THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 13, 1994 TAG: 9406110030
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
DATELINE: 940613 LENGTH: Medium
You've seen the smirky, slightly preppy Greg Kinnear on ``Talk Soup,'' and starting at 1:35 a.m. Tuesday, you'll be able to see him on WAVY (Channel 10) doing the very thing he's been mocking all these months on E! Entertainment Television - hosting a talk show.
{REST} ``Later With Greg Kinnear'' has finally arrived on WAVY, months after it was launched by NBC. Now wouldn't it be grand if the other network show being preempted in this market, ``NYPD Blue,'' showed up on WVEC to make the summer sweet for people who like to watch good cop shows?
WAVY has been running a talk show hosted by Bertice Berry at 1:35 a.m., but it will soon be history, so the NBC affiliate turned to Kinnear. Now you'll be able to judge for yourself if Kinnear is as cool and confident as the critics say he is, if he is ready to move up a notch and replace Conan O'Brien at 12:35 or even Jay Leno at 11:35.
Kinnear, who lived for a time in Northern Virginia when his father worked for the State Department in Washington, said he's not overworked doing ``Later'' and continuing to host ``Talk Soup,'' which is one of cable television's most watched shows.
If you've never seen ``Talk Soup,'' you've missed the chance to see America's misfits on parade. The E! staff selects the best moments from the day's talk shows, and Kinnear takes it from there. If he lifts one eyebrow, he's reacting to some common craziness such as sisters sleeping with the same man.
If both eyebrows rise up, it's ``a highlight to end all highlights,'' according to Kinnear.
He plans to do both jobs indefinitely.
``I genuinely like `Talk Soup' and genuinely like doing it,'' Kinnear said. ``NBC was cool enough to let me work things out and continue doing `Talk Soup.' I think both shows complement each other.''
Every once in a while, the ``Talk Soup'' producers show a clip extracted from Kinnear's show on NBC. To their credit, they don't overdo it.
Kinnear, a bachelor, is young and healthy, so it's not a great strain to host both shows in one day. He does ``Later'' in Burbank, Calif., which is less than a half-hour's drive away from the E! studios where ``Talk Soup'' is taped.
He generally does ``Talk Soup'' in the mornings before heading for NBC to prepare for ``Later,'' which is taped around 7 p.m., Los Angeles time.
``It makes for a long day, but I'm up for it,'' said Kinnear.
He's not exactly an overnight sensation, but Kinnear's star has risen quickly. Fox had him under contract to do a show called ``Best of the Worst,'' but let him go when that show expired after 14 weeks.
The executives at Fox are kicking themselves for allowing that to happen because Kinnear would have been the perfect choice to succeed Chevy Chase in late-night programming on that network. After Fox, he worked for Movietime, the cable network that became E! Entertainment Television three years ago, and helped to conceive ``Talk Soup.''
``Our original intent was to take a serious look at talk shows,'' he said.
And what happened?
``We discovered it was hard to be serious about shows that feature guests such as Mr. Lifto, who attached clips to his nipples and proceeded to lift a couple of 120-pound concrete blocks with his breasts.''
Kinnear's eyebrows really soared when he saw Mr. Lifto do that.
by CNB