'Midnight Special' Rocked Late Night TV: Facts And Stories

By | August 17, 2020

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Left: Psychedelic soul group Sly & The Family Stone performs on the TV show 'The Midnight Special' in 1971 in Burbank, California. Right: Host Wolfman Jack. Sources: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images; actorz.ru

The Midnight Special was a music-oriented TV show that happened late at night, and was performed live -- breaking the established rules of network programming just by its mere existence.

See, in the early ‘70s late night TV wasn’t a thing. Once Carson bid the audience adieu on The Tonight Show there was no reason to keep watching, which is exactly what drove Burt Sugarman to create NBC didn’t want the show so Burt Sugarman paid to produce it himself NBC didn’t want the show so Burt Sugarman paid to produce it himself. He presumed (quite rightly) that music fans and night owls would respond to a weekly showcase of modern music and comedy. On The Midnight Special, bands played live, they played loud, and they played. Even though this groundbreaking variety series was on the air for nearly a decade, it doesn’t get the attention it deserves for jumpstarting all night television.

NBC didn’t want the show so Burt Sugarman paid to produce it himself

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source: NBC

Burt Sugarman was producing television long before he came up with the idea for The Midnight Special, so when he realized that there was money to be made in an after midnight variety show he knew what he was talking about. In 1972, television went off the air at 1 A.M. at the latest, it’s not that the networks didn’t have anything to show, they just didn’t think that anyone was TV that late at night.

Sugarman pitched NBC on a weekly variety show that would play after The Tonight Show, they rejected him outright but that didn’t stop him from producing the show. Rather than rest on his laurels Sugarman convinced Chevrolet to sponsor the pilot episode of The Midnight Special and he took it to air.

The pilot featured superstar John Denver in the host spot with with performances by Mama Cass, Harry Chapin, Helen Reddy, The Everly Brothers, the Isley Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, and War. Sugarman was not messing around with the first episode of his baby. The ratings were so good for this self produced episode that NBC reversed their decision and agreed to produce an hourly version of the show.