Mike Still Makes Your Day, Page 5

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Mike Makes Your Day V CNN and the '80s *The Mike Douglas Entertainment Hour had hardly torn down its sets before the fledgling Cable News Network, barely two years old, dropped one of its first major bombshells.

CNN founder Ted Turner told Broadcasting he was signing Mike Douglas to host a nightly entertainment news/celebrity interview hour. "Name recognition and two decades of credibility with American families. That's what Mike Douglas brings to CNN," said Turner.

Mike Douglas People Now would air at midnight in the Eastern time zone but in prime time on the west coast where Mike now called home. Mike began each show with a five-minute rundown of headlines from the Hollywood scene. The rest of the show was peppered with one or two celebrity interviews in a format not too unlike Tom Snyder's Tomorrow on NBC. This would be a quieter Mike Douglas effort. No studio audience or live orchestra.

Contrary to the waning days of the afternoon show, People Now received good reviews. Variety said Mike "looked re-energized" and called the format a possible key to CNN gaining new and more widespread cable affiliates.

Unfortunately, for viewers who were just happy to see Mike continuing on TV, trouble was brewing. For one thing, Mike was having difficulty attracting top-level stars---in part, because CNN was not yet on a number of L.A.-area cable systems and a number of agents weren't interested in seeing their clients appear on a network which provided limited exposure. Mike would get younger performers on the way up, such as David Hasselhoff of Knight Rider and Pat Sajak of Wheel of Fortune. But few of TV's big names offered to venture to CNN's nondescript Hollywood studio for a live 9 p.m. (PT) interview. Ironically, as Mike was beginning People Now, Group W was announcing the cancellation of The John Davidson Show, deciding instead to put its efforts behind Hour Magazine, its daily talk/service offering with Gary Collins.

By the end of 1982, Mike had become discontent. Unhappy with the poor studio lighting and makeup and probably missing the flavor of afternoon television, Mike wanted out. He and Turner amicably negotiated a release. From January-June 1983, People Now was taken over by TBS favorite Bill Tush.

Though viewers kept expecting Mike to pop up again, the Mike Douglas era of television had ended. But Mike published a best-seller through Word Books, When the Going Gets Tough, which detailed the Christian faith of Mike and Gen Douglas, along with memorable highlights of his career. A well-remembered 1983 three hours of radio with Larry King on King's old Mutual overnight show allowed viewers a rare chance to talk to Mike in an up close fashion.

Occasionally, Mike's name would resurface as a host of a possible series. In the spring of 1984, Mike was listed as a candidate to host a revival of $100,000 Name That Tune (for which he would have been ideally suited). But negotiations with '70s host Tom Kennedy, Peter Marshall and Mike all failed, according to Variety, and the slot went to veteran Dating Game host Jim Lange.

In 1985-86, with Pat Robertson's CBN beginning to venture into limited original production, Mike was listed in Broadcasting as host of The Captain's Table, a scheduled afternoon half-hour of celebrity interviews at a posh Los Angeles restaurant. But the show never surfaced. Entertainment Tonight weekend host Dixie Whatley ultimately emceed a short-lived version of the show under the same title.

Mike, seeing the burgeoning market for video cassettes, believed his audience would enjoy a package of classic Best of Mike tapes, featuring memorable musical and comedy performances and interviews from the 1961-80 series. To his shock, Group W had erased many of his old shows to videotape newscasts on KYW-TV. From the early '70s on, the show was majority owned by Mike Douglas Entertainments, Inc. Mike filed a $10 million lawsuit in the 1990s against Westinghouse over the loss of the tapes, a case which is still pending. Fortunately, some of the surviving Douglas shows are surfacing, including a boxed set of the week of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's co-hosting for the home market and a series of rock performers who appeared on The Mike Douglas Show in a series for VH-1.

Predominantly, Mike was only seen in the remainder of the '80s in an insurance commercial for senior citizens. Then, he dropped from view. Daytime television in the late '80s shifted to the origins of trash talk as Oprah Winfrey, who originally allowed herself to drift into melodramatic, victim-oriented conversation before calling a halt to it in 1994, became the new queen of daytime and the likes of Geraldo Rivera and Sally Jessy Raphael would convince half the nation they were in need of psychiatric help. Mike Douglas increasingly became a name of nostalgia for a medium headed down a road of dysfunction. But Mike would eventually have a new chance to occasionally make your day.