“The Chevy Chase Show” and “The Magic Hour” hit the airwaves with big expectations — then crashed-and-burned as the two most infamous late-night horror shows in TV history.
Both talk shows flamed out in a matter of weeks in very public meltdowns — scaring away viewers in droves.
“The Chevy Chase Show” premiered Sept. 7, 1993, on Fox — a week after “The Late Show With David Letterman” dropped on CBS — and was canned six weeks (and 29 episodes) into its run.
Chase, whose movie career was on the skids after a string of flops (“Nothing But Trouble,” “Memoirs of Invisible Man”) was not Fox’s first choice to host its first foray into late-night following “The Joan Rivers Show” — which lasted seven months from October 1986 to May 1997 — and “The Wilton-North Report,” a hybrid sketch-comedy/talk show that aired for four weeks.
Fox wanted Dolly Parton as its late-night star but her manager, who also represented Chase, recommended him. Chase, who was 18 years past his initial “Saturday Night Live” fame, was reportedly paid $3 million, and Fox spent another $1 million renovating the Aquarius Theater in LA — renaming it The Chevy Chase Theater.
Goldie Hawn was the first guest on “The Chevy Chase Show,” which opened to scathing reviews — “Don’t watch. Don’t listen. Don’t even think about it,” one critic wrote — and it was all downhill from there. Chase appeared to be unprepared, never got into the rhythm of late-night television — despite guest-hosting “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” — was not a good interviewer, and was steamrolled by Letterman’s “The Late Show” and Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” on NBC.
After a moderately successful start in the ratings department, viewers abandoned “The Chevy Chase Show” in droves and it gained a reputation as trainwreck TV. Fox chairwoman Lucie Salhany told The Associated Press, six weeks into Chase’s run, that “The shows aren’t very good. He was very nervous. It was uncomfortable and embarrassing to watch.”
Fox mercifully pulled the plug on “The Chevy Chase Show” in mid-October and swallowed the embarrassment. Chase’s response was muted, calling it “a very restraining format” and citing his competitors. “My hat is off to those guys who do this kind of work. It takes a tremendous effort and long hours of commitment,” he said.
“The Magic Hour” did a bit better … barely. Hosted by retired NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, it premiered in syndication in June 1998 and lasted eight long, embarrassing weeks.
The show got off to an inauspicious start when radio star Howard Stern began ripping “The Magic Hour” on a daily basis. In a stunt intended to goose ratings, Stern was invited to appear on the show. He and his band, The Losers (his “Howard Stern Show” staff), performed the ’60s surf song “Wipeout” — which was punctuated by a flatulent woman at key moments. Stern followed that up with a tense interview on Johnson’s couch where he continued to criticize the good-natured host.
“That was the day after I was fired,” Johnson’s first co-host, comedian Craig Shoemaker, told The Post. “I went to work every day in the car and I would listen to Howard Stern do a playback of the episode that aired the night before and it was cringeworthy. He would pause, assess it, criticize it and make jokes about it.
“He would just completely tear apart the entire show, and me being the co-host and upfront … it was really embarrassing.”
Shoemaker said he was brought on to “The Magic Hour” not as an Ed McMahon-type sidekick, but to deliver his own point of view. “[Johnson] would set up the jokes and I would offer my witty repartee,” he said. “I would do the monologue sitting next to him; that was the idea and I thought it was actually a pretty good idea.
“But [the show] was a failed concept to begin with,” Shoemaker said. “This is no affront or criticism of Magic Johnson, but they gave him a show where the saying was, ‘The Smile That Stole Late Night.’ When you’re building a talk show, which is so complicated and complex, it calls for tremendous creativity — and if you’re basing it on a smile, it’s a loss right out of the gate.”
Things went sideways from the get-go. “They did test shows and then panicked and brought writers in at the last minute and changed the format,” Shoemaker said. “They told me I couldn’t come up with my own jokes and I had to tell the jokes as they wrote them — which were atrocious.”
Shoemaker said he was shocked when he learned what his opening line would be when “The Magic Hour” premiered on June 8, 1998.
“So I come out and this is the opening line out of my mouth to a mostly urban crowd. Magic said, ‘Craig, how about that Bulls game last night?!’ and this is a quote the writer told me to say: ‘Magic, I haven’t seen a beating like that caught on tape since Rodney King!’ You could hear the gasps in New York from Paramount Studios in LA [where the show was taped].
“If you had a recipe for disaster, that was the first ingredient.”
Luckily for Shoemaker, in retrospect, his nights sitting next to Johnson on his couch were numbered.
“On Day 3, after all these horrible reviews [of the show], they blamed me,” he said. “Magic said on the show, ‘We’ll be right back after this break’ and they walked on stage and whispered in my ear, ‘The people upstairs have decided you’re going to be [taken] off the couch now’ — there was no warning, no discussion, it was announced in the middle of a commercial break. It’s probably never been done before.”
Shoemaker could not be fired due to his contract so he stuck around. He produced the following night’s show and snared Samuel L. Jackson, who did not know Johnson, as the lead guest (Johnson and Jackson are now good friends).
“I would be on like the fifth segment, a cooking segment where Magic would throw flour at me and go, ‘Now you’re a cake, Craig.’ He was a basketball player trying to do standup comedy and it just did not work.”
Shoemaker was replaced by comedian Steve White who, in turn, was replaced by comedian Tommy Davidson. The show was mercifully canceled in early September 1998.
“It was like, ‘OK, we’re going to have a boat with no bottom — let’s see if we can sail,’” Shoemaker said. “It’s just not gonna happen. Things don’t work if they’re not organic or real.
“Everyone [behind the scenes] knew [it was a bomb],” Shoemaker said. “Magic had zero experience and not a lot of run-up time and there was no training. It was just one debacle after the next … and there was a mass exodus of guests.
“It’s not like there was any background that spoke to [‘The Magic Hour’] being something compelling, interesting and brilliant every night.
“You say to yourself, ‘What were they thinking?’”
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