On Television

...My advice was to take the money and stay The real issues, though, were too deep to discuss on TV Tom didn't understand, for example, that NBC secretly wanted him to do the Today show With great cunning, they were planning to slowly ease him forward into the 7 A.M...

...On Television WHY 'TOMORROW' IS YESTERDAY BY MARVIN KITMAN TOM SNYDER'S final Tomorrow show the night of December 17—number 1,700 in a series that lasted eight and a half years on NBC—was a sentimental moment in the history of broadcasting The only dry eye in the house was mine I had been doing TV criticism on the late night program(12:30 A.M.-2:00 A.M...

...Well'" Then she could have done think pieces trashing Tom as a journalist It would have been wonderful After all, "Point Counterpoint" on 60 Minutes works And remember all the fights Arthur Godfrey had with his staff, culminating in the firing of Julius La Rosa9 Rona could even have descended on the studio from LA every other week and slugged it out with Tom right on camera INSTEAD, Snyder and Tomorrow had a new crushed quality during the fall season Later I realized that he had turned into a basket case, a shadow of himself, as a result of talks that had been going on behind the scenes with the NBC brass The main issue had been how Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Tom would divvy up the three-hour block of time from 11:30 P.M.-2:30 A.M...

...The network was stuck with a fat contract given to Letterman that was rewarding him for lounging around a California swimming pool eating health food It had to do something with the guy The decision arrived at was not a vote of confidence for Tom, whatever else might be said about it Robert Mullholand, president of NBC and Tom's close friend and rabbi, took him out to dinner and broke the news about Tomorrow's fate It was tantamount to walking papers Tom's psychological decline worsened after that and the show seemed less controversial One typical night, half of America fell asleep watching ex-CIA director William Colby, who is now into gun control, and the other half of the country nodded off during a Sol-zhenitsyn interview—in Russian It was almost as if Tomorrow was on hold with some kind of cardiac arrest It reminded me of the death of The David Frost Show Since last summer, in fact, Tom had been going through a neurotic period and losing his guts as an interviewer To give you just one example, a guest who was in effect advocating the killing of women came on, exactly the kind of guy Tom normally would have torn apart Yet he was trying to be nice, it was as if he had Heinnch Himmler in the guest chair and wanted to chat with him about wine tasting The transformation was amazing Tom lost his bite and his teeth The producers kept booking certifiable lunatics, trying to get Tom's juices flowing again, and he wound up sort of liking the guys Tom evidently felt vulnerable, rejected, alone He wanted everybody to like him In only two seasons in his expanded format the NBC executives had managed to give Tom Snyder an inferiority complex I never thought I'd live to see that day Still, it's hard to feel sorry for someone out on his ear when he has nine months to go with a contract that pays him an annual $800,000 So he had ego problems "Big deal," as my wife the psychologist commented, "Hitler had ego problems too "So they hurt his feelings He asked for it He was a co-conspiratorin his own fall He didn't have to do Prime Time Sunday, he could have told the network brass, "You guys are setting a trap for me " He knows the turkey (or is it the peacock") mentality at NBC There is an amazing sense of gratification at NBC News over the current doldrums of Tom Snyder They are kvell-ing at the downfall of one of their biggest news stars, which is a sign of the network'sself-destructive streak Chevy Chase, playing the role of an NBC executive on the farewell Tomorrow, summed up the attitude "Look out PBS, we're coming after you now "Oh well, at least they won't have Tom Snyder to kick around anymore Tomorrow will be in reruns through January 28, and the following Monday the Letterman hour will get under way Tom is on his way to what his enemies deem a much deserved oblivion His future is up in the air, and his agent, the notorious Captain Hook (Ed Hookstrat-ten) will probably sell him to ABC They have already bought David Brinkley from the Used Anchorman Department Tom himself is discussing his return to journalism Since Rona Barrett has proclaimed herself a journalist, I think Tom should announce that he is going to pursue a career in Hollywood as a gossip reporter...

