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captainsblogPause for a moment of silence. Smoke em if you gottem, because he certainly would have.
More than 30 years after his late-late night appearances became a pop culture paradigm, we still do a Dan-Aykroyd-imitating-Tom-Snyder imitation in this house, usually with the line in the title of this post. Such was the vastness of the 70s TV wasteland, that Saturday Night Live made an enduring recurring skit out of a past-midnight smoke-filled talk show which catered, as Jimmy Breslin once said, to "an audience consisting mostly of professional housebreakers."
And yet what ground was broken at that hour. We in New York knew Tom Snyder; the local NBC affiliate had brought him in as a pretty-haired news anchor in those 70s days when the Murrows of photojournalism were quickly yielding to the happy-talking likes of Ron Burgundy. When the network needed to fill time after Johnny Carson, they tapped Tom for the job. Who would ever have expected what came out of those late minutes?
Weird Al made his first televised appearance on Snyder's Tomorrow show. John Lennon made his last. Other groundbreaking guests included the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and a Plasmatics gig featuring Rochester's late Wendy O. Williams blowing up a television in the middle of the act. This was not your father's Joe Franklin Show.
Ultimately, NBC suits turned over the timeslot to the younger exploits of David Letterman. Years later, Dave returned the favor by putting Tom in charge of his own follow-on broadcast, The Late Late Show. I watched it once or twice. It just wasn't the same.
Yet neither are we, now that Tom's lost his battle with leukemia. So what else is there to say but,....
Good night, everybody!
ETA Oh dear. Bergman died, too. Well, there's only one appropriate response to that:
MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATER!
ETA#2 And Bill Walsh completes the death trifecta, but since I have no love or hate for the man, I'll return to first premise here and toss in this link to a nicely-done piece about how the Tomorrow show came and went.
More than 30 years after his late-late night appearances became a pop culture paradigm, we still do a Dan-Aykroyd-imitating-Tom-Snyder imitation in this house, usually with the line in the title of this post. Such was the vastness of the 70s TV wasteland, that Saturday Night Live made an enduring recurring skit out of a past-midnight smoke-filled talk show which catered, as Jimmy Breslin once said, to "an audience consisting mostly of professional housebreakers."
And yet what ground was broken at that hour. We in New York knew Tom Snyder; the local NBC affiliate had brought him in as a pretty-haired news anchor in those 70s days when the Murrows of photojournalism were quickly yielding to the happy-talking likes of Ron Burgundy. When the network needed to fill time after Johnny Carson, they tapped Tom for the job. Who would ever have expected what came out of those late minutes?
Weird Al made his first televised appearance on Snyder's Tomorrow show. John Lennon made his last. Other groundbreaking guests included the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and a Plasmatics gig featuring Rochester's late Wendy O. Williams blowing up a television in the middle of the act. This was not your father's Joe Franklin Show.
Ultimately, NBC suits turned over the timeslot to the younger exploits of David Letterman. Years later, Dave returned the favor by putting Tom in charge of his own follow-on broadcast, The Late Late Show. I watched it once or twice. It just wasn't the same.
Yet neither are we, now that Tom's lost his battle with leukemia. So what else is there to say but,....
Good night, everybody!
ETA Oh dear. Bergman died, too. Well, there's only one appropriate response to that:
MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATER!
ETA#2 And Bill Walsh completes the death trifecta, but since I have no love or hate for the man, I'll return to first premise here and toss in this link to a nicely-done piece about how the Tomorrow show came and went.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 04:10 am (UTC)