Speaker 1: You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: Just in case you didn't know, Beyonce's Texas Holdham song
Speaker 2: which led off her Cowboy Carter country album, and you
Speaker 2: know that Beyonce's country offering was controversial for a number
Speaker 2: of reasons.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure why.
Speaker 2: It was controversial for some because those who were in
Speaker 2: the country music genre, some expressed resistance that they didn't
Speaker 2: think it was a real country album, or that Beyonce
Speaker 2: wasn't a real country artist. They call that gatekeeping, and
Speaker 2: there was resistance from some within the country music genre.
Speaker 2: It received a lot of country music airplay. I'll get
Speaker 2: to that in a moment. But the reason why I'm
Speaker 2: discussing it or mentioning it is because the news is
Speaker 2: that Beyonce's Cowboy Carter received zero CMA's nominations Country Music
Speaker 2: Awards zero. This to me is not surprising at all,
Speaker 2: and to a person who doesn't know how the music
Speaker 2: industry works, it may surprise them.
Speaker 3: They may say, well, that's so unfair, or did you
Speaker 3: see how.
Speaker 2: Much radio airplay issues it was number one on all
Speaker 2: these country stations. Well, let me just disabuse you of
Speaker 2: that notion and tell you how it works. Even today,
Speaker 2: when a song goes number one on your favorite station,
Speaker 2: it's usually because the record company behind the song is
Speaker 2: providing a lot of incentives, let me put it that way,
Speaker 2: putting a lot of support behind the record. It's not
Speaker 2: you calling the radio station. It's about the record company
Speaker 2: doing special prize giveaways with radio stations and prize flyaways,
Speaker 2: you know, being the twentieth caller will fly you and
Speaker 2: a guest.
Speaker 3: To see Beyonce and Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: YadA, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, where you do these
Speaker 2: types of com tests with the radio station, or you
Speaker 2: promise a Beyonce interview, and then the radio station will
Speaker 2: play the Beyonce song a whole hell of a lot
Speaker 2: in promotion of the contest, the flyway, the giveaway, and
Speaker 2: so the radio station gets something out of playing it,
Speaker 2: and the artist gets something out of the radio station
Speaker 2: playing it, which means it's not organic, That's what I'm
Speaker 2: getting at. And so all this radio airplay of this
Speaker 2: Cowboy Carter album when it comes to terrestrial music radio station,
Speaker 2: so I'm not talking about streaming.
Speaker 3: It had to do with that.
Speaker 2: Not those who were country music listeners in the respective
Speaker 2: markets calling in and wanting to hear it. I mentioned
Speaker 2: that because when you have an actual award show like
Speaker 2: the CMAS, the people who vote on them are the
Speaker 2: actual country artists, the music piers is not unlike the Grammys,
Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken, And so if you don't have
Speaker 2: the support of the actual industry, the country industry, you
Speaker 2: are not going to be recognized by the CMAS. And
Speaker 2: I say this as someone who worked for the Grammys
Speaker 2: many years ago. But some things have not changed in
Speaker 2: the intervening years, and sometimes people forget maybe not you,
Speaker 2: but sometimes people forget that the nominations, I should say,
Speaker 2: most of these award shows are about the record companies
Speaker 2: throwing their weight around. The record companies usually get to
Speaker 2: decide who is going to be. When I say the
Speaker 2: record companies, you have these voting members who are they
Speaker 2: have allegiances, they have connections to record companies. Like when
Speaker 2: I was working at the Grammys, you'd have people who
Speaker 2: vote for everyone who is on the same label as
Speaker 2: him or her, or they vote for all of their friends.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily a recognition of the best music or
Speaker 2: the most popular art or the most sales. It was
Speaker 2: all about relationships and allegiances and things of that nature.
Speaker 2: When I was working at the Grammys, we'd have people
Speaker 2: nominated every single year, whether they had a BS album
Speaker 2: or not. Like, for example, if Mariah Carey came out
Speaker 2: with something, she automatically was going to be nominated in
Speaker 2: any category they put her in.
Speaker 3: There were times where she.
Speaker 2: Was nominated for music that hadn't even hit the radio airwaves.
