Word: tonight
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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, 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...
...band in recurring bits like the "poetry moments," featuring various sidemen reading silly verse. Musically, the show has brought on a host of rock performers -- Kool Moe Dee, 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...
...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...
...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 his job the next...
...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...