| The Arsenio Hall Show | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Variety/talk show |
| Created by | Arsenio Hall Marla Kell Brown |
| Presented by | Arsenio Hall |
| Narrated by | Burton Richardson |
| Composer(s) | Michael Wolff (bandleader, musical director) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 1,248 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Arsenio Hall |
| Location(s) | Paramount Studios Hollywood, California |
| Running time | 45–48 min |
| Production company(s) | Arsenio Hall Communications Paramount Domestic Television |
| Distributor | Paramount Domestic Television CBS Television Distribution |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Syndication |
| Original run | January 3, 1989 – May 27, 1994[1][2] |
The Arsenio Hall Show is an American variety/talk show that aired late weeknights in syndication from January 3, 1989 to May 27, 1994.[3] The show was created and hosted by comedian/actor Arsenio Hall.[4][5]
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Hall had been a host on The Late Show, another talk show on Fox, after the dismissal of Joan Rivers. He was given a 13-week run, during which he became unexpectedly popular. During the monologue of his final appearance as host, Hall stated that the reason he had agreed to only do 13 weeks was because that was as long as he was able to stay, as he had plans "to do other things."[6] He subsequently began working on the Eddie Murphy vehicle Coming to America. He ultimately signed with Paramount Television before Fox finally decided, too late, that they wanted to keep him.[7] (This was the second hosting job Paramount hired Hall for, as he had just finished a three-year run as a co-host of Solid Gold in July 1988.)
One of the show's recurrent gags is affixing a humorous label to a specific section of the audience at stage left of the band, called the "dogpound."[8] The labeling is a staple of Hall's opening monologue and almost always begins with the phrase "People who...." In one variation of the gag, Hall designates this section as "People who are currently in a Witness Protection Plan," at which point the camera pans over to that section to reveal a digitally pixillated view of the audience that made it impossible to identify them.
Although not an actual "gag", Burton Richardson's long intro of the show's host (in which he holds the "O" in "Arsenio" for as long as ten seconds right before Hall came out onto the stage, then, in the same breath, finally announce "HALL!") is a staple of the show. In the intro to the final episode, Richardson held his one-breath introduction for exactly twenty seconds, one of the few times he had done so.
A frequent gag in Hall's opening monologue suggests that he still lives in Cleveland, and drives himself to Los Angeles every day to host the show. While on these alleged long drives, Hall ponders certain thoughts, referring to them as "things that make you go hmmm...." This running gag inspired a 1990 C+C Music Factory song by that very title. "Things That Make You Go Hmmm..." reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart, and #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Hall's show was aimed primarily at the younger urban audience, with Eddie Murphy (a personal friend of Hall's) and other performers often featured. The show quickly appealed to young people of all races and began to attract a wide variety of guests (although this popularity with audiences was short-lived, leading to the show's cancellation). It became the show for entertainers to go to in order to reach the "MTV Generation." [9]
The show was known for the audience's chant of "Roo! Roo! Roo!" while pumping their fists in a circular motion. Some say this was appropriated from the fan chants at Cleveland Browns games, and others say that it came from the chant of Black Greek Letter Organization Omega Psi Phi fraternity. In any case, it quickly became associated with Hall's show.
Hall would often have friend MC Hammer as an interview and musical guest. He also interviewed "Jason Voorhees", the main character from the popular Friday the 13th series of films around the time of the release of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.[10] Muppets creator Jim Henson also appeared on the show 12 days before his death in May 1990, marking one of Henson's last public appearances.[11] Hall also often featured World Wrestling Federation wrestlers like Hulk Hogan (who first denied using steroids on the program), Ravishing Rick Rude (who made a special set of tights with Hall's face on the back) and the Ultimate Warrior.
During a May 1991 taping, three or four members of Queer Nation, seated in the back row in different sections of the audience, interrupted Hall's opening monologue to ask why he never had any gay guests on his show. Hall's answer was that since most of the guests were not open about their sexuality neither Hall nor the producers knew whether they were gay or not.
