Andy Sullivan: Against the Grain

Thu, 01/05/2023 - 9:56am — Diane Dyer

Happy New Year! With a new year comes a new series from yours truly. This will be called From the Vault. Music videos are few and far between on places such as MTV, VH1 and CMT. Once staples of these channels, the music video has pretty much gone to the wayside in favor of classic tv shows (CMT still shows old episodes of Roseanne) and more reality dating shows than you can shake a stick at (thanks for that, MTV and VH1). These days, you can basically only find music videos if you go on YouTube. That’s why I love YouTube. There was a time, however, that you could find music videos on network television.

Friday Night Videos (later becoming Friday Night and then Late Friday) was an American music video show that was broadcast on NBC from July 29, 1983, to May 24, 2002. It was the network’s attempt to capitalize on the emerging popularity of music videos as seen on MTV. From January 5, 2001-August 30, 2002, the show changed its name to Late Friday, showcasing new stand-up comedy talent with original video from sets from a stand-up club type setting with an established comedian as guest host.

Friday Night Videos was initially produced by Dick Ebersol. From 1974-1981 in his role as Director of Late Night Programming at NBC, he co-produced The Midnight Special with series creator Burt Sugarman. Ebersol departed The Midnight Special in 1981 to take over as executive producer of his co-creation with Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live. Upon doing this, Midnight Special was cancelled and replaced by Canadian-import sketch comedy program SCTV, which turned out to be a placeholder for NBC’s late Friday night/early Saturday morning schedule for a 2-year period.

Beginning on October 18, 1985, FNV had celebrity guests as weekly hosts. Guest hosts would last through March 29, 1991 and would include: Sam Kinison, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil, Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Landesberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jay Leno, Ahmad Rahsad and Phylicia Rashad, Bobby Brown and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon just to name a few.

The name was shortened to Friday Night in 1994. The show was retooled, moved from NBC Studios in Burbank to New York. It became less of a music video show and more of a general entertainment and variety show. The old Video Vote segment was brought back and renamed Friday Night Jukebox.

In 2000, despite the show having its highest ratings in years, it was again reformatted by NBC for budgetary reasons, occasioned in part by a minor economic recession at the time. Under that title, Friday Night’s last broadcast was December 29. On January 5, 2001, the show returned under the name Late Friday. Discontinuing the music and feature segments entirely, the show now solely revolved around stand-up comedians performing their set routines (think Comedy Central before the channel existed). Late Friday continued until Last Call with Carson Daly was expanded to five nights a week in May 2002. The show had begun in January of that year as a Monday-Thursday (Tuesday-Friday mornings) strip at 1;30 am eastern. NBC opted not to relocate Late Friday and dropped the program after a 19-year run, the last 16 months or so under its final format. The cancellation marked the end of 29 years of NBC scheduling a weekly Friday late-night music or comedy variety show. Since then, the former Friday Night timeslot was filled with A Little Late with Lilly Singh after Last Call ended in 2019. A Little Late didn’t exactly continue the proud Friday Night Videos and Carson Daly tradition: Singh’s show only ran for 2 seasons. At which time NBC gave back the former timeslot to its affiliates. (www.en.wikipedia.org)