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The Midnight Special
NOTE. This article originally appeared in Television Chronicles
in February 1997.
The Midnight Special no longer airs on VH-1.
However, select episodes of the series are available on tape or DVD
For more information, visit
MidnightSpecial.com.
VH-1 is bringing back one of television’s groundbreaking programs:
The
Midnight Special (1973-1981). The cabler has acquired
80 of the 450 episodes, all digitally remastered and edited into 30- and
60-minute segments from the original 90-minute broadcasts. The weekly rock
concert taped exclusively for NBC was also network TV’s first attempt at
"late-late night" programming, originally airing Friday nights at 1:00
a.m., following The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
 At a time when there were still only three networks in "network
television," The Midnight Special "was the only shot at
network TV for rock bands to play live," recalls Paul Brownstein, whose
Paul Brownstein Productions distributes the series to VH-1 for Burt Sugarman
(who owns the show). "Rock" in those days was still a catch-all phrase
encompassing many musical genres: country, soul, rhythm and blues, pop oldies,
disco, and heavy metal (or "hard rock," as it was known back then). Midnight
Special showcased artists from all realms, including Rod Stewart, Aerosmith,
Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Helen Reddy, Prince, Tom Petty, Donna Summer,
Steppenwolf, The Jacksons, and Elton John.
"Back then," relates
Brownstein, "a band would come to town on
Saturday and lip-synch their hit on American Bandstand, then go to the
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Sunday and do Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which was syndicated. If they really wanted major television exposure,
though, they’d have to go to NBC in Burbank and do The Midnight Special,
because that was the only opportunity for a network TV gig at the time. They
would perform with live vocals, and the concert would air that Friday night –
before a huge audience." Its lead-in, of course, was The Tonight Show,
which averaged a whopping 50+ share every weeknight.
It was Burt Sugarman, who had provided countless game shows and music/variety
hours for the network, who first pitched the idea of a weekly program that would
follow Carson to take advantage of Johnny’s enormous audience. Since there was
no network programming on after 1:00 a.m. in those days, there’d be no
competition. Nonetheless, NBC initially rejected the idea.
Sugarman, though, believed there was a gold mine waiting to be tapped – he
bought the air time himself, then sold it to Chevrolet, the show’s first
sponsor. When Midnight Special premiered in February 1973 to huge
numbers, NBC decided Sugarman "may have been on to something after all, and
so they renegotiated," relates Brownstein. "But he took a huge leap of
faith in creating this venue for music. You’ve got to give him full
credit." Indeed, the success of Midnight Special begat The
Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, then later Late Night with David Letterman.
Midnight Special was influential in other ways. "Back then, you’d
never see rock bands play on daytime talk shows," Brownstein recalls.
"Today, you can see hard rock on Rosie O’Donnell at three in the
afternoon. But in those days, at three in the afternoon, you had Mike Douglas
singing with Tony Orlando. Big difference. Johnny never had anyone hipper than
John Davidson or Barry Manilow – even though Johnny himself was listening to
hipper stuff (as evidenced by the cassettes you’d see in his car while you
were on the NBC tour). The reason being, the ‘older generation’ was still
booking the show, whereas we see top music stars on all the major talk shows
today because more of the producers have grown up with rock ‘n’ roll."
Brownstein will soon be launching the
Midnight
Special web site, a library
listing every performer who appeared on the show. "We also eventually hope
to have audio and video clips available, but that’s probably a couple of years
away," he reports. "But in the meantime, we do have some downloadable
stills available on our home page at
www.tvclassics.com."
 Brownstein also distributes many other TV classics, such as
The Sonny and
Cher Show on Nick at Nite’s TV Land, and American Bandstand, The
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Dick Cavett Show, and other shows
that are part of VH-1’s Archives.
www.tvclassics.com
includes links to those cable channels, plus other fun stuff. "For example,
every guest star on the Smothers Brothers show hummed the theme song at the end
of the show," says Paul. "They put together, with razor blades and
two-inch videotape, a montage [of the guest stars humming]. We will have that
available on our web page as a video clip."
Selected videos are also available for purchase, including episodes of
The
Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, several Debbie Reynolds performance specials,
and Richard Burton’s 1964 Broadway version of Hamlet, considered by
many critics and scholars to be the quintessential performance of Shakespeare’s
classic tragedy. "Frailty, thy name is woman" and other famous
soliloquies can be downloaded from the Brownstein Productions page. In addition,
excerpts from an interview with Burton, along with news on the upcoming
exclusive webcast of Hamlet, can be found at the
Alternative
Entertainment Network.
Text
(c) 1997 by Ed Robertson. All rights reserved.
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