When the protesters voiced their offense because the show failed to book Gus Van Sant or Harvey Fierstein, Hall defended the show by saying that Elton John had been a guest. Infuriated, Hall added that he usually booked guests due to his interest in what they were working on at the time, not because of their sexual preference. The heated exchange[12] went on for several minutes, and Hall continued to defend himself as both a comedian and a host, pointing out that he also had gay friends, and that a person's sexual preference was really nobody else's business.
Then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton was a guest on the show in June 1992, playing "Heartbreak Hotel" on the saxophone (causing Arsenio to quip, "It's nice to see a Democrat blow something besides the election"). The appearance is often considered an important moment in Clinton's political career, helping build his popularity among minority and young voters; Clinton went on to win the election in November 1992.[13][14][15]
The program remained popular into 1993 but as the year went on Hall and Paramount began having problems. Two of the largest ones resulted in a drop in ratings and eventually in the show's cancellation.[16] The first problem took place over a span of two weeks and caused serious damage to Hall's ratings, and happened just as the new fall season was about to begin.
At the time the 1992-93 season ended, Hall's two strongest bases were with affiliates of CBS, which did not offer much in the way of late night programming other than its nightly crime drama rerun block and its late night newscast CBS News Nightwatch, and the still-young Fox, who picked up Arsenio to fill gaps left when The Late Show was finally canceled. Among the stations that aired Arsenio at the time were WJW-TV in Cleveland, Hall's then-hometown CBS affiliate, and WBBM-TV in Chicago, one of the network's owned-and-operated stations. In the summer of 1993, Late Night host David Letterman, who had spent over 13 years at NBC and the last 11 as the host of the popular post-Tonight Show program, left the network due to his dissatisfaction with being passed over for the Tonight Show hosting gig after the retirement of Johnny Carson. Letterman signed with CBS to do a late-night program which would compete head-to-head with the Jay Leno-hosted Tonight Show.
This caused a problem for Hall, who had found himself in a similar situation when his program first premiered. At the time, Carson's program was the only network program airing in the post-local news timeslots nationwide. While Paramount was set to launch Arsenio in syndication, CBS was ready to premiere 'The Pat Sajak Show, which was to have Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak preside over a similar program to Carson's and run for ninety minutes. However, Hall had two things working in his favor- his prior late-night hosting experience when compared with Sajak's lack of emceeing outside of his Wheel duties and the fact that his show was to premiere exactly one week before Sajak's to give him a head start. Hall gained many of Sajak's former timeslots when The Pat Sajak Show was canceled within twelve months of its debut. However, this time instead of facing an unproven entity Hall was facing one of the most popular hosts in late night and The Late Show With David Letterman became an instant hit and eventually became the most popular late night program. Letterman's instant popularity cost Hall most, if not all, of his CBS affiliates.
Later, Fox had decided that after several years they would try and get back into the late night television battle despite Arsenio drawing ratings on many of its affiliates. In September 1993, the network premiered The Chevy Chase Show on all of its affiliates, further damaging Hall's ratings. To make matters worse, once Chase's show failed after twenty-five episodes over five weeks, Hall wasn't able to get those timeslots back and after years of showing respectable ratings against his late night counterparts, Arsenio found itself in a distant third place due to an increase in undesirable hours. Furthermore, Arsenio found its audience eroded due to a new late night program airing on MTV and hosted by comedian Jon Stewart, which premiered earlier in the summer of 1993 and quickly became the second most popular show on the cable network.
Still, Paramount stuck with Hall in the hopes that he would be able to turn his ratings trouble around. Unfortunately for both parties, that would not be the case as a controversial guest booking proved to be the final straw.
In February 1994, Hall booked controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to be on the show. Despite a press release saying that Hall would have other guests appearing the night of Farrakhan's appearance[17], Hall instead allowed Farrakhan the entire sixty minutes for himself to be interviewed. The backlash from the appearance and subsequent ratings dip was enough for Paramount to finally cancel Arsenio after five years. The final episode aired on May 29, 1994, and in most of its markets Arsenio was replaced by a syndicated version of The Jon Stewart Show; this series was canceled within a year due to low ratings and Paramount did not replace it with any other offering.