Posted by chicagomedia.org on May 29, 2009 at 10:37:43:
Curtain call protocol: Leno an exception
Phil Rosenthal | Tribune Media
May 29, 2009
It will be less a farewell to the millions of viewers he ushers to bed each night than to the late-night institution it was his long-held ambition to preside over.
Jay Leno will say goodbye to NBC's "The Tonight Show" on Friday, 17 years after he replaced Johnny Carson as host, no doubt echoing the thanks Carson offered his audience in 1992 for making his run on the program both worthwhile and possible.
Not everyone in broadcasting gets that kind of closure with their audiences.
Like prime-time dramas that end with a cliffhanger produced before it was known there would no more episodes, many endings are unacknowledged in radio and television. Many personalities sign off for the day only to be told they have signed off for good.
"It's a question of how much you trust them and what the circumstances are," said longtime radio exec John Gehron, now an industry consultant. "Often it ends badly, and they're never welcome back in the station again. It's like being fired and escorted from the building."
Actually, sometimes, it's exactly like that. Upon being intercepted by management while preparing for his shift and told he was part of companywide Clear Channel layoffs in January, Rick O'Dell described stuffing as much as he could from his 20 years at WNUA-FM 95.5 into a gym bag and being walked to the elevator.
But jazz legend Ramsey Lewis, WNUA's morning host, got to say farewell last Friday as the station switched from smooth jazz after 22 years to a Spanish format.
Longtime mid-morning hosts Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey announced that same morning that Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.'s WGN-AM 720 was dropping their program after 20 years. This was a shock to listeners, but the co-hosts said they had known for three weeks the end was coming. This gave them time to prepare some greatest-hits clips to pepper a moving finale.
"I heard more about their show after they did that [final program] than I have in the 20 years it was on the air," said longtime radio personality and occasional Tribune columnist Steve Dahl, off the air since signing off in December from CBS Radio's WJMK-FM 104.3. "I think that's why management people are hesitant to let you do it, because it makes you really sympathetic."
For some, the unannounced breakup with fans is seen as the easiest if not altogether cleanest way to end those relationships.
"You do invite more trouble if you allow somebody to say farewell," said Kevin Metheny, WGN's program director. "But here's the real disappointing, sad truth in my view. Over 90 percent of the time, it doesn't make any difference. We've kind of minimized and marginalized ourselves as broadcasters and performers. ... [Many performers] don't really create a meaningful bond with the listener."
With performers who do forge that kind of relationship with their audience, not allowing them to say adieu can be an a-don't.
"After they got enough hatred or anger or whatever you want to call the feedback they got, they called and made a nice offer for us to come on," said radio veteran Eddie Volkman, who, with broadcast partner Joe "JoBo" Bohannon, was taken off the air by CBS Radio's WBBM-FM 96.3 in November with no advance warning.
"But it was not on the air live. It was to help with the year-end countdown. ... JoBo and I were both at a loss. What would we really say? Here's No. 78, and we remember those great times at B96? It didn't seem right."
Some valedictions are more memorable -- and graceful -- than others.
CBS TV and radio host Arthur Godfrey infamously handed increasingly popular singer Julius La Rosa his walking papers on the air in 1953 so abruptly La Rosa didn't seem to realize he had been fired until the show was over. Godfrey, whose public image was more paternal and friendly than that, faced a serious backlash.
Tom Snyder took time on his CBS "Late Late Show" finale in 1999 to explain a grudge he had been nursing with CNN's Larry King, how he felt he had been wronged and then let it go.
In the final week of his short-lived 1992 syndicated talk show for Tribune Co., Dennis Miller dedicated each night to one of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of coping with grief and tragedy -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance -- before pretending to be airlifted out by chopper at the end amid explosions a la "Apocalypse Now."
Leno is unlikely to be so ambitious or dramatic. He isn't leaving television or even NBC. He's shifting to prime time.
Dahl, who has been blindsided by dismissals, known he was doing final shows, had plans for one final show upended and once campaigned to be sent packing, said he never thinks of his final shows as truly final in that he always expects to resurface somewhere.
"If you ask people to take the time to listen to you and become a fan, you owe them an explanation," Dahl said. "But when it's all said and done, I prefer not to know [ahead of time]. The burden of knowing that and knowing at the end of your show you're going to have to do something that's meaningful, that's onerous."
Howard Stern, whose radio career has been marked by sudden exits, was allowed to remain on CBS Radio for months leading up to his departure for satellite radio, culminating in a 2005 parade and rally speech about how he, his show and his audience were the last of a dying breed. CBS profited from his presence all that time, but the decision to keep Stern on was dubious, especially when its post-Stern strategy unraveled.
Metheny, who long ago butted heads with Stern at WNBC-AM, said that as a program director, "You clearly have an obligation to your employer to avoid casting them in a negative light, and you also have an obligation to avoid creating unnecessary drama and consternation for the listener."
One of the industry's best final broadcast stories involved a disc jockey known as Joey Reynolds at WKBW-AM in Buffalo back in the '60s. Having learned he would be axed the next day, Reynolds stewed through his final late-night shift until the final five minutes. He explained to listeners that he would be leaving the station, promised he would resurface and signed off.
"Then," Metheny said, "he went and nailed his shoes to the general manager's door with a note, saying, 'Fill these, [jerk]!' "