A lot of people think that late-night TV means Letterman and Conan. These people are amateurs.
The real late night starts in earnest after Conan signs off. This is the vast, unconquered frontier -- the realm of infomercials, re-runs from the '80s, re-runs from two hours ago and, for all you pay-cable subscribers, soft-core porn (or so I'm told! Ha ha ha!). This is a different kind of TV: no Must-See block schedules, just pure, untamed programming.
After years of enjoying "true" late-night television I've developed a condition in which I'm unable to fall asleep before about 3:00 a.m. This is unfortunate, for late night isn't designed for the awake, it's meant for the terminally groggy.
The ideal late-night viewer flips the channels only through involuntary spasms, dividing his attention between finding entertainment and staving off the immense temptation of just going to bed already. He nods off as a matter of course, typically waking to bewilderment at a live-action musical starring Kirk Cameron and John Davidson.
I use the male pronoun because women are generally equipped with highly developed feminine instincts, such that when they must hold their eyelids open manually, they know (instinctively, mind you) it is time to sleep. Barely conscious late-night viewing is primarily a male phenomenon.
So it's 2:30 a.m., you're in front of the TV, you may very well be drunk. Ideally, you're wondering why. No matter, the question now is what to watch?
For those of you with decent cable (and uninterested in the aforementioned "mature" entertainment), Comedy Central is a late-night gold mine.
I don't think they have a late-night schedule, just a coked-up intern in the control room eating Fritos and throwing whatever tapes he wants to see in the trusty Broadcast-O-Matic. Cartoons are common fare on Sunday nights. "The Critic" and "Duckman" are solid early '90s fare that suit the Monday morning procrastinator well.
Recently on Comedy Central, I stumbled onto a mini-marathon of "Police Squad," the Leslie Nielsen cop show that spawned the "Naked Gun" movie series. This is a fine selection from the "blast from the past" category, which makes up a good portion of programming after dark. Jonesing for some Willis or Alex P. Keaton? This is when to find it. Scott Baio fans must never go to bed. I don't know what TV stations filled late night with before they had campy '80s re-runs to tap into.
Entire channels have been based on this concept. Nick at Nite was a nice idea, but then everybody found out about it and "TV Land" was born. One of the unique characteristics of true late-night is the eerie sensation that you are the only person watching this program. Nick at Nite is too popular for this. Plus, it's the easy way out. If you're not seeing a Craftmatic 2000 ad every five minutes, you're not trying hard enough.
That's right, the more obscure, the better. I was pretty proud of "Police Squad." Glancing down to the lower-right corner of this page, I'm reminded that "Mr. Belvedere" would be a good find, too. Infomercials don't count; those are boring at any time of day.
Despite the wealth of 500+ cable channels, Dartmouth cable still offers some late-night potential. Our NBC affiliate signs off after Conan with the national anthem, a rare sight these days. Most NBC stations air the abysmal half-hour talk show "Later," and then re-run the programming from earlier that night starting with the 11:00 news. Film 45 students will note that this makes for an interesting trip through four-dimensional television space, although having to watch Jay Leno cancels any pleasurable mind-bending effects.
The local CBS airs some mundane entertainment news magazines, and the novelty of the international channels wears off fast, with the exception of Spanish-language game shows.
ABC saves the day, or at least the early morning, with "World News Now." This three-hour (2:00-5:00 a.m.) show looks like your run-of-the-mill news program, but after five minutes you see that it's something quite different. The male anchor, Anderson Cooper, is more likeable than any of the network morning or evening news personalities. But I watch more for his colleague, Alison Stewart, the quintessential smart and sexy anchor -- the sexy got her a job at MTV until ABC discovered the smart.
This is probably not the best place to get updated on national and world events -- the "news" portions of the shows are so rapid-fire and condensed that they make the "NBC Nightly News" look like the McNeil-Lehrer report. This makes sense, of course, because "World News Now" isn't appropriately titled in the first place. How much world news is happening "now" when "now" is between 2:00 and 5:00 in the morning? The only scoop the show has ever gotten was when the Japanese government woes were generating a ruckus across the Interntional Date Line.
No, "World News Now" is about the oddities. A correspondent who makes political commentary while playing an accordion. A British finance correspondent who is constantly (and amusingly) plagued by the trans-Atlantic satellite delay. The weather forecast consisting of a "national temperature index," the meaning of which is debated nightly.
My favorite segment is the "Papers" portion of the show, in which Anderson and Alison (they would want you to call them by their first names, I'm sure) flip through The New York Times and others in search of the fun headlines of the day.
Best of all, "World News Now" barely even realizes it's a news show. There's none of the ego of Tom Brokaw or the strained whimsy of Charlie Gibson. A great moment occurred recently when Alison wondered out loud whether "anybody was even watching."
At this hour? I doubt it.
