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Dick Clark's Live Wednesday/Live! Dick Clark Presents

J

johnnya2k6

Lately, assorted clips from "Dick Clark's Live Wednesday" and "Live! Dick Clark Presents" have been posted on YouTube by Awardsshownetwork, which happens to be Dick Clark Productions.

Both shows aired within ten years of each other on two networks, which explains why they were short-lived: Live Wednesday on NBC, and Live! on CBS; both of them were in dead last place at the time while ABC and NBC were ruling the ratings. Does anyone hardly remember them, because until now, I don't.
 
...I only recall Dick Clark's Live Wednesday because on the premiere broadcast, somebody -- Clark himself? -- got the not-so-bright idea of having a jam session during one of the segments and overloading the stage to the point where Chuck Berry accidentally conked Doc Severinsen with the top of his guitar. It appears, according to Wikipedia, that thae series may have also been the last place Bobbie Gentry appeared on television...
 
CLARIFICATION: Dick Clark Productions has two YouTube pages: Awardsshownetwork and dickclarkMA; the latter's previous upload was in 2009 but both contain a lot of rare stuff from the specials/series they've done like Will You Marry Me?, Friday Night Surprise, Half Hour Comedy Hour, Hot Country Nights, etc.

And Fox's "Celebrity Boxing"? Don't let the UTL Productions name fool you; it was also by DCP (probably to protect themselves from embarrassment).
 
Dick Clark's Live Wednesday was where Connie Francis made a live appearance, lip-synching because it was her first live appearance since her rape a few years earlier.

And not sure of this, but this may have been where Jan and Dean made one of their first live non-lip-synching performance since Jan had been involved in that car crash years before.
 
johnnya2k6 said:
Both shows aired within ten years of each other on two networks, which explains why they were short-lived: Live Wednesday on NBC, and Live! on CBS; both of them were in dead last place at the time while ABC and NBC were ruling the ratings. Does anyone hardly remember them, because until now, I don't.
Click to expand...
I remember Dick Clark Live on NBC. I don't remember his CBS show. The NBC show premiered in September 1978. During the late '70s, just about ANYTHING on NBC was DOOMED TO FAILURE. Johnny Carson made the comment during his monologue one night, that the just completed World Series (Yankees/Dodgers) was NBC's MOST SUCESSFUL SERIES that season and the first NBC series that year to last longer than 4 Episodes (it went 6 games).
 
ricksegers said:
I remember Live Wednesday. I, along with about 7 other people in the country, liked it. I also liked "Real People".
Click to expand...
...I thought The Chuck Barris Rah-Rah Show was more entertaining than Dick Clark's LIVE Wednesday ;D ...
 
jwk1979 said:
johnnya2k6 said:
Both shows aired within ten years of each other on two networks, which explains why they were short-lived: Live Wednesday on NBC, and Live! on CBS; both of them were in dead last place at the time while ABC and NBC were ruling the ratings. Does anyone hardly remember them, because until now, I don't.
Click to expand...
I remember Dick Clark Live on NBC. I don't remember his CBS show. The NBC show premiered in September 1978. During the late '70s, just about ANYTHING on NBC was DOOMED TO FAILURE. Johnny Carson made the comment during his monologue one night, that the just completed World Series (Yankees/Dodgers) was NBC's MOST SUCESSFUL SERIES that season and the first NBC series that year to last longer than 4 Episodes (it went 6 games).
Click to expand...

That was also around the time somebody (maybe Carson, I don't recall) said that Fred Silverman was the only network executive who knew what it was like to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. ::)

It's amazing that NBC would have tried Clark's show at all; it was, essentially, another attempt to revive the "Ed Sullivan Show" concept of a nonperforming host introducing a succession of guests, an idea that had failed on ABC three years earlier--
"Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell"--right after Silverman moved to ABC! But then again, Silverman was so desperate for a hit at NBC that he'd do anything, including recycling old formats.

"Live! Dick Clark Presents" was something CBS threw into the breach for about a month in 1988 during a writers' strike. IIRC, it was about the same time "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" was revived, with the new segment featuring Tommy as the
"Yo-Yo Man" (he's really quite proficient at it).
 
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