Name: Tom Snyder with Craig Kilborn, February 15, 1999
Uploaded: 2020-05-16T03:12:49.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Snyder with Craig Kilborn, February 15, 1999' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-05-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Snyder with Craig Kilborn, February 15, 1999' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-05-16. Transcript available.

Tom Snyder with Craig Kilborn, February 15, 1999

Good evening, my friends, and welcome back, everybody.
Happy Monday, I'm Tom, and the Colourcast is on the air now for the 15th of
February, 1999.
Dennis Prager of ABC Talk Radio is here tonight, my pal from Los Angeles,
and Craig Kilbourne, broadcaster and former sportscaster,
who will take over as host of this program on the 30th of March, 1999.
And I want to talk to you about that for a couple of seconds here.
You know, when I was a kid, my father always told me to tell the truth.
He said, you know, the great thing about telling the truth is you don't have to
remember a lot of things.
You know, you start making up stories, and all of a sudden you slip up
because you can't keep it all straight.
When Kilbourne begins his assignment here on the 30th of March,
I will have been here for four years and about three months.
And when I started this job four years and three months ago, in my mind,
it was a four- to five-year run, at which time I wanted to look for other
things to do in my life,
which I've been telling you here for almost the past year.
And when it came time to announce my leaving this program,
there's always a big orchestration on when somebody leaves a show
because the network and the company that produces the show
wants it to appear in the papers at the proper time so nobody gets hurt.
It often becomes more important than it really is.
But this was all going down about a year ago.
And the reason I'm telling you this story is because it involves a man who
really helped me to get this job at CBS
and from David Letterman five years ago.
And his name is David Bianculli, and he is a TV critic and writer for the New
York Daily News,
who about five years ago now, when I was still working over at CNBC
and happy as a pig and you know what, printed a story in the New York Daily
News,
"Hey, CBS, how about putting Tom on after Dave?"
And this whole thing about me coming over here to follow David Letterman at CBS
took on a life of its own, and David Bianculli wrote about this day after day
after day
in a very positive and a very kind way.
So he became a friend to me, and I thanked him for his efforts in making this
possible.
Now when it came time to leave, the network and the production company,
World Wide Pants, Mr. Letterman's company, were concerned that the announcement
about the passing of the torch,
or as I call it, the burnt stick, be done at the correct time.
And this was going to take place, if you recall, I told you about this just
about a year ago.
It was going to appear in the papers after we appeared in New York last April.
And somebody at the New York Post, you know, found out my plans to leave the
show,
and they called the network and they said, you know, we hear Snyder's leaving
and we're going to go with the story.
And the network felt that they would like the story not to run in the paper
until after we had left New York,
and until after they had talked to Craig Kilbourne and made plans for an orderly
transition on this program.
And so the network made a deal with the man from the New York Post, whose name
I can't remember,
that if they would hold the story until a certain date, we would give them an
exclusive on the story,
and I would consent to be interviewed by the man from the New York Post, which
I agreed to at the time.
The next day, I went out to have lunch with David Bianculli at an interview
arranged by the CBS Press Department.
And all of a sudden, he looks at me and he says, by the way, have you made any
plans to leave the show?
And I know the network has made a deal with the New York Post, so therefore I
can't tell him,
because that would violate the deal that we made with the New York Post, which
I agreed to.
And you know how a number of options go through your mind, and I looked at him
and I said, you know, I really haven't thought about that.
And I'd like to call it a white lie, but it wasn't very white.
It was an untruth, because I knew what was going to happen, and I knew that I
wanted to leave here, you know, as quickly and as orderly as I could.
So now the story runs in the New York Post, and David Bianculli, who's been my
friend for a long, long time,
I called him on the phone to apologize, and he took it rather well, and he was
very gracious.
But he said, I know that you were telling me an untruth.
And I said, yeah, I was, but I said, I need to ask you to consider the
circumstances that I was in.
There are no circumstances in which an untruth is acceptable, and I apologized
to him on the phone at the time.
And he will hear about this, I'm sure, and I want in front of all of you to
tell him I'm sorry that that happened, and I wish it never had.
And that's the end of my little story.
This has been bothering me now since last April or May, festering my little
brain, and I just want to get it off my chest,
because I consider Mr. Bianculli to be an honorable man, and I was less than
honorable with him.
Now, Tom, will you stop whipping yourself and get on with the show? Yes, I will.
Dear Tom, I took my grandmother to the doctor the other day for a routine checkup.
This is from a listener.
The older woman began a conversation with my grandmother, and after a while I
heard her say,
"Well, I sent my husband to the garden to pick a head of lettuce for supper,
and right there in the garden he fell over dead."
Granny said, "Oh my, what did you do?"
She said, "I opened a can of peas."
Carolyn, thank you very much.
Dennis Prager is here tonight.
Craig Kilborn, the once and future king.
And you on the toll-free.
I'm Tom, you're watching CBS, and thanks for catching our stuff as we fly it
through the air.
As many of you know, and as I've said here for the past year or so, there's a
change ahead in late night.
At the end of March, I'll be happy to hand over this program to Craig Kilborn,
who was the one-time host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, and before that
an anchor over at ESPN.
And come March 30th, it'll be the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn here on CBS,
and it's a pleasure to welcome this young man to our program, and thanks for
coming on.
Nice to see you, sir.
Now, many people have called here saying, "What's going to happen when the
changeover takes place?"