Speaker 2: It was released in stores and so eligible to be nominated,
Speaker 2: but people just automatically voted for it the academy members
Speaker 2: because of relationships and allegiances, and we were working the
Speaker 2: Grammar's like that song no one's even heard it yet,
Speaker 2: hasn't even played on the radio. We're talking about pre internet,
Speaker 2: so the only way that you could hear music back
Speaker 2: then was on the radio. That's how these awards shows
Speaker 2: likely work. Like for example, the CMA Awards, the nominees
Speaker 2: and winners are determined by more than six thousand industry
Speaker 2: professional members of the Country Music Association. These are voting
Speaker 2: members within the Country Music Association. Their relationships, their allegiances,
Speaker 2: and they don't for the most part, include Beyonce, she
Speaker 2: is an outsider musically. It's not saying that her music
Speaker 2: is bad. It's not saying that whether we're going to
Speaker 2: have this conversation about whether it was country enough, is
Speaker 2: that she is a country music outsider.
Speaker 3: It may not be fair, but it's a fact.
Speaker 2: And you can say, well, what about all the artists
Speaker 2: who go from pop to rap and they end up
Speaker 2: with with nominations or Grammy Awards. Yeah, it does happen
Speaker 2: in that time. Sometimes you have pop artists and they'll
Speaker 2: do a hip hop song and they'll end up with
Speaker 2: nomination or even a Grammy Award because hip hop doesn't
Speaker 2: gatekeep like that. Country music historically has been very much
Speaker 2: about keeping outsiders out. This did not surprise me at all,
Speaker 2: but it's somehow controversial.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because the very first thing that I saw
Speaker 4: that I said to shake my head at is the
Speaker 4: cries of racism and that they were hating on her
Speaker 4: because she was black. And I'm like, if you all
Speaker 4: knew how the award and eligibility process worked, you would
Speaker 4: know for a fact that that's further than the truth,
Speaker 4: and that is how you know, Like the song Tipsy
Speaker 4: and I cannot remember the young man's name, but he
Speaker 4: is a black artist. His song is eligible because his
Speaker 4: song is an actual country record by an artist who
Speaker 4: professes himself to be a country artist off the gate
Speaker 4: and his record is in there. So that right there
Speaker 4: says well, that argument now falls flat on its face.
Speaker 4: So that's the thing that I think threw me the
Speaker 4: most this morning.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of times it's easier to reach
Speaker 2: for those things. Some things are racist, not all things
Speaker 2: are racist. This is one of those things which is
Speaker 2: definitely not racist. This is one of those things where
Speaker 2: it's not about race. You just have to have a
Speaker 2: wider understanding of how country music works.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not disregarding the racist history of country music.
Speaker 3: That should not be pushed aside.
Speaker 2: But as far as Beyonce expecting as a musical outsider
Speaker 2: to be a CMA nominee or winner when she hasn't
Speaker 2: had any time or history in the genre, I don't
Speaker 2: care if she's from Texas and grew up loving country music. Musically,
Speaker 2: she is an outsider that it's not reasonable to expect
Speaker 2: that she's going to be embraced by the country music
Speaker 2: professionals and industry insiders who actually vote. Yeah, And I've
Speaker 2: seen it with other artists and different genres. And I
Speaker 2: would think that if people took the time to actually
Speaker 2: learn how these award shows are voted on, then they'll
Speaker 2: better understand. Like for example, Little nas X he won
Speaker 2: at the CMAS, so it's not about excluding someone of
Speaker 2: them being black. But Lil naz X, I think was
Speaker 2: more available and did country music interviews. He did a
Speaker 2: country music remix, and it was one of those things
Speaker 2: where it wasn't like the label was trying to force
Speaker 2: everything Little nas X on the country music industry.
Speaker 3: It's just one song.
Speaker 4: Well, when he came out, his entry into the music
Speaker 4: game was through a country collab with That's right.
Speaker 3: I forgot about the race. Sorry, that's right.
Speaker 4: So that was his introduction and everyone thought, how is
Speaker 4: this guy a contrust And he is the one that
Speaker 4: came out later and said, this was just a form
Speaker 4: of music that I grew up with and I appreciate,
Speaker 4: but I am an artist of all music. And I
Speaker 4: think he called backlash because people wrongly believed him to
Speaker 4: be a country artist, when in fact he said, no,
Speaker 4: I am a pop artist and that is something that's
Speaker 4: true to my heart.
