FOX's Joan Rivers / Chevy Chase Debacles

By Billy Ingram

By the mid-1980s, the Tonight show on NBC had been dominating the ratings for decades, easily vanquishing multiple attempts by the other networks to topple the 'King of Late Night' Johnny Carson. In 1986 Carson faced a formidable challenger when FOX hired away his permanent guest host, Joan Rivers, to go head to head against him at 11:30.

When it was announced that Rivers had signed on for her own talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, she phoned Carson. "The first person I called was Johnny," Rivers said. "And he hung up on me -- and never, ever spoke to me again. And then denied that I called him. I couldn’t figure it out. I would see him in a restaurant and go over and say hello. He wouldn’t talk to me.

"I kept saying, 'I don’t understand, why is he mad?' He was not angry at anybody else. I think he really felt because I was a woman that I just was his. That I wouldn’t leave him. I know this sounds very warped. But I don’t understand otherwise what was going on. For years, I thought that maybe he liked me better than the others. But I think it was a question of, 'I found you, and you’re my property.' He didn’t like that as a woman, I went up against him."

This promised to be a late night game changer while helping to establish a new TV network. Rivers, after all, was a proven winner. "And I was put up against him. In the press, he said, 'She didn’t call me, and she was so terrible.' When you’ve told the truth and you read a lie, there’s nothing you can do about it. To this day, I'm very angry about that. Don’t f---in' lie. You’re making, what, $300 million a year? What are you talking about? And I was going on Fox. Fox didn’t even have call letters at that point. Fox wasn’t Fox. Fox was six stupid little stations."

The first episode of Rivers' talk show was a star studded hour with guests David Lee Roth, Elton John, Pee Wee Herman, and Cher. It easily beat a Carson rerun.

The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers struggled for two seasons with tepid and tumbling ratings. After many subsequent failed talk shows and other attempts, FOX abandoned late night in 1988 but returned to the field in 1993, the year after Carson retired, with an event level bomb.

After Dolly Parton, the network's first choice, passed on hosting her own talk show, FOX went with The Chevy Chase Show starring the comic actor famous for movie roles in National Lampoon's Vacation series, Fletch, and Caddyshack. One thing Chevy Chase wasn't noted for was being off the cuff funny, a required skill for talk show hosts.

The first episode encapsulates exactly why the program didn't work. Awkward pauses in the monologue - was he on the verge of tears in the opening? Like he's been bestowed a great honor? Pantomiming to a Lambert, Hendricks and Ross tune that he claimed to be singing was like an idea one would dream up after a night of cocaine.

In a nod to his Saturday Night Live years, Chase presented the news in the same manner / format as he did with Weekend Update a decade earlier.

Chase reportedly signed a $3 million deal with FOX. Despite spending an additional $1 million to renovate the Aquarius Theater, changing its name to the Chevy Chase Theater, The Chevy Chase Show was mercilessly canceled after five weeks on the air. Which has to rank as one of the most expensive television shows of all time.

The Chevy Chase Show - First Episode (September 7, 1993)

The Chevy Chase Show | Forgotten Failures

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