Word: biz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...acquiring for $3.4 billion. In return, Sony ceded entertainment assets to Warner Bros. that analysts estimated could be worth between $400 million and $600 million. "Sony has paid the most extraordinary price in history for management talent," said Alex Ben Block, editor in chief of the industry newsletter Show Biz News...
Most of the time, however, the conversation on The Arsenio Hall Show is just what you'd expect from a talk show that bills itself as a party: lots of small talk, much of it boring. Hall's show-biz gush rivals Merv Griffin's or Rivers' at their most unctuous. His treatment of guests is overly deferential, his questions stultifying softballs. ("Let's talk about pet peeves," ran a setup for Kirstie Alley.) The talk on Carson's Tonight show may be programmed and artificial, but at least it gives the illusion of a real conversation. Hall seems tied...
...fans care? At a time when most talk shows have moved into controversial issues (Phil, Oprah, even Rivers) or anti-talk-show parody (Letterman), Hall has returned the genre to its original raison d'etre: old-fashioned, unapologetic stargazing. His innovation has been to set the show-biz plugs to a bracing rock beat. And if you prefer a little more substance with your MTV flash, boy, are you stuck...
...Show-biz stirrings came early. As a teenager, Hall hired himself out as a magician at parties and played drums and bass guitar in a couple of groups. He started college at Ohio University and finished at Kent State, where he majored in speech communication and played the lead in the musical Purlie Victorious. After graduation, Hall went to work in Detroit for Noxell, the makers of Noxema skin cream. But one evening after tuning in to a Tonight show segment, he decided the moment had come "to do what I'd been dreaming about." He quit...
...climb up the show-biz ladder had few missteps. He moved to Chicago and began honing a stand-up act in comedy clubs. "Even then he seemed to have something extra," says Art Gore, a friend from those days. "He had a rapport with the people; he could adjust his comedy to fit the audience in the club." In 1979 singer Nancy Wilson hired Hall to emcee her stage show in Chicago. When she arrived late, he had to improvise with the audience for 20 minutes. It went well, and Wilson hired him as her regular warm-up act. Hall...