...first, then 2,3,4,5, and before long he would have been the new host of Today, or maybe Good Morning, Tom Snyder He would have risen with the dawn Meanwhile, network would have gotten the people who go to sleep late and the early risers, all of whom would follow Tom wherever he went My souces say that NBC even had a code name for this incredibly sneaky strategy "Project Glacier " It was cooked up in the map room on the sixth floor of the RCA Building (That's where Freddie Silverman put in the gold faucets They haven't clogged up yet, so management decided to keep them for the austere Grant Tinker regime, which has turned the place into Grant's Tomb ) Project Glacier was a brilliant plan, conceived by Moe, Curly and Larry, the triumvirate now apparently running NBC The trouble was, they neglected to tell Tom about it He foolishly took the short view of the network's maneuvers, choosing to feel demeaned by being pushed back and having his 90 minutes curtailed Yet Tom must have known that everybody in TV is humiliated in one way or another—it's a humiliating medium Youhavetowonder why Tom put on such airs His threats of walking out were silly, as it he'd been studying acting under Rona Barrett who used to threaten to storm off Tomorrow if the coffee was cold She quit the last time after the President was shot, convinced she was fourth in order ot succession alter Secretary of State Alexander M Haig Jr Everybody has been making mistakes about Tom's career, however, not just Tom The pattern began with NBC's refusing to give him Today in 1978 because Barbara Walters wanted Jim Hartz as the host Then there was the Prime Time Sunday fiasco NBC believed that having Tom as the host would turn its magazine on the air into an instant success No single individual makes a magazine, though, especially not the host The network moguls tried very hard to copy CBS' 60 Minutes As usual, they were suffering from the TV executives' syndrome Something works, do something like it (The show man' smotto,on the other hand, should be Something works, do something new) Unfortunately for NBC, they didn't copy consistently enough They have three or four very brief hosts on 60 Minutes, each doing his own thing One guy turns the light on, another turns it off NBC, it should be remembered, struck out in a field where even.20/20 scored Nevertheless, they blamed Tom and let him discover that he was fired in the newspaper Prime Time Sunday's malaise was the producers' fault, if anyone's Ironically enough, as Tom's replacement host David Brinkley got even lower ratings Next, they stuck poor Tom with Miss Rona Freddie Silverman gave her a contract guaranteeing the same thing that Tom's did Tomorrow Nobody noticed the conflict until too late, and she had to be taken on board the ship It became the Ship of Fools as it plied from coast to coast The situation could have been saved if only NBC executives had gone to the two superstars and proposed, "Let's do The Bickersons for late mght " Tom and Rona should have been allowed to get on each other s case in a toned-down version of "Face Off on Saturday Night Live Every night Tom could have introduced Rona's essay from the West Coast by sneering, "Let's see what she thinks is such a big deal that she wants it to be the first thing we play on the show' After a Rona interview with some industry hotshot, Tom could have come on and said, "So you really think country and western is such hot news that it had to be on first...

...since July as Rona Barrett's replacement, or so somebody told me Just another pretty face Over the months, whenever I finished blasting some NBC effort, Tom would ask me when I was going to review Tomorrow So on the farewell performance I really gave it to him, kicking a fellow on the way down being an old American custom I reminded the live studio audience that Tom Snyder was the kind of guy you could take an instant dislike to I know I did—I was the first critic to recommend that he be replaced by Dan Aykroyd, whose imitation of Tom on Saturday Night Live was more believable than the original Then Tom started to grow on me, like a fungus Sure, he came across as a manic middle-aged meathead, blowing so much smoke in guests' faces that they thought they were in Pittsburgh Sure, he could be ridiculous and absurd, with gaps in his knowledge you could drive a think tank through But he also actually listened to his guests speaking—somebody was home upstairs, a rarity in television And sometimes he had an emotional reaction to an event or conversation that proved he was not a zombie but an old-fashioned TV newsman, like Edward R Murrow Alive In short, I continued, he got better His talk show had become the only intelligent one that didn't cater predominantly to women, the way Donahue does Nor did Tom sing, do a monologue, or have the Gabor sisters on every time they changed their hairdos Some problems, of course, are insoluble Tom's first shortcoming as a talk show host, I explained, was that he is too big for TV Did you ever notice how most successful TV hosts are very small men" Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, all dimmuitives Snyder is simply too tall, too gangly, too wide open Second, none of the NBC executives watched Tomorrow because it's on too late for them, they retire at 9:30 out there How do you think they get so laid back...

...Had he forgotten that he was at his best with the original one-hour Tomorrow...

...slot He would have gone on at 1:30 A.M...

...I also suggested that Tom was wrong to be so fahitzed about what NBC was doing to him and Tomorrow (reducing his time from 90 to 60 minutes, starting at 1:30 A.M...

...after the new David Letter-man Show, which would begin at 12:30 A.M., February 1...

...More man-hours and analysis went into that tussle than the jurisdictional dispute between Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovinia in 1924...