By Dom Serafini
At VideoAge, we recently received a copy of the new book, Carson The Magnificent, which we’ll soon be reviewing. It’s about the popular U.S. late-night talk-show host, Johnny Carson (1925-2005). The book was written by the late Bill Zehme (but concluded by Mike Thomas), and published by Simon & Schuster.
The Sunday, November 24 edition of The New York Times devoted the cover of its Arts & Leisure section and three interior pages to a look back at Carson’s Tonight Show, which he hosted on the NBC TV network from 1962 to1992. Before Carson, the show had been hosted by comedian Jack Paar.
Even though this reporter never met Carson in person, I had some nice experiences with him and his nephew Chris Carson, who became a client of VideoAge when he served as a marketing executive at King World Distribution Company.
My first direct encounter with Johnny Carson was when I launched the world’s first GameShow Magazine in June 1986. Even though 70 million U.S. viewers watched TV game shows every week at that time, the publication failed to find success at newsstands and closed after just nine issues. This happened despite the fact that the magazine received full support from Carson, who held the very first copy of GameShow Magazine in his hands on his TV show and gave it a nice, free plug.
Previously, while I was hosting a weekly community talk show on a local Viacom cable system in 1975, Carson came into the picture when I had one of Johnny’s favorite guests, the eccentric musician Tiny Tim (popularized by his 1969 song Tiptoe Through the Tulips), who in 1969 got married on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson — an event that attracted 45 million viewers on NBC.
Then in September 1986, GameShow Magazine published a picture (shown above) sent to us by Carson’s office staff that was never before seen and taken in 1959 when he was host of the game show Who Do You Trust on the ABC-TV Network.
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