Word: late
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...Living Colour, Winger -- who rarely get exposure on mainstream TV. And in contrast to the carefully stage-managed routines on the Tonight show, Hall's manic energy sends a signal that just about anything can happen at his nightly party. "There used to be a feeling that late at night people wanted to be put to sleep by a talk show," says producer Marla Kell Brown, 28. "But I don't think that's true for our generation. We want high energy...
...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 soon moved to Los Angeles and started picking up work opening for other singers, from Robert Goulet to Tina Turner...
...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...
...talk-show ring for long. In 1986 he joined Marilyn McCoo as co-host of Solid Gold, a syndicated music show. Then he got a call from the Fox Network, asking him to be a last-minute replacement for Frank Zappa as fill-in host of The Late Show, which had just dumped Rivers, its original star. Hall's stint went so well that he was asked back twice the following week. Soon he was doing the program full time...