The UK has flirted with nightly chat shows since the days of Simon Dee and Wogan, but no-one's had the guts to go Monday to Friday with the same host - yet in America, it's a must for channels of even medium ambition. The guests are usually "free", on plugging tours - success comes from the way the host uses or abuses them, bookended by shots of the video or book cover. It's currently a changing landscape, with Jimmy Fallon, who's taken over from Jay Leno, soaring in the ratings; and Jon Stewart's Daily Show, on Comedy Central, disrupting things with sharp takes on serious news and media stories.
Simon Dee with Dee Time was a simple aping of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. It came twice a week (from Manchester, with no apparent fuss in getting guests) from April 1967. In September that year Bill Cotton switched it to a weekly Saturday evening slot and move production to London. Terry Wogan, after various weekly tv slots, ran three nights a week from 1985 to 1992 at the Television Theatre, until the slots were taken over for ex-pat soap opera Eldorado.
The One Show, half-chat show and half half-baked version of Nationwide, runs Monday to Friday, but you'd hardly say the presenters had "edge". With all the channels at the disposal of the BBC, ITV, C4 and Sky, will no-one step forward to have a go ?
- A polymath reader notes I've omitted The Jack Docherty Show, which start off as five nights a week on Channel 5 in 1997, pre-recorded at The Whitehall Theatre. By September 1997 it was down to four nights a week; by March 1998, to three; and by September 1998, two. In spring 1999, it was one night a week, before closing altogether in June that year.
- A legal beagle notes my omission of V Graham Norton, which ran on C4 from April 2002 to December 2003, with summer and winter breaks. Ooops.
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