Tom Snyder
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Tom Snyder (born May 12, 1936 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American television personality best known for The Tomorrow Show.
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[edit] Early life
Snyder was raised Roman Catholic, graduated from Marquette University High School,
[edit] Newscasting career
He was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Philadelphia, WNBC-TV in New York City and KNBC-TV in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
[edit] Tomorrow with Tom Snyder
Snyder gained national fame as the host of Tomorrow with Tom Snyder (more commonly known as The Tomorrow Show, which aired late nights after The Tonight Show on NBC from 1973 – 82. It was a talk show unlike the usual late-night fare, with Snyder alternating between asking hard-hitting questions without pulling punches, and offering personal observations that made the interview closer to a conversation. When not grilling guests, Tom would often joke around with off-stage crewmen, often breaking out in a distinctively hearty laugh that was the basis of Dan Aykroyd's impersonation of Snyder on Saturday Night Live. Snyder was also the basis of the cartoon "Tom Morrow," which appeared in Playboy in the late 1970s. Snyder's seemingly mismatched jet black eyebrows and grey hair were also lampooned on Saturday Night Live.
Peak moments with Snyder on Tomorrow included John Lennon's final televised interview, in April 1975 (replayed in December 1980 as a tribute to Lennon, and later released on home video), an interview with philosopher Ayn Rand in 1979, U2's first American television appearance in June 1981. Bizarre moments included 1979 appearances by punk singer Johnny Rotten, Chicago shock-jock Steve Dahl, The Clash in 1981 and a 1980 appearance by rock band The Plasmatics during which lead singer Wendy O. Williams blew up a TV in the studio; the explosion disrupted a live broadcast of NBC Nightly News being produced in a studio two floors above. Tom himself referred to this occurrence on a 1981 followup appearance in which the Plasmatics demolished a car. Also memorable was the 1980 appearance of Public Image Ltd.'s John Lydon and Keith Levine, whose thoroughly uncooperative twelve-minute appearance on the show is still talked about to this day.
The most outrageous interview seen on Snyder's show occurred on Halloween 1979, when the rock band KISS appeared to promote their album Dynasty. During that 25-minute "interview", the interview devolved into a somewhat chaotic exchange between Tom and a very drunk Ace Frehley, who picked up a teddy bear left behind by another guest, put the armbands from his costume on the bear, and laughed, "the only Spacebear in captivity! I've got him-- he's captured!". (Gene Simmons has revealed on his website that he felt "betrayed" by the other members during this interview.)
The show was cancelled in 1982 to make room for up-and-coming young comedian David Letterman, following a disastrous experiment with turning Tomorrow into a more typical talk show, renaming the show Tomorrow Coast to Coast, adding a live audience and co-host Rona Barrett, all of which Snyder resented.
[edit] After Tomorrow
Soon after the cancellation of The Tomorrow Show, Snyder worked as a New York news anchor on WABC-TV's Eyewitness News. In 1985, he returned to the talk format at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, with a local afternoon show he had planned to gear up for national syndication the following year; those plans were scratched after Oprah Winfrey's Chicago-based show entered the market first and took over Snyder's time slot on KABC-TV.
An older, slightly more mellow Tom returned to virtually the same format on ABC Radio in the late 1980s, then to television on CNBC in the early '90s, adding the opportunity for viewers to call in with their own questions for his guests. Snyder nicknamed his show "the Colorcast," reviving an old promotional term NBC-TV used in the early 1960s to hype its color broadcasts. Meanwhile, Letterman had moved on to CBS and was given control of creating a new program to follow his at 12:35 am; Letterman—who had idolized Snyder for years — hired Snyder in 1995 as host of The Late Late Show. (The idea had actually begun as a running joke on Letterman's show, that Snyder would soon follow him on the air as he'd once followed Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show; the unlikely suggestion caught on.) This show aired live on the East Coast and was simulcast to other time zones on radio to allow everyone a chance to call in. (Snyder's CNBC show was taken over, largely unchanged in format, by Charles Grodin.) In 1999 Snyder left The Late Late Show, which was then reformatted for new host Craig Kilborn.
[edit] Colortini.com
Tom posted regular messages on his own website (see colortini.com), during the early 2000s. A "colortini," according to Tom in the CNBC era, was the drink you should enjoy while watching the show ("Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."). For the CBS show, he redubbed the mythical drink a "simultini". In April 2005, Snyder revealed that he is battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia, but that his doctors had told him it is "treatable".
On July 28, 2005, Tom announced he was deleting his website after six years, stating: "The novelty of communicating this way has worn off". On August 1, 2005 (see colortini.com) his page was abruptly taken offline. The front page was replaced with "Colortini is gone. Thanks for the Memories."
[edit] Later life
In June of 2006, Tom sold his Benedict Canyon home of almost 30 years and headed to Tiburon, in Northern California, where he has a second home. Snyder sold the Benedict Canyon house for $1.7 million. It had four bedrooms and four bathrooms in nearly 3,000 square feet. The home, built in 1951, also had a pool and canyon views.
[edit] External links
- Tom Snyder at the Internet Movie Database
- Colortini.com listing on Archive.org's Wayback Machine
- Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia: Tom Snyder
| Preceded by: None |
Host of The Late Late Show 1995 – 1999 |
Succeeded by: Craig Kilborn |
