Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201250404
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAY SHARBUTT ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"TODAY" WEATHER OBSERVER WILLARD SCOTT SAYS
"Today" weather observer Willard Scott says he's never won an audition. But he'll see a lot of people auditioning in 1992 - singers, jugglers, whistlers, aerobics stars of the future, and more.It's because he now has a second job - as host of "The New Original Amateur Hour." The series makes its debut Sunday at 9 p.m. on cable's The Family Channel, with each show repeated the following Saturday.
Scott's only fear about the new show is that "maybe it's too old-timey."
That may be true for younger network executives whose idea of classic nostalgia is a rerun of "thirtysomething." But his back-to-the-future adventure may well profit from the current wave of longing for a kinder, gentler yesteryear that already has provoked two Ed Sullivan retrospectives on CBS.
Scott's show was begat by the granddaddy of all audition shows - "Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour." That became "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour" after the good Major joined the Grand Army of the Hereafter in 1946.
The original started on NBC Radio - which NBC no longer owns - in 1934, the year of Scott's birth. Its young hopefuls included Frank Sinatra, singing with the Hoboken Four. The Mack version also was on radio.
But its longest run was on TV. It began there in 1947 and didn't die until 1970 after runs on the Dumont, NBC, ABC, and CBS networks. It is said a young man with a swivel-hip condition once auditioned for the TV version in the '50s, but was turned down. He was Elvis Presley.
The "New Original Amateur Hour," like the old, puts on a parade of showbiz hopefuls each week. Unlike those on the syndicated "Star Search," they must be "bona fide amateurs" who don't earn their living through performing.
Ten compete each week. The winner, chosen by the audience, gets a modest prize by today's standards - a sea cruise. Second and third-place winners get lesser awards in the shows, taped at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla.
All manner of mendicants have already tried, said Scott. Not all were accordion players attacking "Lady of Spain" on the stomach Steinway.
"We got one guy that plays whiskey bottles, a kid that clog-dances, and two thousand and one aerobics people," he said.
Not quite the cold-eyed, frozen-pose rockers of MTV. But that's the point.
"We're counting heavily on the nostalgia angle," says the ebullient Scott. Still, there are concessions to modern times. He says the new show is full of technological whizbang, compared to the old version, which "was very straight and simply produced."
Its pace also is far faster than the 1947-1970 model, so as to deal with the miniaturized attention span of today's TV audience.
"The interviews are no more than 15 to 25 seconds, so it's got the modern zap," he said. "Yet it's folksy and friendly, and naturally, I hug and kiss everybody."
It may mildly startle viewers to see Scott, a "Today" regular since 1980, appearing each week on the Family Channel, which is based in Virginia Beach, and serves 53.4 million homes.
But his NBC contract lets him do that, says Scott. "I could always do pilots [for other shows] and I could always do TV for cable. They just had the right of first refusal." He laughed. "They never took it."
He also is allowed to do commercials, unlike the other "Today" regulars. The show is produced by NBC News, which bars its correspondents and anchors from doing product endorsements.
"`We have a pretty good deal," he says of his arrangements with NBC, which recently gave him a "Today" contract that extends through 1995 and a four-day work week.