Speaker 2: And also I forgot the whole Billy Ray Cyrus connection
Speaker 2: made that acceptance a little bit easier. I know people
Speaker 2: had some a bad taste in her mouth about the
Speaker 2: way Beyonce went about it is it was almost a gimmick.
Speaker 2: So she could get Album of the Year, and she
Speaker 2: still may get Album of the Year when the Grammys
Speaker 2: roll around. But as far as the Cmas go, if
Speaker 2: you know how country music works, they're not into gimmicks
Speaker 2: like that. You're not going to get industry love like that.
Speaker 2: So I was not surprised in the least.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: I can't speak for Twilets Sharp, I can't speak for
Speaker 2: Mark Ronner, who are my contemporaries in age. But I
Speaker 2: was a kid who grew up on Johnny Carson. I
Speaker 2: grew up on late night television, and honestly, when people
Speaker 2: talk about David Letterman, no disrespect. I was a Johnny
Speaker 2: Carson kid, the great Karnak. That to me was the
Speaker 2: golden age of late night television. That time is gone.
Speaker 2: Late night television as we once knew it is not
Speaker 2: as popular. Some may say it got too political in
Speaker 2: its monologues.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 2: I don't subscribe to that, but that's what people want
Speaker 2: to often attribute it to. I think it's just an
Speaker 2: evolution of how we consume entertainment, and the idea of
Speaker 2: appointment watching a late night variety show or a comedic
Speaker 2: bit show at eleven o'clock eleven thirty is not what
Speaker 2: people do anymore. I mentioned that because NBC is scaling
Speaker 2: back on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. They're cutting
Speaker 2: it from five nights to four nights a week, and
Speaker 2: then they're going to air reruns on Friday nights. What
Speaker 2: does that tell you? Friday night number one is not
Speaker 2: a big TV night. It used to be not anymore.
Speaker 2: Late night television used to be a really really big thing.
Speaker 2: It used to be not anymore. It used to be
Speaker 2: where late night television would destroy cable. Late night television
Speaker 2: not anymore. It's Great Gutfeld, who has a larger viewership
Speaker 2: than most, if not all, I think of the late
Speaker 2: night television host When I say late night, I'm talking
Speaker 2: about ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live, CBS is The Late Night
Speaker 2: Show with Stephen Colbert, and Comedy Central's The Daily Show.
Speaker 2: But all of those shows that I just told you about.
Speaker 2: They're also only taping four shows per week. Late Night
Speaker 2: with Seth Myers has only been airing four original episodes weekly,
Speaker 2: so they're all contracting. It's not I wouldn't say it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily in economics, saying, yes, it's economics within studio budgets,
Speaker 2: but it's not economics because of the economy. I just
Speaker 2: think there's a dwindling market and audience for this type
Speaker 2: of entertainment. And again, I talk about Twala and Mark,
Speaker 2: how we are age contemporaries. When we were grown up,
Speaker 2: Once upon a time, it used to be the variety show.
Speaker 2: Flip Wilson had a variety show laughing. You know, there
Speaker 2: was so many, so many people who had variety shows.
Speaker 2: That was a big thing in the nineteen seventies until
Speaker 2: it wasn't a thing. And you could say, well, the
Speaker 2: Tonight Show has been on for decades and decades. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: but things are cyclical and things ebb and flow. There
Speaker 2: was a time in which game shows were a huge
Speaker 2: deal in the nineteen seventies. They weren't so much in
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties, and now they're kind of coming back,
Speaker 2: but not exactly the same way. And this is how
Speaker 2: I think late night television is going through one of
Speaker 2: those evolutions. I don't know if we'll have late night
Speaker 2: TV as we once knew it by the end of
Speaker 2: this decade.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to be fatalistic.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying you should be able to read the
Speaker 2: handwriting on the walls.
Speaker 3: The space is not growing, it's actually contracting.
