Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Just a few minutes before the TV taping is to start on this sunny Tuesday afternoon, an earthquake strikes San Francisco. But the only tremor felt by ) the crowd filing into a Paramount sound stage 350 miles to the south is one of anticipation. Two women from New Orleans are congratulating themselves on getting into the show twice in three days (they stood in line for tickets at 7 a.m.). A couple of teenage guys from Orange County are making time with two girls they met in line. A twentyish blond from Los Angeles sings the praises of the young...
...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, its advantage disappears. The Tonight show audience is dying every day." No need to convince Mel Harris, president of Paramount Television, the company that syndicates The Arsenio Hall Show. "In the 1960s, Johnny Carson started with a young audience that stuck with him for 20 years," he says. "Arsenio's is the new generation...
With his all-gums smile, flattop hairdo and exuberant, affable manner, Hall seems like an overgrown kid surveying a roomful of candy. His conversation is frank, unaffected, headlong. "When I'm on the air, I'm happy," he says, relaxing in his mirrored office on the Paramount lot, a muted TV set overhead tuned in to MTV. He is dressed in his typical off-hours duds: baseball cap, Reebok T shirt and unlaced sneakers. "I was born to do this. When I'm in the spotlight, I'm gone. I love it more than anything in the world. When everyone...
...better one was in the offing. Last year Paramount proposed another late-night talk show; Hall would be executive producer as well as star, and he would be guaranteed time off to make movies. He was still reluctant. But a guest appearance with Carson on Tonight got his talk-show juices flowing again, and he finally agreed...
...executives weren't watching," says Hall. "No one cared." When Wilton North was a quick failure, Fox asked Hall to return. But by this time his attention was elsewhere, notably in movies: he had just shot Coming to America, the first of a three-picture deal with Paramount. Hall turned down the Fox offer...