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Syndicated late night comedy

G

gr8oldies

I can remember a cuple of late night comedy shows, and the name of one escapes me. Norm Crosby was the host and it featured new standup comedians. I remember a tongue as the logo. Of course, a little better known was SCTV (or Second City Television), the half hour version that preceded "SCTV Network 90"'s NBC run.

SCTV was cleared on WDTN channel 2 in Dayton, first at 1am after Saturday Night Live and later at 11:30 on Sundays. I believe Norm Crosby's show cleared at 1:30am on Saturdays and was later moved to 1am,though I could be wrong. When in Florida I saw Norm Crosby's show at 1am after Saturday Night Live on one of the tampa stations.

So in your market, where were these shows cleared?
 
gr8oldies said:
I can remember a cuple of late night comedy shows, and the name of one escapes me. Norm Crosby was the host and it featured new standup comedians. I remember a tongue as the logo. Of course, a little better known was SCTV (or Second City Television), the half hour version that preceded "SCTV Network 90"'s NBC run.

SCTV was cleared on WDTN channel 2 in Dayton, first at 1am after Saturday Night Live and later at 11:30 on Sundays. I believe Norm Crosby's show cleared at 1:30am on Saturdays and was later moved to 1am,though I could be wrong. When in Florida I saw Norm Crosby's show at 1am after Saturday Night Live on one of the tampa stations.

So in your market, where were these shows cleared?
Click to expand...

SCTV was cleared on WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh for only a few shows. They did it as a trial run, pre-empting Saturday Night Live. It went over like a lead balloon.
 
Did WPXI run the syndicatd half hour version and push Saturday Night Live up by a half hour? Or did they run "SCTV Network 90" and delay it from Friday to Saturday night? (there were a couple of time SCTV did run on NBC in SNL's time slot).
 
gr8oldies said:
I can remember a cuple of late night comedy shows, and the name of one escapes me. Norm Crosby was the host and it featured new standup comedians. I remember a tongue as the logo.
Click to expand...

...I believe that was "The Comedy Shop." I know WTMJ-TV/4 Milwaukee ran "Second City TV" in its syndicated form and the "SCTV Network" NBC edit package, and may have run "The Comedy Shop" as well, although I vaguely recall seeing "The Comedy Shop" on indie WVTV/18 at one point too...

...my favourite syndicated late-night comedy item was "Dave Allen at Large," which Time-Life Television offered in response to (IIRC) Taffner's success with "The Benny Hill Show" (both were British sketch comedies, Allen on BBC and Hill at the time on ITV). We all know Hill's trite sexual leerings; Allen was much closer to "Laugh-In," with his observations dispensed between sips of a brownish liquid (probably drawn from the same tap as Jackie Gleason's "cup of coffee") and filmed blackout sketches. Allen's half-hour was drawn from early '70s BBC programs, and ran on both commercial stations (WVTV, WUTV/29 Buffalo) and PBS (WHA-TV/21 Madison, WTTW/11 Chicago). In fact, WTTW entered into such a long-term deal to run the program between "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and "Doctor Who" on Sunday late nights that they stopped only in the early '90s when Allen took legal action to withdraw all of his BBC material from syndication. Time-Life also took a flyer on BBC-originated material from Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise, which I saw on WGN-TV/9 Chicago but lasted only a handful of weeks there...

...there was also "Comedy Tonight," a Metromedia weeknight strip emceed by Bill Boggs (later the producer of Morton Downey Jr.'s WWOR show) in '84, and "Comedy Break with Mack & Jamie," which took to the air shortly after the Boggs show folded and itself lasted for three years or so...
 
gr8oldies said:
Did WPXI run the syndicatd half hour version and push Saturday Night Live up by a half hour? Or did they run "SCTV Network 90" and delay it from Friday to Saturday night? (there were a couple of time SCTV did run on NBC in SNL's time slot).
Click to expand...

It was the former, I believe.
 
The original SCTV aired for a brief time, late Saturday night on KPRC, Houston. I don't remember if it was right after SNL or not.

Here's a few more:
- The original Make Me Laugh, with the late Bobby Van.
- Bizarre (the "clean" version, reruns of shows originally aired on Showtime) with John Byner and Bob "Super Dave Osborne" Einstein.
- And of course, the one and only Benny Hill.
 
they weren't variety, but how can we forget Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (which ran late nights in most markets), and then fernwood 2-nite? both ran on the old WNYS/ch. 9 in Syracuse in their day.

"Bizarre"--boy, I'd forgotten about that show.
 
"Bizarre" used to air on WVIT-TV (NBC) channel 30 of New Britain/Hartford after "SNL" 20-some years ago. They also aired "Benny Hill" on Saturday evenings, usually around 7 PM. Benny Hill also aired on WTXX-TV (CW) channel 20 of Waterbury weeknights at (I think) 11 PM in the early-to mid 1980s.
 
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