Speaker 4: I think after Johnny Carson retired, we all kind of
Speaker 4: followed Leno for a while, and it took us a
Speaker 4: minute to get on board with Leno. But when Leno
Speaker 4: went off the air, for me, that was the end
Speaker 4: of my need or reason to watch late night television
Speaker 4: me too.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 4: And I'm sorry, no no hit on anyone, but it
Speaker 4: was just and I loved our Sinio, but there was
Speaker 4: something about the Tonight Show and the legacy that he
Speaker 4: even passed along and sang sin and blessed Lino to
Speaker 4: carry on. And I thought what Lino did was new
Speaker 4: and vibrant, and he carried it as long as people were.
Speaker 4: But when he signed off, I'm like, there's no because
Speaker 4: I used to look at interviews that he would have
Speaker 4: on guests and say, now I want to go see
Speaker 4: that movie this weekend or I want to see the show.
Speaker 4: It kind of was the temperature gauge on entertainment for me.
Speaker 4: And after he signed off, I was like, I'm okay, okay, that.
Speaker 2: Was ten years ago that Jay Lintel left, and he
Speaker 2: might be listening right now, longtime CAFI listener. He's actually
Speaker 2: been on the show before, and Arsenio listens to KFI
Speaker 2: a lot, and he may be listening as well. But Arcinio,
Speaker 2: his first foray into late night television was a good
Speaker 2: thirty years ago, and he changed the game back then.
Speaker 3: But I think the game has changed since then.
Speaker 2: And the whole idea of doing a late night television
Speaker 2: show in the vein of the nineteen's, sixties, seventies, eighties,
Speaker 2: and nineties, I don't know if it has a place
Speaker 2: today because people aren't watching broadcast television. That's number one,
Speaker 2: late night broadcast television number two, and I think it's
Speaker 2: a very niche type of television.
Speaker 5: You're going to say, Mark, Well, I don't think anybody
Speaker 5: could ever replace Johnny Carson. First of all, everybody our
Speaker 5: age kind of wished Johnny was our dad, right, But
Speaker 5: the thing about Johnny was that he was a funny,
Speaker 5: genuinely a funny, skilled comedian, but also cool enough to
Speaker 5: stand up against not just anybody in the rat pack,
Speaker 5: but the whole rat pack. He was the whole pack,
Speaker 5: and you're not going to find that again. So you
Speaker 5: guys are talking about Letterman, who is also, I believe,
Speaker 5: a skilled comedian who had really honed his craft. But
Speaker 5: a lot of people, including me, went to Letterman. I
Speaker 5: still religiously watch Colbert and Myers and Jimmy Kimmel at
Speaker 5: least they're monologues every single night when I go home
Speaker 5: from work, because whether or not you like or dislike
Speaker 5: any of them particularly, they're absolutely a barometer for pop
Speaker 5: culture and current events.
Speaker 3: They are.
Speaker 2: But also going back to watching broadcast television, the most
Speaker 2: I've watched of Jimmy Fallon is on YouTube, where they'll
Speaker 2: do these music pieces where they'll bring in the whole
Speaker 2: band and they'll use a kazoo.
Speaker 5: I forgot what it's called. Yeah, And I will admit
Speaker 5: that I'm not a Fallon watcher. Of the major talk
Speaker 5: show hosts. He seems to be like the least edgy one,
Speaker 5: and I've heard people who have worked with him say, well,
Speaker 5: he wants everybody to love him, and that's you can't
Speaker 5: be that in late night televion. No, Johnny didn't care
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again, it is a different world in many
Speaker 2: respects how we consume media entertainment, what actually works in
Speaker 2: broadcast television, which I think is a declining industry. We
Speaker 2: look at who's winning Emmys, you know, Immy's just passed
Speaker 2: you looking at the proliferation of streaming services and how
Speaker 2: they've dominated television as we know it. It's not late
Speaker 2: night television what we used to watch decades ago.
Speaker 5: It used to be much more like a cocktail party.
Speaker 5: And if you go back and watch any of these
Speaker 5: old Tonight shows, which I'll admit that I do from
Speaker 5: time to time, there's a lot on YouTube. They were
Speaker 5: very unplanned, they were very spontaneous. They had awkward moments.
Speaker 5: Everything now moves right along. There've been pre interviews, everything
Speaker 5: is agreed on beforehand, and it was a whole different
Speaker 5: scene altogether, in addition to how fragmented all the media
Speaker 5: is today.
Speaker 3: But that was our.
Speaker 2: Reality TV of the day. Because it was unscripted, it
Speaker 2: was much more edgy. You had different types of conversations
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't have in daytime TV or regular broadcast TV.
