of adorning his set with glittering lights and the Hollywood sign, he opted for dicey-looking businesses like an adult video shop.
Talkshow‘s premiere also introduced multiple refillable comedy containers which Feresten would revisit over the life of the series.
Running departments included “Idiot Paparazzi,” in which the host and a small cadre of real-life paparazzi photographers would chase down civilians on the street, snapping their pictures and shouting the names of their (often unflattering) celebrity doppelgängers.
Another reliable mainstay was “Comedy For Stoners,” which the host regularly explained was owing to the realization that the majority of the available audience on Saturdays at midnight was high. This became a recurring showcase for inspired surrealistic hilarity such as “Electric Lincoln,” “Mexican Space Lizard,” and “Bigfoot Pleasuring a Unicorn.”
The premiere also featured a report from hard-nosed newsman “Rick Richards,” brilliantly played with deadpan verisimilitude by Geoff Witcher. Richards delivered a searing exposé about how everything and everyone in West Hollywood was detected to be splattered with semen.
Ultimately, the talk portion of Talkshow was a single act with a lone guest. And in the case of the premiere, it was Andy Richter, who was then in between late-night stints with Conan O’Brien. The interview was decidedly unserious and irreverent, featuring Richter roasting himself in a segment entitled “Unfair Target” in which he addressed his own photo as “You lump of ratings kryptonite.”
Later episodes featured mostly comedy luminaries, including Seth MacFarlane, Fred Willard, J.B. Smoove, Carl Reiner, and all of the main company from Seinfeld… minus Michael Richards, whose infamous rant at The Laugh Factory occurred early in the first season of the show.
It was a jam-packed, sure-footed premiere ending with the final commercial parody “B.B. King Sings About His Other Ailments,” mocking the blues legend’s public service announcements at the time about living with diabetes. While this bit, featuring a sound-alike singing “My Balls Itch,” earned the show a “Jeers” from TV Guide, Feresten had already established a template and tone that would carry Talkshow through three seasons.
That run remains the longest for a late-night talk show on Fox to this day—not bad for a show whose very first sketch suggested the network had been cursed in the time period from the start.
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