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The new Arsenio Hall Show

W

WMC2006

After the first 15 minutes, I'm not impressed. Female announcer fairly low key. She ain't no Burton Richardson, that's for sure. Sounds like part of the theme song is a variation of the old theme song but, overall, somewhat understated.

Poor monologue.
 
Well, I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet but I was not impressed. Loved his show 20 years ago. This version is a poor retread. Good news is that it can only get better because it can't get much worse.

But really... Chris Tucker as your first guest and he can't say much more than "it's great, man, it's great."

Snoop Dogg, Paula Abdul and Jay Leno were along for the ride.

I guess I did just spoil it for everyone. So save yourselves and watch something else instead. Sorry Arsenio.
 
Consider all the people in the last 20 years who got talk shows. How talented are they? Were their first shows any good? He's rusty. Athletes get a whole month of pre-season before it counts.

Arsenio gets a pass from me. He has an audience built in that no one else has. He speaks a language that no other talk show host speaks. He is as real as it gets. He will get guests that no one else will get. He will ask questions that no one else will ask. The show will succeed because there's no one like him. Oprah retired. He is the male Oprah. I don't care how the first show went. This guy was born for TV, and sitting in that chair is what he does. All of us who love what we do are rooting for him.

My only question is: When did Snoop Lion go back to Snoop Dogg?
 
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Hey, I'm rooting for him too.

But, with all the people in the entertainment industry, all you can get for a first guest is Chris Tucker? I have nothing against Chris Tucker but...Chris Tucker? Less Chris and more Snoop might have even been better.
 
I agree. Chris Tucker was boring. Snoop was great, as always. The bits and jokes were mostly pretty funny. Sure, it wasn't classic TV last night, but give it time to settle in.
 
TheBigA said:
Consider all the people in the last 20 years who got talk shows. How talented are they? Were their first shows any good? He's rusty. Athletes get a whole month of pre-season before it counts.
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Preseason is a poor analogy. He's had, what, a year and a half prep time? This may have been the worst debut since The Chevy Chase Show. And I liked Arsenio 1.0.

And yes, there have been a lot of talented people in the past 20 years (mostly daytime). And I've been very impressed with their first show, then it all went downhill. Hopefully Arsenio goes in the opposite direction. If not, watch him get bumped back to 1 or 2 a.m. by November.
 
I'll paraphrase what I had in the similar thread over on the national board...considering the time he's been off, I thought it was good overall. I think part of the problem, at least from the initial airing, is the writers, whomever they may be. His monologue was okay, but the skits were borderline terrible (they started out okay, but went downhill from there). All that said, I just Arsenio stays the course, and not radically change his show around just to appease people like focus groups, social media, and the higher-ups at CBS and Tribune.

The only tweak that would needed to be made is better joke writing...everything else, IMO, is good.
 
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TheBigA said:
Who's the failure? Not Arsenio. He had a hit show and left when he was on top.
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Not according to Jon Stewart (MTV) and David Letterman (CBS). Arsenio was popular only when there was no competition. That is hardly being "on top".
 
landtuna said:


Not according to Jon Stewart (MTV) and David Letterman (CBS). Arsenio was popular only when there was no competition. That is hardly being "on top".
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To be fair, Arsenio's original competition was Carson (and later Leno), Letterman, a few others that came and went (like Rick Dees on ABC who tried a similar show to Arsenio's). Even with that, his original show catered to a different (and arguably, an underserved) demographic than what Carson and Letterman were doing.

What did Arsenio in was, besides slipping ratings, the defection of his CBS affiliates to Letterman, and his Fox stations to Chevy Chase.
 
In my local market, Arsenio's original series was available only on cable, relayed from a Minneapolis station. He was on opposite Carson and (I think) Pat Sajak was still on CBS at the time. He was probably doing fairly well here too; enough to worry the local NBC affiliate. They bought the Arsenio show solely to enforce the "syndex" rule and force the cable company to block out the Minneapolis signal from 10:35-11:35 CST, just so that Arsenio would not be on here opposite the Tonight Show. They played off the Arsenio show in a graveyard time slot, something like 2-3 AM. Wonder if anything similar happened in other markets?
 
JeffM said:
In my local market, Arsenio's original series was available only on cable, relayed from a Minneapolis station. He was on opposite Carson and (I think) Pat Sajak was still on CBS at the time. He was probably doing fairly well here too; enough to worry the local NBC affiliate. They bought the Arsenio show solely to enforce the "syndex" rule and force the cable company to block out the Minneapolis signal from 10:35-11:35 CST, just so that Arsenio would not be on here opposite the Tonight Show. They played off the Arsenio show in a graveyard time slot, something like 2-3 AM. Wonder if anything similar happened in other markets?
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some places ran him after Carson and delayed Letterman
 
landtuna said:
You might want to read the comments following that story. Mixed bag to be sure.
At any rate, Arsenio is going up against a dirty old man whose ratings have never been spectacular and a smokey old stand up guy who is stale and a lame duck to boot. Not difficult to win against that "competition".
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Arsenio is the youngest of those three, and even he is something like 56 now.
 
I would think that Conan is now his closest competition in terms of both going after the same audience. Abd since Conan is repeated later fans of both could watch both in most markets.
 
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