Speaker 2: It's not edgy anymore because it's just broadcast TV and
Speaker 2: you're competing with streaming.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, and don't leave Dick Cavit out of that either.
Speaker 5: Here that's not at all unbelievable interviews and some immortal
Speaker 5: moments on his show. But you're not going to get
Speaker 5: a show now on late night where say, Shelley Winters
Speaker 5: pours a drink over all over Reed's head, or they
Speaker 5: give Uri Geller a chance to bend a spoon and
Speaker 5: he can't do it under the pressure.
Speaker 3: You know, But remember late night television, those couch interviews.
Speaker 2: You got to see your stars in a very relaxed setting,
Speaker 2: oftentimes highly lubricated. Oh yeah, and you've got a sense
Speaker 2: of their real personalities. That doesn't mean anything now because
Speaker 2: you can get on social media. You see, we're overexposed
Speaker 2: to these individuals, so we kind of know what their
Speaker 2: real personalities are. It's not a window into people like
Speaker 2: it used to be. It's just not special anymore. It's
Speaker 2: definitely not this. But there's still some good stuff on there.
Speaker 2: And I even if I am not the biggest fan
Speaker 2: of whose fallon, there are two Jimmy's I was trying
Speaker 2: to get the right Jimmy. A lot of people like him,
Speaker 2: and when I did work at NBC Universal, he had
Speaker 2: a huge number of fans there in the building.
Speaker 3: I'm quite sure he does.
Speaker 2: I just don't watch any of them anymore, not to
Speaker 2: be disrespectful. When we come back, we're going to say
Speaker 2: goodbye to one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Speaker 2: And you may not know his name, but you damn
Speaker 2: sure know his music. Will Jennings, that's next.
Speaker 1: You're listening to later with Moe Kelly on demand from
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: And being in the music industry, sometimes we lose sight
Speaker 2: of the songwriters. I should say being in the music industry,
Speaker 2: you're very much more sensitive to knowing who the songwriters are,
Speaker 2: not just the artists who may perform songs. You may
Speaker 2: wrongly assume that because someone sings a song, they also
Speaker 2: wrote the song, and more times than not, that's not
Speaker 2: the case. Will Jennings passed away today at the age
Speaker 2: of eighty. He was an Oscar winner for My Heart
Speaker 2: will go on Celine Dion's song obviously from Titanic and
Speaker 2: if you know the movie, an officer and a Gentleman.
Speaker 2: The song of Where We Belong which was sung by
Speaker 2: Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warns that also won an Oscar
Speaker 2: And you think about some of these timeless hits that
Speaker 2: will transcend time. You may remember the people who sung
Speaker 2: the song, but you may not know who wrote the song.
Speaker 2: And these are songs which were written by Will Jennings.
Speaker 2: He won those two Academy Awards, and did you know
Speaker 2: for example, he wrote Tears in Heaven performed by Eric Clapton, which.
Speaker 3: Was used in the movie Rush.
Speaker 2: He won also a Golden Globe for Best Original Song,
Speaker 2: as well as Grammys for Record of the Year and
Speaker 2: Song of the Year.
Speaker 3: He won three Grammy Awards.
Speaker 2: And you may think of great vocalists like Celine Dion
Speaker 2: or even Whitney Houston. Well it was Will Jennings who
Speaker 2: wrote Whitney Houston's number one song, Didn't We Almost Have
Speaker 2: It All?
Speaker 3: And Barry Manilow's Looks Like We Made It. These are anthems.
Speaker 2: These are great songs which will be remembered for all
Speaker 2: time pop classic music. Will Jennings was inducted into Songwriters
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame in two thousand and six, and he
Speaker 2: was a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2: And I always say that music is the closest thing
Speaker 2: we'll ever have to a time machine, because music, especially
Speaker 2: the songs we love, will take us back, at least emotionally,
Speaker 2: to exactly who we were, where we were, and when
Speaker 2: we were. Think about a favorite song. Think about the
Speaker 2: song My Heart Will go On from Titanic. You probably
Speaker 2: will remember where you were when you first heard the song.
Speaker 2: You probably will remember hearing it as part of Titanic soundtrack.
Speaker 2: You probably will remember the emotions you had at time.
