Name: 29th Anniversary of Tom Snyder's Late Late Show: Conversations with Dave Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-01-04T02:49:40.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video '29th Anniversary of Tom Snyder's Late Late Show: Conversations with Dave Letterman' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video '29th Anniversary of Tom Snyder's Late Late Show: Conversations with Dave Letterman' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-04. Transcript available.

29th Anniversary of Tom Snyder's Late Late Show: Conversations with Dave Letterman

Music playing
Let me ask you here about what you think is the legacy, the continuing legacy,
if in fact there is any of it left, for Johnny Carson's reinvention of late
night television.
Because you and Jay have taken it a totally different way from Carson's gentle
art of conversation and mimicry.
Yeah, I think that in some way that's too bad because I watch shows like yours
and other shows, but they're dwindling.
And you realize how entertaining the simple form of reasonable conversation can
be.
And I realize that we probably just beat that notion to death.
And when we were in London, we had Peter O'Toole on Wednesday night.
I saw him.
And every now and then we'll have guests here on this show where you kind of
get a sense of, yeah, this used to be the way it was.
And my God, there was really nothing very wrong with this at all, was there?
Hey, are you, uh, going to use this?
All right, how you doing?
Oh, hey, Dave.
Hey, congratulations on that.
Thank you very much.
Well, good to see you.
Nice to see you.
How you doing?
I'm doing good.
Boy, you lost a lot of weight.
Yeah, 80 pounds.
I was up around 280.
I'm down at about 200 now.
But I feel good.
Thank you very much.
CBS make you lose that weight?
Yeah.
How you been?
Good.
Yeah.
Good.
Good.
I'm having trouble, a lot of trouble, finding one of those guys to take the 1230
spot after me.
Me too.
It's killing me.
Boy, it's fucked.
There's only a handful of guys that can do it.
Who are you thinking about?
I can't tell you.
Well, come on.
No, I can't.
I'm sorry.
There's no one around.
Just tell me.
No, I know.
There's no one around.
Who are you thinking about?
Well, I said I can't tell you.
I'll tell you who we're leaning towards.
I would tell you.
You want a straw?
No, thanks.
Who are you thinking about, though?
It's a big deal.
Well, we're leaning towards Bobcat Goldfield.
Oh, he's great.
The animal.
Ha, ha.
He shouts, and I think that would be good going into a commercial break.
We'll be right back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's cute.
I like that.
Who are you thinking about?
Come on.
I can't tell you.
Come on.
Come on.
It's between us.
I can't tell you.
Who are you thinking about?
What did I say?
Did I say I can't tell you?
If I could, I would.
You can't tell me.
Come on.
You should be on a high right now.
You're moving.
It's going to be great.
Who are you thinking about?
Tom Snyder.
But don't tell me.
Oh, come on.
Tom Snyder.
Come on.
Tomorrow, Tom Snyder.
No.
Yeah.
Tom Snyder.
The original Tom Snyder?
He's got you.
Yeah.
His hair is back.
Wow.
He's ready to go.
Tom Snyder.
I'm shocked.
No, it's going to be great.
God.
No, we're very happy with it.
Dick Cabot tied up.
I couldn't answer to that.
I was just, I'm still kind of amused with something Howard told me before we
came out here.
He was explaining to me earlier how the loss of NFL football really wouldn't
hurt the network.
I'm still enjoying kind of a chuckle over that one.
We've been here in the Ed Sullivan Theater for almost one year.
It'll be a couple of weeks we will have been here.
Started our brand new show at CBS one year ago, August 29th, 1993, and shortly
we'll have completed somewhere over 200 shows one year.
Tonight, I'm announcing that I have decided to return to NBC.
They have a spot open for me immediately following Greg Kinnear, and I couldn't
be happier.
Thank you very much for your thoughts, your prayers, and your blessings.
In 1971 or two, I was working at a television station in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Then it was the ABC affiliate, WLWI, Channel 13, and one of my responsibilities
there was to work as the booth announcer.
And every half hour, every hour, I would do public service announcements, I
would read commercials, I would mention the call letters of the station, give
the time, introduce the news, so on and so forth, and log all of the commercial
spots that ran.
And because I was a kid, and because I was just out of college, my working day
began around 4:00 in the afternoon, and if everything went all right, I would
be done by about 12:30 or 1:00, 12:45, and I would be home a little bit after 1:00.
And it was, in those days, frustrating, because there was no cable TV, there
was no satellite, really, and there was just three stations in Indianapolis,
and two of them had signed off, my station, of course, and the CBS station,
which then had nothing on at night.
We fixed that, didn't we, Howard?
I should say, I worked.
And I got to go home, and the only thing that was on television in those days,
at night, was the Tomorrow Show, which followed the Tonight Show with Johnny
Carson.
It came on the air about, I believe, 1 a.m., and I think I saw the first show
that Tom Snyder did from Burbank.
Tom's sitting there in a chair, talking right to the camera, and as you know,
the impression you get when a man is doing that is that he is talking right to
you, and immediately, I recognized this as being a very smart, very resourceful,
very natural communicator and broadcaster, and I believe, as I've told Tom over
the years,
I probably am one of those people who saw 80, 85% of all of the television
shows he did as the Tomorrow Show.
And then things come and go as they do, and I packed up my pickup truck and
moved to Los Angeles, and was lucky enough through, I guess, some mistakes and
misfortunes, and just, as I mentioned, dumb luck,
to be offered a television program that was called Late Night, which replaced
Tom's show there at NBC.
It had undergone some changes, sort of dramatic changes in the format, and Rona
Barrett.
