‘AFTER HOURS’ COMEDY SHOW WINS RECOGNITION

If you pared down the late-night talk shows to just their stand-up segments--comics performing five-minute routines before chatting with Johnny or Dave--you’d have something like “After Hours,” a 30-minute program produced by Fullerton’s Group W Cable.

In the 14 months since the weekly show debuted, it has racked up several kudos, small and large. Among them:

- Strong word-of-mouth praise among Southland comedians, who are lining up to appear on the show--even though they receive no pay.

- A representative from Arts & Entertainment, a national cable network, called recently to explore the possibility of airing “After Hours.”

- And, most notably, last week the show won an ACE (Award for Cable Excellence)--cable’s equivalent to an Emmy--in the comedy-variety category.

Producer Steve Arndt and host Mike Pearce, sitting in their office the day they learned about the award, were low-key about the national honor.

“Well, it’s amazing to us,” Arndt admitted. “We’re still kind of in shock.”

“When I first heard this morning, I let out a nice, loud ‘hoot!’ But, really, I think we’re all kind of surprised,” Pearce agreed.

This subdued demeanor would seem surprising to regular viewers of “After Hours,” considering the program’s crisp, energetic format that has a huge irreverent streak. (The show airs live tonight at 9 on Group W in Fullerton, Buena Park and Placentia. At various times, the show is also carried in such Orange County cities as Brea, La Habra, Anaheim and Newport Beach.)

A basic description of the format--two comics doing their stand-up before talking with Pearce and a co-host in front of a studio audience--doesn’t begin to convey the program’s wacky, adventurous edge.

This trait--like that of David Letterman in the willingness to experiment with different things, even if they don’t always click--emerged very early, when the production originated from Buena Park (before moving to Fullerton last fall). In one segment, there was a “barbecue show,” where friends and members of the studio audience were invited by for burgers and laughs.

“We took the whole set outside, had a satellite dish as a backdrop, and were flipping burgers while we talked,” Pearce, 26, recalled.

“It was one of those stick-your-neck-out type of things,” Arndt added. “We had no idea what was going to happen, but it came out all right.”

That, apparently, was all the encouragement needed to forge ahead with other unusual episodes: from one devoted to Pearce giving blood on camera to presenting a swimsuit “edition,” which may be reprised later this season. “Well, for no apparent reason, a la Sports Illustrated, we had beautiful girls in bikinis on the show,” Arndt said..

Sometimes the quirks are subtle, such as the goldfish on Pearce’s desk that goes by the name of “Sushi.”

Or they can be on a larger scale, such as the hourlong live special expected to air next month from Cal State Fullerton (Pearce, Arndt, director Mike Ewing and executive producer Lisa Yale are all Cal State alumni.) “We’ll do a lot of college stuff. Mike’s going to tour the campus--it’ll be like if Letterman went back to Ball State,” Arndt, 28, predicted.

About the show’s anything-goes tactic and how it is viewed by Group W executives, Pearce observed: “I think, slowly but surely, everyone is finding out that the ideas we come up with pretty much work. Something that sounds kind of strange on paper--and like it won’t work--has actually worked a couple times. So now we can take more chances.”

That kind of acceptance is in sharp contrast to the response Arndt received when he first proposed the program. “It started when I was a (Group W) intern (from Cal State Fullerton) and begging to do live TV. But I was an intern, so nobody paid a heck of a lot of attention to me. . . .

“What ultimately happened is that we had a big Group W Christmas party . . . suddenly (the show) seemed like a great idea to them.”

Arndt said the question arose of who would host. “Mike was taking a bite out of a cream puff and getting stuff all over his face--and everybody laughed,” he remembered. “Then it was like: ‘What about Pearce?’ ”

“I said yes,” Pearce laughed. “And within a month (January, 1985) we had a show on the air.”

That makes the program’s earliest days sound deceptively easy. Actually, they initially had such a tough time filling the guest slots with comics that they booked such people as a local high school coach who had just won a league championship.

And because at first “After Hours” was not officially sanctioned by Group W, there was no budget, and work on the show could only be done after completing the day-job duties. “That’s why it was called ‘After Hours’--it was literally produced after hours,” Arndt said.

Fourteen months later, there is still no budget, although Ewing, Arndt and others are now allowed to work on it during their regular shifts at Group W in Fullerton.

Today, instead of struggling to book a show’s worth of comedians, comics are now requesting spots--even though their only compensation is a tape of their appearance--considerably boosting the caliber of funnymen (and women) on “After Hours.” Now, the comedians are professionals who work regularly at such clubs as the Comedy Store, Ice House and Laff Stop.

Arndt and Pearce attribute the recent improvement of comedic talent to recommendations from comedians who have appeared on “After Hours.” They feel this word-of-mouth recruiting is practiced most effectively by those comics who fill the rotating co-host position.

Two weeks ago, for instance, the co-host was Comedy Store regular Steven Allen Green. He helped secure the guest comics, including radio-TV personality Frazier Smith (who headlines at the Laff Stop April 17) and Marc Price, who portrays Skippy on the NBC sit-com “Family Ties.”

While the ratio of top comics has risen, the number of shows done live has dropped 50%. Now, twice a month--including tonight----a show is taped at 7:30 p.m., then a second one is produced live at 9 p.m.

Pearce said this approach gives them much more time to prepare between shows, and enables them to create twice as many programs with about the same effort and setup.

Nonetheless, they maintain that the live shows have provided some of the most “memorable” highlights of “After Hours.”

“On one of the live shows, a guy ate a moth,” Pearce recounted. “I still think that’s funny, although there are various, conflicting opinions on it.

“Anyway, there’s this guy who gets moths from the upper decks at Anaheim Stadium during night games, and eats them. We (booked) him, and I told him to get here a couple of hours early.

“So he rolls up and says: ‘I don’t have a moth!’ And we’re about to go live, right? Now across the way was a park. So he and a couple of friends went out there with their cars, turned on their headlights, and caught a moth. The show went on--and he ate the moth.”