Speaker 2: Maybe you were dating someone, maybe you were going through
Speaker 2: a breakup.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: But music is always very closely tied to who we
Speaker 2: were at the time in which we remember that song.
Speaker 2: So I thought it would be appropriate to at least
Speaker 2: say a few words in support of Will Jennings, someone
Speaker 2: that you may not know if you weren't really connected
Speaker 2: to music, but I knew, and anyone who was really
Speaker 2: connected to the music industry knew because of all the
Speaker 2: many hits that he had written for some of our
Speaker 2: favorite artists, you and me. You also had major hits
Speaker 2: with Steve Wynwood. Obviously, we played that in coming out
Speaker 2: of the Break, Dion Warwick, Tim McGraw, so many people.
Speaker 2: And also you may remember a few weeks ago we
Speaker 2: had a discussion about artists selling their music catalog and
Speaker 2: how artists, songwriters and also performers they want to be
Speaker 2: able to cash out while they're still here. And Jennings
Speaker 2: sold his music last year, and it's even though the
Speaker 2: terms of the deal weren't disclosed publicly, it was estimated
Speaker 2: that it was around anywhere between seventy and eighty million,
Speaker 2: and you could tell just by the hits that I
Speaker 2: listed that it could easily be worth that and more so. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Will Jennings has gone now at the age of eighty,
Speaker 2: but his music that we all know and love will
Speaker 2: be with us for the rest of our lives and more.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: And before we get out of here, you look, it's
Speaker 2: hard to measure up to Johnny Carson. I don't think
Speaker 2: anyone can measure up to John Carson, but I think
Speaker 2: it's fair to acknowledge that the industry as a whole,
Speaker 2: I don't think you can support as many late night
Speaker 2: shows as we have right now, and I don't know
Speaker 2: if he can support I don't know if people growing
Speaker 2: up now or coming of age now, or coming into
Speaker 2: the own as adults and entertainment consumers are looking for
Speaker 2: traditional late night television. And I think that's the difference
Speaker 2: between now and let's say twenty fourteen when Jay Lennel left,
Speaker 2: Because even you Mark Ronner, you may get home and
Speaker 2: you say that you catch all the monologues, but you're
Speaker 2: not watching it for the interviews and the whole show,
Speaker 2: are you.
Speaker 5: Well, they all do the interviews differently, and so if
Speaker 5: it's somebody I'm interested in, yes I will, But I
Speaker 5: don't watch all three shows from start to finish it.
Speaker 3: Who could do that? Well? When I was in college,
Speaker 3: we watched.
Speaker 2: Lino and depending on the person who I control the TV,
Speaker 2: Letterman just about every night from beginning to end.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I couldn't do that with Letterman. After the famous
Speaker 5: Bill Hicks routine, you know what I'm talking about. I
Speaker 5: don't know Bill. Well, you know who Bill Hicks was.
Speaker 5: He died very young, if I believe pancreatic cancer was.
Speaker 5: He was kind of positioned to be the next George Carlin,
Speaker 5: or at least an heir to George Carlin, and he
Speaker 5: did an immortal Jay Leno routine that Leno must be
Speaker 5: familiar with.
Speaker 3: It's about Jay Leno.
Speaker 5: Selling his soul hawkin' doritos and asking Joey Lawrence, so,
Speaker 5: so you got a car?
Speaker 3: Can you drive? Can you drive?
Speaker 5: And at the end of the bit, Leno loses his
Speaker 5: mind and goes on a murder spree. It's hilarious and
Speaker 5: it's worth looking up. You can find it on YouTube.
Speaker 3: And that turns you off of Letterman.
Speaker 5: Turned me off of Leno because I was already much
Speaker 5: more of a fan of Letterman's more offbeat, sarcastic humor.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, for me, I used to watch it
Speaker 2: beginning to end one because look, you know what I do.
Speaker 3: I love the interview style.
Speaker 2: I love the conversational style of Johnny Carson or a
Speaker 2: Jay linno interview. That's something where I always loved what
Speaker 2: was special about late night And it didn't matter the guest.
Speaker 2: I felt that it was someone I would want to
Speaker 2: know about because they were on late night television.
Speaker 3: It used to be a thing.
