Poor Jimmy Breslin. After 36 years as a sports reporter, crusading columnist and New York City character, he finally lands his own network TV show, only to find himself at the end of a very long line. In New York, for instance, the Friday edition of his late-night talk show does not air until Monday. Then a viewer has to outlast an ABC Monday-night football game that usually wraps up after midnight, a half-hour local newscast, Nightline with Ted Koppel and Nightlife with David Brenner before Breslin's mug finally appears on the screen, somewhere around 2 a.m. The graveyard shift has so annoyed Breslin that he complained about it in a New York Daily News column, implying that he will give up the show at the end of his 13-week contract. "I do not intend," he said, "to be publicly embarrassed in my own city any longer than that."
Breslin should feel at home: the crush of shows elbowing for space in the late-night arena is starting to look like the 5 p.m. commuter crowd at Penn Station. A year ago at this time, the field was largely the domain of NBC's Johnny Carson-David Letterman duo and ABC's Nightline. But Joan Rivers, who raucously departed as the Tonight show's permanent guest host last spring, has just launched her own syndicated talk show, telecast live at 11 p.m. EST and currently seen on 99 stations. Brenner's Nightlife, another syndicated entry, is now in its second month on 108 stations. ABC, meanwhile, has enlivened the post-Koppel hours with a pair of newcomers: The Dick Cavett Show on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Jimmy Breslin's People on Thursdays and Fridays. Linda Ellerbee is expected to join them starting in January. Even CBS, which has traditionally settled for reruns after the local news, has refurbished its late-night schedule with a trio of original crime dramas produced in Canada.
So far none of the newcomers have come close to upending Carson, still the after-hours ratings king. The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, the flagship of Rupert Murdoch's new Fox Broadcasting Co., has done respectably in the ratings, but is well behind Carson, averaging a 4.9 rating in twelve prime urban markets, compared with Carson's 7.5. Brenner's numbers have been more disappointing, hovering around 2.4. Cavett and Breslin (whose shows are designed to air at midnight EST, but have been pushed later by several major , ABC affiliates to make room for Brenner's show) are lagging farther behind.
The participants in this nighttime battle royal, however, insist that it is not a duel to the death. "We don't see ourselves as pitted against Johnny Carson," says Barry Diller, chairman of Fox Inc., Rivers' corporate parent. "We're just aiming at improving the performance of the independent stations that carry us." Rivers, who roused Carson's ire last spring when she left for the competition without telling him first, is also sounding a conciliatory note: "My people will watch me; Johnny's people will watch him . . . We can all make it; the pie just has to be cut a little smaller." How many pieces the pie can accommodate remains to be seen. Cavett, who is returning to ABC after sojourns on PBS and cable, observes that it is "kind of silly" to have so many talk shows. "We could all just have them come from the same set," he quips. "Do you realize how much money we would save?"