And for one reason or another, through mishandling, mismanagement, Tom was let
to slip away from NBC.
And as we started our television program in February of, was it 80?
February of 81 or something?
82.
82.
Thanks, Tom.
Welcome.
Don't ever correct me again in public.
What have I done?
The most trepidation that I felt beginning that new project was that there
would be no Tom, that people would be disturbed,
that people would miss Tom, and that was my biggest ongoing fear, that we had
bumped somebody who would establish for himself a natural position,
not only in broadcasting, but in the popular culture of the day.
And from that job, Tom, I guess, worked at Channel 7 here in New York City,
and then ended up doing a very entertaining radio show for three, four years,
Tom.
I don't want to correct you, sir.
And I believe that, again, I listened to nearly every one of those shows.
And through it all, and up now to and continuing on his television program at
CNBC,
I always found the man first and foremost entertaining.
I found him intelligent, and I found him, as I mentioned earlier, a gifted
broadcaster and communicator,
which is endlessly appealing to me.
So now, if you think in these terms, for me, in a small measure, we have come
full circle here,
and we are able to afford Tom a position which I think he has earned and
certainly deserved,
which is to be, once again, a fixture on network television.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's my good friend, Tom Snyder.
Tom, stand up and stand up and take a bow.
Tom, Tom Snyder.
Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Snyder.
You know, I just have the feeling that my leg has really been pulled here, Dave.
You know, jeez.
Anyway, thanks, folks, for coming over here.
I, you know, this is truly incredible.
You know, a year ago, this was no more in my mind than it would be to jump off
the top of the Empire State Building.
And all of a sudden, here we are tonight.
And I just, I want to thank all of you in the press.
I mean, you and I have been together for a long time in radio and television.
And since this first appeared, I believe, in Mr. Bianculli's column in the
Daily News back in January or February of this year,
most of you have written about this idea.
And thank you for saying it seems like a pretty good idea.
Not all of you agree, and that's okay.
And I hope that once we get on the air, you'll give us a chance.
But really, I've read the articles that you've written about this idea and
about Dave and about me and about CBS.
And I'll tell you, you have truly floored me with your kindness to me.
And I want you all to know that I truly appreciate that.
I thank Mr. Stringer and Mr. Tish for their kindness to me and listening to me,
for David Letterman, for his friendship.
And there are only two reasons that I leave the very comfortable quarters at CNBC.
And by the way, I thank those people there, Roger Ailes and Tom Rogers and Andy
Friendly and the other people at CNBC who have been most gracious and kind to
me
in allowing me to listen to Mr. Tish and to Mr. Stringer and to Morty and to
Peter LaSalle about this project called The Late Late Show.
And so I thank them for that.
And as I told them, the only reason, you know, I'm not doing this for the money.
And I'm not doing it to go back on the network.
I'm doing it for two reasons.
The first reason is late night broadcasting at CBS.
I've loved late nights since I did it back in the 70s at NBC.
And the second reason is the profound friendship and respect that I have for Mr.
David Letterman, who's been kind to me and a stand-up friend for going on 15
years now.
You know, I think David Letterman was on The Tomorrow Show back in the 1970s
with Meryl Marko and with Harry Shearer, as I recall.
And there was somebody else there.
Billy Crystal.
Billy Crystal, I think.
And it was he who changed my life when Brandon Tartikoff called me into his
office one day in late 1981 and said,
we have come to an agreement with David Letterman.
So I thank him for his friendship and his kindness, and I thank you all for the
nice things you've written about me.
And we will all be pleased to answer any questions you have.
Thank you, folks.
Thanks.
Twenty years now.
It's hours away from going live at a new address.
His career has been compared to the proverbial roller coaster, and this could
be a return trip to the top.
Whatever.
CNN's Jim Murray learned no one's enjoying the ride.
More than Tom Snyder.
When I was a kid, I would hear my mom listening to the radio, and I knew that
somewhere there was a guy somehow talking into something that could be heard
all over Milwaukee.
And when I grew up, I wanted to be that guy since I was nine years old.
I was born to do this.
At 57, Tom Snyder is still generating his own brand of talk.
He recently left his CNBC program, turning over the range to actor and veteran
talk show guest Charles Grodin.
As of Monday, Snyder is back in the same late-night time slot that first made
him a national name.
We continue now with Mr. John Lennon.
You said earlier that it became boring.
Snyder's groundbreaking Tomorrow Show, which ran on NBC from 1973 to 1981, is
the focus of a month-long retrospective at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast
Communications.
Ironically, Snyder's new show follows David Letterman, the same man who knocked
Snyder from his late-night throne and who's now responsible for bringing him
back.
I credit the genesis with David Letterman and the people at Worldwide Pants.
What a great name for a company, huh?
And, I mean, they just pushed this thing, and they supported this thing, and
all of a sudden, everybody at CBS got on board, and they said,
Okay, let's go. Let's do it.
How do I follow this at 1230? Wow.
Well, it's not going to be easy, Tom, but if there's anybody who can do it, it's
you.
This whole thing started a little over a year ago as a joke on the Larry
Sanders television show.
And all of a sudden, it was an e-ride at Disneyland, and old Tom just strapped
himself in and says,
Okay, hang on tight and see what happens.
I can't believe this. I mean, this is unbelievable.
Like his CNBC program, Snyder's new Late Late Show will be broadcast live via
satellite, and viewers are invited to call in.
The show will also be simulcast on radio.
A career including numerous ups and downs has tempered Snyder, who remains
philosophical about his latest venture.
I'm not looking past Monday night, January 9th.
We might do only one.
You know, Howard Hughes flew the plane one tim