Speaker 2: And it was also this you would see the next
Speaker 2: great comedian on late night television.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, but the thing is you want to see
Speaker 5: how Johnny interacts with anybody, whether it's rak Kela Welch
Speaker 5: or a guy with a big twine ball from Nebraska
Speaker 5: or something like that. That was what was great about Johnny.
Speaker 5: But it's not the same now. It's I mean, I
Speaker 5: like Colbert and I like John Oliver too, but it's
Speaker 5: a whole different ball of axe.
Speaker 2: It's different, and I think it comes down to the
Speaker 2: fact that the shows today are more about the show
Speaker 2: and less about the host. The Tonight's show is bigger
Speaker 2: than Jimmy Fallon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and one.
Speaker 5: Thing that you haven't mentioned because it was before both
Speaker 5: our times was Jack Parr. But if you go back
Speaker 5: and look at his old shows, I mean, he may
Speaker 5: not have been the very first late night host. I
Speaker 5: think it was Steve Allen, but he was incredible. But
Speaker 5: you want to watch it because of Jack park You
Speaker 5: don't know what he's going to say, because he's sort
Speaker 5: of a volatile guy and a little bit of an egomaniac,
Speaker 5: but also tremendously witty, and the whole show is about
Speaker 5: how he responds to things and people.
Speaker 2: And there's something else we talked about growing up late
Speaker 2: night television was near the end of the programming schedule
Speaker 2: for TV. If you're not old enough to know this,
Speaker 2: TV went off back in the day. As far as programming,
Speaker 2: it would sign off you get static until you got
Speaker 2: the star spangled banner some five in the morning.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that sign that says do you know where
Speaker 5: your children are?
Speaker 3: Right? Or you get the test pattern.
Speaker 2: And for late night television back in the day, it
Speaker 2: was the only thing.
Speaker 3: There was nothing competing against it.
Speaker 2: There was not like you could go home and say, well,
Speaker 2: let me see what's on Netflix or let me see
Speaker 2: what's stored up in my DVR that I want to watch.
Speaker 3: No, it was late night television or bust. It was.
Speaker 5: And people at this point may not understand how famous
Speaker 5: and how powerful and how enormously rich Johnny was. As
Speaker 5: a result of that, he was the only game in
Speaker 5: town for late night TV for a very long time.
Speaker 2: Well not only that, think of how many careers that
Speaker 2: he made, I don't want to say destroyed, but short
Speaker 2: circuited just by appearances on his show.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, if he called a comedian over to the
Speaker 5: couch after their set, they were made. If he iced
Speaker 5: you out because he got mad at you for anything
Speaker 5: at all and anything. And I've read recently the book
Speaker 5: by his old lawyer Bushkin. If you got on his
Speaker 5: bad side and you never knew what it was going
Speaker 5: to be, you were done.
Speaker 2: In Hollywood, not even well put his away, not even
Speaker 2: done as far as coming on the Tonight Show. You
Speaker 2: because there were fewer places that you could land or
Speaker 2: be seen or be discovered. And that's why it was
Speaker 2: so coveted to have time on the Tonight Show for anyone.
Speaker 2: I mean, even if you were an established actor and
Speaker 2: you were promoting something, you had to go see Johnny
Speaker 2: or hopefully you get the chance to go see Johnny.
Speaker 5: Wielded his power very capriciously, and I gotta say I
Speaker 5: love Joan Rivers, but she didn't do herself any favors
Speaker 5: by going against him and getting agreeing to do her
Speaker 5: own show without talking to him. You kind of he
Speaker 5: was sort of the king, and you go to him
Speaker 5: for his blessing.
Speaker 2: He was, and then you hear stories about how he
Speaker 2: let Harry Belafonte sit in for him for a week
Speaker 2: and how that shames the whole perception of Late Night
Speaker 2: and how it opened the doors for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: He could be very generous and he could be very cantankerous.
Speaker 3: I didn't know about the Belafonte thing. Yeah, yep, it's
Speaker 3: later with Mo Kelly. We'll see tomorrow.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty We are alive everywhere in the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app free.
Speaker 1: Range, non genetically modified, handcrafted, artisanal groute and freeze emulating.
Speaker 3: Talk K S I M K O S T HD
Speaker 3: two
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, Orange County loves Everywhere on the radio.