Word: carsons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that Carson is in imminent danger of losing his title as late-night king. After soaring during the summer, Hall's ratings have slacked off a bit this fall. (The kids who constitute his main audience, explain show executives, have gone back to school.) Through it all, Tonight's ratings have remained relatively stable. "This race is not a sprint, it's a marathon," notes Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment. "Whatever burns the brightest, fades the fastest...
Complacency would be a mistake, however: Hall's popularity may signal a geologic shift in late-night TV. The rise and fall of potential rivals to Carson -- from Alan Thicke to Joan Rivers -- has become an industry joke. But Hall is the first to catch on, and he has done it by reaching out to a new group of viewers. It is not Carson's audience, Hall likes to point out, but Carson's audience's children. "The Tonight show is an institution," says Steve Allen, who started it all back in 1954. "But with each tick of the clock...
Hall's one concession to talk-show tradition is to perform an opening monologue. His topical jokes are lame compared with Carson's or Jay Leno's, but he exposes himself in a way those cool satirists never do. Talking about Ralph Abernathy's book, in which the former civil rights leader made allegations about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s sexual escapades, Hall barely disguised his anger. "He's just jealous," said Hall. "Probably hasn't been with three women in his life . . . Martin's still my hero. Right...
...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 to preset questions and often appears disconnected and unresponsive. Too many comments elicit a blank "mmm-hmmm," followed by an awkward silence...
...Hall landed a job that provided a strange foretaste of his current success: as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the much ballyhooed, short-lived Carson challenger, Thicke of the Night. Thicke remembers the young comic fondly. "I think I recognized that if anyone was going to be the Jackie Robinson of late night, it was Arsenio," he says. After the show flopped, says Thicke, "I know writers who removed my name from their resumes. Arsenio remained a friend in failure, and you learn to appreciate those people in a year like that...