Party’s Over, but Hall Made His Mark on TV

Arsenio Hall was getting boxed in.

After turning late-night TV on its head by bringing to it a new, young, pop-culture sensibility--and rocketing to the runner-up talk-show spot behind Johnny Carson--he suddenly fell victim to high-powered rivals challenging some of his trademarks, including his musical bookings and party atmosphere.

NBC’s new “Tonight Show,” with Jay Leno replacing Carson, seemingly attempted to go the Arsenio route at first in its musical acts. CBS’ David Letterman series stormed out of the starting gate last August with a high-energy party atmosphere of its own, and hasn’t yet cooled down.

Leno-Letterman. Letterman-Leno. That’s all anyone seemed to be talking about when it came to late-night competition. CBS was pressuring its stations that had carried Hall to drop him or push him back later to help the network’s Letterman showcase. Fox had done the same to its own stations when it launched the ill-fated Chevy Chase late-night show in September.

So unless Hall had an unknown personal reason for quitting, it was hardly a surprise when he and Paramount announced Monday that he will be ending his 5-year-old syndicated series on May 27. The ratings had fizzled in the face of the new competition and the pressures to downgrade his time slot.

Even KCOP-TV Channel 13, which is neither a CBS nor Fox outlet, pushed back Hall’s starting time from 11 p.m. to midnight as the handwriting on the wall became clearer. Hall’s national ratings dropped 24% from January of 1993 to January of 1994, and the number of stations carrying his show slipped from 184 to 160.

At one point, he had been so hot that “Nightline,” a solid ABC contender for years against Carson, found itself frustrated because some of its stations were delaying the honored news show until the wee hours and replacing it with Hall.

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Hall may have also helped box himself in by burning too intensely too quickly and without letting up, a lesson that Letterman may want to study. Carson lasted 30 years by settling into a relatively gentle, easygoing style that was a comfort zone for television viewers at bedtime.

With the proliferation of night-time talk shows on cable as well as the networks--from Larry King on CNN to Tom Snyder on CNBC--the new age of TV and its expanding universe made it even tougher for Hall to maintain a definitive, high-profile place for himself on the home screen.

Hall’s series was definitely not everybody’s taste. He had matinee-idol looks and a sly sense of humor, but he was a fawning interviewer for his celebrity guests. His audience barked its approval, and he encouraged the raucous scene.

But if that was his weakness to his detractors, it was what his admirers liked. And even those who were not thrilled with his approach had to concede the terrific energy he spread as a cheerleader for those not yet ready to go to bed.

And, in the annals of TV, he had already made his mark on a more significant level as the first successful black host of a late-night talk show.

Other late-night icons have also had relatively short runs: Steve Allen and Jack Paar on the “Tonight Show,” for instance, although they both left the series while on top. It was Carson’s amazing run that perhaps subconsciously gave viewers the notion that late-night shows run forever. Letterman ran for 11 years on his former NBC show. And Snyder lasted nine years with NBC’s late-late “Tomorrow” series.

Still, Hall’s series somehow seems to have faded relatively quickly. Unlike most late-night hosts who seek a kind of entertaining neutrality, Hall openly plunged into political and social issues, which endeared him to some viewers, especially in his positive and admirable TV role during the violence following the initial Rodney G. King verdicts.

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At other times, however, his outspokenness probably got him into hot water with non-fans. And here, too, he may have helped box himself in.

The year 1992 was a kind of high-water mark for controversy and some remarkable showmanship for Hall’s series. The showmanship was epitomized in early June of 1992 when Bill Clinton, en route to the presidency, made a memorable appearance on Hall’s one-hour program, wearing shades and playing the saxophone--”Heartbreak Hotel” followed by Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.”

Shortly afterward, a White House spokesman said that then-President George Bush was considering appearances on “the same kind of media” as other candidates, except for the Hall show. Hall reacted on the air with a personal tirade against Bush, opening his show by saying:

“Excuse me, George Herbert, irregular-heart-beating, read-my-lying-lipping, slipping-in-the-polls, do-nothing, deficit-raising, make-less-money-than-Millie-the-White House-dog-last-year, Quayle-loving, sushi-puking Bush! I don’t remember inviting your ass to my show.”

In the same year, Hall also unloaded on Leno as Carson’s “Tonight Show” heir, telling Entertainment Weekly magazine: “Jay Leno can’t replace Johnny Carson. It sounds like an insult. . . . I’m gonna treat him like we treated the kid on the high school basketball team who was the coach’s son. He was there because he was anointed too. We tried to kick his ass, and that’s what I’m going to do--kick Jay’s ass.”

It did not, of course, work out that way. Letterman last year immediately grabbed the late-night crown, but Leno has held his own, and Hall went into a tailspin.

Far more controversial than the remarks about Bush was the visit to Hall’s show this year by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whose views have stirred concern among whites, gays and Jews. It was not that Hall should have been prevented from doing the program, but, rather, that once again he turned out to be a pushover interviewer at an inappropriate moment.

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Hall’s exit in May will, of course, open the door for other wanna-be late-night hosts. But with the fallout rate this season--including upper-tier names such as Chase and Hall--plus the disappointing showing of NBC’s new Conan O’Brien series, it seems as if the witching hours, at the moment, belong strictly to Letterman and Leno, and to Ted Koppel on “Nightline.”

On the downside, late-night talk-show territory again is strictly the domain of white middle-age men. While Hall is black, isn’t it about time to consider other emerging minorities as well for candidates? And are there no women out there deemed worthy of major national exposure as late-night entertainment and talk-show hosts? Just because Whoopi Goldberg’s talk show went under is no reason to stop looking.

No one can deny that Hall has flair. The late-night gig is a tough one, as other failed, big-name entries in recent years--Pat Sajak, Rick Dees and Dennis Miller--can attest.

On his show, Hall did the usual celebrity interviews, but he also supported Nelson Mandela, celebrated Martin Luther King Day, talked with Magic Johnson about being HIV-positive, discussed music censorship with Ice-T and presented lesbian comedian Lea Delaria.

Like him or not as an entertainer, Hall did have a presence and an attitude. He shook things up. And he definitely was a major factor in television for five years before the fat lady sang.