With Conan’s seven-month run as Tonight Show host at an end, I thought it might be fun to look back at some other late-night experiments that didn’t last very long.
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers
Everyone’s favorite red carpet punchline hosted her own night time talk show on Fox from October 1986 until Rivers’ firing in early 1987. Rather than canceling the show, Fox renamed it simply The Late Show and featured a series of guest hosts – including a young comedian named Arsenio Hall – before finally pulling the plug at the end of 1987 (Arsenio, of course, landed his own gig in 1989).
The Dennis Miller Show
After leaving Saturday Night Live in 1992, Miller launched a talk show. The show, according to Miller's Wikipedia page and my own fuzzy recollections, was notable for featuring guests and musicians not seen on other late-night shows. It also featured ex-Police guitarist Andy Summers as musical director, and a writing team that included SNL alumnus Norm Macdonald, and Dave Thomas of SCTV. Unfortunately, the show also featured Dennis Miller. Viewers eventually realized this, and the show was cancelled later that year.
The Pat Sajak Show
In 1989, CBS decided that Sajak’s unique talent for making banal conversation with regular folk on Wheel of Fortune meant he would be naturally gifted at making banal conversation with famous people on a talk show. Inexplicably, The Pat Sajak Show ran for more than a year, from January 1989 to April 1990, even though the average episode looked like this:
The Chevy Chase Show
Pat Sajak’s first guest was Chevy Chase. Four years later, Chase had landed his own late-night talk show on Fox. Coincidence, or just a misguided attempt by Fox to try anything to remove the Curse of Joan Rivers (see above)?
The show was cancelled after five weeks, with Fox nobly announcing it was pulling the plug “in the best interests of its star.” In the years following the cancellation, Chase starred in Vegas Vacation, and a whole bunch of movies nobody has ever seen.
Thicke of the Night
What do you do if you’re a Canadian entertainer with a relatively successful daytime talk show running on CTV in the early 1980s? Well, if you’re Alan Thicke, you take your show to the U.S., and agree to run it in late-night syndication. Shockingly, viewers apparently weren’t quite ready for Alan, and the show was axed after one season.
Here he is doing his best “Jason Seaver interviews a band” imitation:
What about Magic Johnson? You fuggot bout de show bout bassetball and funk!
I didn't forget about Magic. He was a terrible host, but he actually had a personality... so he doesn't count.