Pictures Flying Through The Air

I was there. I was there the day Robert Morton dropped by CNBC West. I was there the following week when a box arrived filled with “Worldwide Pants” SWAG (I still have a t-shirt with the WP logo, though it is in its second life as a painting smock). I was there the night the whole crew met in the conference room after the show had wrapped and Snyder gave us the news. None of us were there when Snyder announced the move to his viewers, because he did so from the studios in Ft. Lee, NJ — after the press conference at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.

I was also there shortly before the public announcement, answering phones in the CNBC bullpen. I was offered $500 by an agent from a gossip tabloid to confirm the Snyder/CBS deal. I turned it down, and when I shared this information with a few on Snyder’s crew, they all told me they wouldn’t have hesitated to take the money and rat Tom out. That was the day I knew I was different than typical Hollywood folks.

I didn’t make it to the CBS lot known as Television City until after Tom had left CBS. Unlike the NBC studios in Burbank, I felt no connection to TV City. The walls were bare. The hallways were cold. The people were oblivious to my existence. I cannot speak with any degree of authority about any personal relationship Snyder and Letterman might have had, but I would guess that they had very little contact outside of the time they spent together on camera. The reason I say this is because of their chemistry on camera. Put simply, it seemed forced.

The two men certainly respected each other, and I don’t believe they disliked each other. However, both men had their own ideas about late night television, and, in the end, they were just too different. I would add one additional however, though, and mention that Tom and Dave on screen at the same time was something to see.

In the first of the three interviews, Tom tried as hard as he could to get to the heart of who Dave was as a person. Dave (appearing via satellite from the set of his own show), on the other hand, preferred to crack jokes. They found middle ground by spending a good deal of time discussing Dave’s appreciation for the world of broadcasting. Early on in his career, Dave seemed to take a cue from Johnny Carson and not reveal too much about his personal life on camera. Even today, after the allegations and revelations of the past year or so, he still isn’t one to sit down with someone else and talk from the heart.

In the second interview, Dave and Tom were not only sharing the same screen but also sharing the same studio. It was the only time the two men would share the same stage on “The Late Late Show.” From the top, Tom and Dave both acknowledged the previous interview was not to their liking (each for different reasons). This time around, they focused on Dave and his show, which was taping in California that week as part of “November sweeps.” There were fewer attempts by Snyder to engage Letterman in discussions of a personal nature. There was a good deal of industry talk in this interview.

The final chance Tom Snyder would have to interview his boss came in February of 1997, the month CBS was celebrating Dave’s 15th year in late night (counting “Late Night” on NBC). The interview functioned more as a career retrospective than a conversation, with Dave lamenting about his flaws and shying away from all of Tom’s attempts to praise his accomplishments. As it happened, it was fun to watch, but realizing that it would be the last time the two men would appear together, one can’t help but wish for more.

The goblins who control embedding video onto websites have been less than cooperative with the last of the three interview clips. Please click anywhere on this paragraph to be directed to the video clip, and be patient — it is a large file and will take several minutes to load.

Dave would periodically call into Tom’s show under various pseudonyms such as “Elliot from Gas City, Utah” and perform a little shtick, but these three interviews represent the sum total of the time the two spent together while they both worked for CBS. In early 1999, Snyder would leave CBS. “The Late Late Show” would adopt a less conversational tone, emphasizing comedy and bearing a closer resemblance to Dave’s late night show (and every other late night show at the time). Tom would appear on “The Late Show” as one of the substitute hosts who filled in for Dave as he recovered from heart surgery, but he was never again seen on camera with Dave.

I don’t believe these interviews are emblematic of anything specific, but they do represent a time and a place when two broadcasters with two different styles and sensibilities came together and talked about the nature of their art. Whether in the form of personal experiences, industry commentary, or professional highlights, anyone with any appreciation for the art form should be interested in what these two had to say.

Next time: Bob Costas