RIVERS SET TO HOST LATE-NIGHT SHOW ON MURDOCH’S ‘INDEPENDENT’ NETWORK

H eeeere’s Joanie!

Joan Rivers, frequent substitute host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” will have her own competing late-night show on a new network this fall.

“The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers” will be the cornerstone of the new Fox Broadcasting Co., the realization of Fox Inc. owner Rupert Murdoch’s goal to create a network of independent stations to compete with NBC, ABC and CBS in certain time periods.

Rivers’ show will air Monday through Friday from 11 p.m. to midnight on the former Metromedia stations now owned by Fox, including local KTTV-TV Channel 11. It also will be broadcast on other independent stations that Fox expects to align with its limited network.

“I’ve wanted to do my own show for a long time,” Rivers said, meeting the press side by side with Fox Chairman Barry Diller Tuesday morning. The lavishly catered press conference was held at the Fox Television Center in Hollywood, formerly Metromedia Square, where the show will originate.

Rivers went through the motions of thanking Carson and NBC for making her a permanent substitute “Tonight Show” host in 1983, but she made it clear that the network had gotten more than its share of the bargain.

“NBC should be a little grateful to me, too,” she said. “They’ve made a bundle off of me.” (River’s suggested that advertising rates for “The Tonight Show” increase when she’s hosting. However, New York media buyer Paul Schulman, contacted after the press conference, said, “most sponsors buy the Carson show to get Carson.”)

While Carson had no immediate comment on Rivers’ move, a spokesman for Carson said that the late-night talk-show king “was shocked and surprised to learn of it through a press release.” Rivers, at the press conference, said that she had placed two calls to Carson and that neither was returned.

The spokesman, Jim Mahoney, said that Rivers had been negotiating with Carson’s production company for a new contract and that when she appeared on the show last week “not a word was said” about her plans to work elsewhere.

“It came as a real surprise. It’s an unusual way to do business, to say the least,” Mahoney added.

Diller said that Fox had been considering Rivers for six months and that she was considered the “one person capable of” hosting Fox’s late-night show.

Rivers signed a three-year contract with Fox, which takes effect following the completion of her NBC contract July 19. Rivers said she presently has neither a “second banana” nor a bandleader signed up, but Diller said discussions along those lines would begin “this afternoon.”

Rivers promised a fresh look to the show, in part because of such potential guests as Lily Tomlin, David Lee Roth, Pee-wee Herman and Boy George. All of those celebrities, Rivers said, were difficult to get approved for “Tonight Show” appearances when she hosted. “With all due respect for the Carson show,” she said, “they have their image . . . and I have mine.”

The show will be presented live, though it will be seen on the West Coast via tape delay.

Rivers, who had two more weeks of guest-hosting to do under her “Tonight Show” contract, won’t be doing that now, an NBC spokesman said. She will be replaced for those weeks by comedian Gary Shandling.

For the last few years, many program syndicators who sell shows to independent stations have insisted that there is an untapped audience ripe for a late-night show more youth-oriented than Carson’s.

That belief coincided with Fox’s desire to parlay its newly purchased stations, which cover 22% of the United States, into a mini-network. Diller said that Fox had been eyeing the late-night time slot as a possible entry into network-style program distribution while awaiting Murdoch’s final acquisition of the Metromedia stations in March.

Fox Broadcasting Co. will not merely sell Rivers’ show to other independent stations across the country, it also will sign them up as affiliate stations who must air several hours of Fox programming each week. Fox next week will announce plans for three hours of prime-time programming to premiere next March.

“This defines what we want to be, what we want to do,” Diller said.

Though he and other Fox executives consistently have eschewed the term “fourth network” conferred on Murdoch’s scheme by the press, they had the air of network proprietors Tuesday morning. Jamie Kellner, president of the network, referred to it as “FBC”; a metallic plaque labeled FOX BROADCASTING COMPANY adorned the head table.

As a network does, FBC will acquire programs from various sources, possibly including but “absolutely” not limited to its sister company, 20th Century Fox Film Corp., Diller said. The latter is the film-and-television studio that make movies bearing the 20th Century Fox name and also supplies television shows primarily to the major networks.

(At some point, a 20th Century Fox series on a Big Three network may actually compete with a prime-time series on FBC. That’s not unusual, however; big studios like Universal often have two shows head-to-head at competing networks.)

Diller said that he wanted the best idea, and “we don’t care where it comes from.”

The idea of a fourth network is not a new one, and the cry for a programming service unifying independent stations has grown as the number of independent stations dramatically increased in the last few years. So have those stations’ average ratings, fueled largely by clever counter-programming with the blockbuster movies NBC, ABC and CBS refused to play once pay-cable services such as Home Box Office began getting a first shot at them.

Operation Prime Time is one such attempt at an ad-hoc network. It has been responsible for such original fare as the movies “A Woman Called Golda” and next week’s “Strong Medicine,” both financed indirectly by the promise of their airing on a large number of stations.

Fox, however, is in a better position than most to build a truly competitive new network because of the size of the station group it owns, officially called Fox Television Stations. In addition to KTTV, the group has stations in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Washington and Houston.

Times staff writer Jay Sharbutt contributed to this story.