And I've been saying, "Wait till Craig gets here, we'll ask him."
What have you got lined up for the folks?
Everyone wants to know the format.
Isn't it enough that I'm going to be there?
And, no.
No, it's not.
No, no, it's not quite enough.
We need to know more.
You know what I found out today?
The Daily Show was a half hour, and I assumed this was going to be a half hour.
Today, they say it's going to be an hour.
No, no.
This goes on for an hour.
And some nights, I can tell you, it seems like three or four.
Speaking of that, I'm tired tonight because I tried to watch the ESPYs, and
that'll wear you out.
Sportscasters should stick with sportscasting.
Comedy should be handled by professionals.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely correct.
I'm going to get to comedy with you in a second.
Before ESPN, I read today that you worked as a local sports anchor for a
station up in Northern California in Salinas.
Yeah, Salinas.
And that one of your early assignments was covering the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
Yes.
Now, you know, I have a home in Northern California, and I drive through Gilroy,
and I usually stop and buy some along the way.
It smells.
But what is the festival?
What do they do there?
Well, I was working, I was living actually in Carmel, and the market was Salinas,
Monterey, Santa Cruz.
It was a beautiful place.
It was like, it was the 110 market.
Almost entry-level market, but a lot of people wanted to live there.
And the news director, Paul Miller, who is married to the beautiful Kirstie
Wilde, used to be at KNBC, they live up there in Pacific Grove.
He thought I was different as far as sportscasting.
Mm-hmm.
He would go to dinner with me.
I enjoyed food.
I still do.
And he said, Craig, the Gilroy Garlic Festival, I want you as our sports
director to cover that, because you love food.
And they just, it was decadent, including garlic ice cream.
And it's not good, they just wanted to say they had garlic ice cream.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
So you covered that as part of your, but your main assignment was covering
sports.
Yeah.
Which, and so from there, did you make your way to ESPN because of your
background in sports?
Um, yeah.
I went, I sent a tape to an agent in New York, and I got the job at ESPN, and I
was on at 2:00 a.m. live, and I get to bed at 4:00 in the morning.
And people would say, isn't that, isn't that, uh, how do you keep those hours?
And I said, it's easier than what a Bryant Gumbel used to do.
Now what he does, I don't know what he does.
Nothing.
It's probably easy.
That's very easy.
He's very well paid to do nothing.
But he had to get up at 3:00, right, to get to the day show?
Yeah, about that, 3:00, 3:30, yeah.
Speaking of food, can we mention that, um, we had a nice dinner.
At your expense.
Thank you very kindly.
Well, we wrestled over the bill.
Tom and I had, had a dinner.
I, you'll get a kick out of this.
No one else knows what this means.
But the receipt, I still have not turned it in to Dorian.
So I'm really paying for that dinner.
You're trying to expense account my dinner?
No, I didn't.
I did not turn it in.
You pay for that dinner, young man, or the television gods will punish you
severely.
I know, I did.
I didn't even think about turning it in.
Now at ESPN, and I've talked with your friend Keith Olbermann about this, you
know.
I'm worried about Keith.
I am worried about Keith.
But let me ask you here about living in Bristol, Connecticut.
One of the complaints he had as a young, as a single guy living in Bristol was
that it got lonesome there at night.
There isn't an awful, and I'm saying nothing against Bristol, Connecticut as a
great community if you've got a family.
But for a single guy looking for a little...
Right.
Tom, let me just tell you.
Keith lives in LA.
He's still lonely at night.
Okay?
That's our Keith.
He lived in New York for two years.
He was lonely at night.
Okay?
He's a genius on the air, and he's a friend off the air.
Okay?
That's all I'll say.
Now, how do you get from ESPN to The Daily Show?
Which, you know, when I found out that you were going to be taking over the
show here, naturally, out of curiosity, I dialed up the comedy channel.
Most people hadn't heard of me.
And it's a comedy-driven show.
Yeah.
So how did you get from sports to comedy?
Did you take comedic training?
Did you do stand-up?
Tell me about that transition.
Well, the guy, I don't know where he is now, a guy named Doug Herzog, but he
used to be the president of Comedy Central.
Yeah, this is the guy that said, "I'll never let you go," to you.
Right.
Yeah.
And he saw me on ESPN, and he found me very attractive, or something like that.
Mm-hmm.
It's kind of muddy, is the reason he picked me.
But I did, out of college, live in Los Angeles.
I lived in Venice, and I took improv classes.
And I wanted to do something comedic.
Okay.
I wasn't sure what it was, and there's really no system here in Hollywood.
I don't want to frustrate some of the young actors.
But I wanted to circumvent the whole thing, so I went into sports.
I went to Monterey, to ESPN, to Comedy Central.
Now I'm back.
But it was so frustrating, because when you're trying to act or do something
comedic, you'd say to your friend, "How are you doing?"
Well, I got an audition.
I got a call back.
And that was encouraging.
But now, that was six months ago, so now I need to get some new headshots.
Whenever things are tough, you get new headshots.
Photographs, those are.
Yeah.
And that was supposed to help your career turn around.
And they're mostly waiters and waitresses.
But did you play comedy clubs at all?
You said you had some training in it.
Did you play the clubs?
Do stand-up?
I never did stand-up.
And it was something that I didn't want to do.
It was in the late '80s, and there was a stand-up boom.
And too many people were doing it.
I 