Over in The New Yorker, Lewis Menand has an article about…well, it starts out like a review of Bill Carter's new book on the Leno/Conan dust-up, then makes a sharp left into a review of Dick Cavett's new collection of his New York Times columns, then suddenly it's about David Susskind of all people and…well, you might enjoy it even if you aren't sure exactly what it's about. Late night TV, mostly. There are some good observations in there.
Cavett is a fascinating figure in the whole history of that time period. He did a show that was on in a highly-competitive time slot for six years. (Joey Bishop, who he replaced, lasted for less than half that time.) Cavett's program was profitable for its network and it won great critical acclaim and awards at a time when very little on ABC was even in contention for any of that. Still, it was viewed by many as a failure because it somehow failed to move a man named Johnny Carson to the unemployment lines. What I've gleaned of the history is that that's about all Cavett did wrong. Today, there is little shame to finishing a respectable second in your time slot as long as your show makes money. Back then, if you didn't finish first, you were expected to concede abject failure and collapse onto your sword. And of course, what replaced Cavett got lower ratings and the network lost cash in that slot until years later when Ted Koppel and the Hostage Crisis moved into it, thereby begatting Nightline. I believe some ABC execs were later quoted as saying they should have just left him on and spent more on promotion.
Mr. Cavett's new book is called Talk Show (that's an Amazon link) and while you may have read all or most of those pieces in the Times, it sounds like it's still worth picking up for the sheer permanence of it all. I'm going to wait until the event mentioned in this posting to see if I can get one autographed without waiting in line for ninety minutes. In the meantime, here's a little montage of moments from The Dick Cavett Show…
