posted 2007/07/30 at 21:00
Broadcaster Tom Snyder dies at 71 (AP via Yahoo! News)
Although I was alive when Tomorrow was still on the air, and I have vague memories of sometimes watching Johnny Carson back then, I never got a chance to see Snyder's show there. In fact, I think my first exposure to Snyder may have been through Dan Aykroyd's impersonation of him on reruns of Saturday Night Live. I was a big fan of Later when Bob Costas was hosting it (I've always been a fan of Costas), and I can remember Snyder occasionally substitute hosting for him. I think I even caught the original airing of Snyder's interview on that show with Howard Stern that ended with Snyder storming off the set, although this was long before Toledo radio got Stern so I only had the vaguest notion of who he was. In fact, before Snyder moved to CBS, I had at best the faintest awareness of who he was.
Once Snyder started hosting The Late Late Show, however, I became a huge fan. At a time when Jay Leno turned The Tonight Show from Carson's offbeat irreverence to a huge self-important production, David Letterman was still struggling to find a new identity for himself in the earlier timeslot he got at CBS, and Arsenio Hall was ... well, Arsenio Hall, there were a lot of other late night shows that got started and stopped here. My favourite out of all of them was Whoopi Goldberg's show, which just featured her and a single guest for a half-hour, with no monologue, no studio audience, and no band. (Robbie Robertson recorded some absolutely gorgeous music for the show, though, and ever since then I've nearly killed myself trying to find recordings of that music. If you can help me track it down, please let me know.) Whoopi's show lasted only a season, but Snyder's Late Late Show kind of carried on in that same tradition, albeit with Snyder injecting more of himself into the show. Then again, Snyder earned the right to do that through all his years of broadcast excellence, and at least he was entertaining when he did so.
Back when I took all those years off of college and I kept the oddest hours, there were times when I would literally work overnight at my parents' office just because that was most conducive to both my sleeping schedule and the way I work. We had a spare TV there that didn't even have rabbit ears, so catching any channel on it was a hit-or-miss affair, but if I was there then I made sure to catch Snyder's show. Even when he had a guest on I knew nothing of, I could still enjoy the interview because Snyder did more than just tell a few jokes and let a guest plug his or her latest project; he made sure that the interview was actually informative, and did so in a way that was entertaining and hardly ever risked being stodgy. (That last bit is the reason why I've never gotten into Charlie Rose that much.)
It was bad enough to me that Snyder got sacked from CBS, but it really hurt that he had to be replaced by Craig Kilborn, the second most loathable figure in Hollywood as far as I'm concerned (next to David Spade). Sure enough, Kilborn turned the show into a huge misogynistic ego-stroke, and I only ever watched the show when I wanted to be mad at something. These days I think late night television is basically unwatchable; Leno's too lost in his own aura, Letterman seems to be retreading the same material over and over again, Kimmel just plain isn't funny, and O'Brien and Ferguson just do nothing for me. Tom Snyder's Late Late Show may very well end up being the last of the truly great late night talk shows, and television is truly a bleaker place now that he is gone.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon