Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 11, 1995 TAG: 9501120020
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: VERNE GAY NEWSDAY
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
``I take great pleasure,'' he says with that typical Snyder directness, ``in trying to make the people I love - and that love me - happy.''
These people include his mother, now living in a California nursing home. ``I spent Thanksgiving with her for the first time in 25 years,'' he says. ``It brought me great joy.'' They include his only granddaughter: ``To make her smile makes me very, very happy.''
And what about that new 12:37 a.m. late-night show on CBS - which marks Snyder's return to network television for the first time in over a decade and represents one of the most stunning comebacks in TV history?
Oh, that's nice too, he says.
Tom Snyder: He's nice. Or he sure seems nice. What ever became of that beast with the bushy eyebrows? What has happened to that fire-breathing, smoke-exhaling loudmouth? Who can forget Snyder's ill-fated return to New York TV 10 years ago, which was accompanied by a promotion campaign notable for its curious blend of bad taste and truthfulness: He's bold. He's brash. He's smart. He's arrogant. He's a windbag.
A new campaign might just as easily read: He's kind. He's gentle. He loves puppies. He opens doors for old ladies. Maybe years of living under the hot California sun does that to some people. Or maybe he's simply adapted to the '90s. (Another slogan? ``Tom Snyder: A '90s Kind of Guy.'')
Or maybe - just maybe - Tom Snyder is a really, truly different fellow. A chastened fellow. Someone with nothing left to prove anymore.
Monday night at 12:37, when ``The Late, Late Show With Tom Snyder'' kicked off, viewers did not notice anything terribly amiss. (At least those viewers who never watched his CNBC show and haven't seen him since ``Tomorrow'' went off the air in 1981). Those eyebrows, ever formidable, are still black as crows, but that characteristic helmet-like hair has turned a metallic gray. He's lost five pounds, which makes his gangly frame looks more like a loosely assembled Erector set than a human body. Yet that voice still booms and the laugh (even without the aid of cigarettes, which Snyder swore off several years ago) still has that wondrously wheezy quality with just a hint of gravel.
Some sentimental observers may think there's a sort of cosmic justice in Snyder's return to the big time. After all, he has recaptured the time period that David Letterman took from him back in the early '80s after he was fired by NBC Chairman Fred Silverman.
But that, says Snyder, is mostly bunk. ``I don't see it as poetic justice or vindication. I see it as serendipity. As in `what goes around comes around.' As in `Tom, you're a lucky guy.' As in, `Tom, you should be grateful.' And I am.''
What is remarkable - even mind-boggling - is that Snyder is back on network TV at all. There is a story (perhaps apocryphal, but probably not) that in the mid-'80s Snyder pitched a show to a TV executive. This executive looked at Snyder as though he were trying to sell him an Edsel, and then intoned that the former NBC star was all washed up. It was one of the low points in Snyder's life. For the first time, the newsman-cum-TV-talk-impresario whose ego was once as big as Rockefeller Center suspected that the executive was right. It was over.
Snyder calls the final days at NBC ``very sobering ... When I was leaving, I said to my secretary, `Ya know, now that everybody in broadcasting knows that Snyder's available, we're going to have to put in a separate switchboard to handle all the calls coming in offering me a job.'
``Well, we didn't have to put in a separate switchboard.''
In the '70s, Snyder was one of the brightest stars in the network firmament, even if some network executives considered him obnoxious and difficult to work with. At one time or another, he had been considered a likely replacement for Johnny Carson (on ``The Tonight Show'') or John Chancellor (on ``NBC Nightly News'') or Tom Brokaw (on ``Today''). The final decision, it had seemed, was up to him. But by the early '80s, he was a network has-been, which made Snyder's crash-and-burn memorable - and pathetic.
Andy Friendly, head of programming for CNBC who bears as much responsibility as anybody for the comeback of Snyder, says that ``he's the George Foreman of broadcasting. But [the CBS show] is even more dramatic because Tom was really convinced a few years ago that his career may have been over. He had some real doubts about it, but I never did and I think the people around him still knew he had it.''
Born in Milwaukee 58 years ago, and trained by Jesuits, Snyder got a part-time job at a local radio station while attending Marquette, then dropped out of college for a reporting job at a TV station in Georgia (he got fired after belching on the air and blaming his gas attack on something he had eaten at the Howard Johnson's across the street - which also happened to be owned by the station manager). In the '60s he held a succession of TV news jobs around the country and eventually landed at Philadelphia's KYW, where the characteristic Snyder style - at turns, witty, acerbic and nasty - came to fruition.
In 1970, Snyder hit the big time as an anchor on Los Angeles station, KNBC - a perennial loser of a station that hadn't won the local news race in two decades. Snyder changed all that.
He then got picked by the bosses in New York to head up a new post-``Tonight'' project simply titled ``Tomorrow,'' which premiered Oct. 15, 1973, and would become a much-praised, much-vilified and much-parodied late-night fixture for the next eight years.
When the show was canceled in early '82, Snyder was cut loose too.
Later he got a job as a late-night talk show host on the ABC Radio Network in the mid-'80s. ABC canceled the show, and Snyder was back on the street. But not for long. Friendly - who had been a producer on ``Tomorrow'' and had become CNBC's programming boss - called his mentor and offered a job on CNBC.
Then last March, Snyder got another unexpected call - this one from another ``Tomorrow'' alumnus, Robert Morton, co-executive producer of ``Late Show With David Letterman.'' In his negotiations with CBS, Letterman got the right to program the 12:35 a.m. time slot.
Morton, who'll produce Snyder's late show with partner Peter Lassally, says, ``Snyder's still the biggest guy you'll ever meet. His voice is bigger than anyone else's in the room. His laugh is bigger than anyone else's. He's a head taller than anyone else. When you sit down with him, you feel like you're a guest on his show. He's made for TV.''
Snyder took months to decide. ``I didn't need it financially or professionally. ... I don't need any more limousines. I don't need anymore billboards.'' He signed a four-year contract anyway. ``It wasn't because of youthful ambition, and striving and climbing to get to what you perceive as the top,'' he explains. ``This was an opportunity to return to late-night TV [and] there's something terribly ironic in following the man who followed you in late night at NBC.''
by CNB