Friday Night Videos
Friday Night Videos is an American music video/variety program that aired from July 29, 1983, to May 24, 2002, on NBC. Originally developed as an attempt by the network to capitalize on the emerging popularity of music videos, which had been brought into the mainstream by MTV during the early 1980s,[1] the program shifted over to a general music focus in 1990, mixing in live music performances alongside the video showcases. Upon being retitled Friday Night in 1994, its format was expanded to incorporate a variety of entertainment content to supplement, and eventually surpass, the music videos. The program evolved into its final format in 2001 under the title Late Friday, removing the music and feature segments and becoming dedicated solely to showcasing new stand-up comedy talent.[2]
Friday Night Videos
Friday Night (1994-2000)
Late Friday (2001-02)
- Frankie Crocker (1990–1993)
- Tom Kenny (1990–1992)
- Darryl M. Bell (1992–1993)
- Branford Marsalis (1993)
- Henry Cho (1994–1996)
- Rita Sever (1994–2000)
- Nick Michaels (announcer, 1983–1985)
- Scott Muni (announcer, 1983–1985)
United States
English
90 minutes (1983–1987)
60 minutes (1987–2002)
July 29, 1983 –
May 24, 2002
History[edit]
Early years[edit]
Friday Night Videos was initially produced by Dick Ebersol. From 1974 until 1981, in his role as Director of Late Night Programming at NBC, he co-produced The Midnight Special with that series' creator, Burt Sugarman. Ebersol departed from The Midnight Special in 1981 to take over as the executive producer of his co-creation with Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live. Upon doing this, The Midnight Special was canceled and replaced by the Canadian-import sketch comedy program SCTV, which turned out to be a placeholder on NBC's late Friday night/early Saturday morning schedule for a two-year period. SCTV was a quick, cheap solution to an emergency scheduling gap created by Ebersol's urgent departure and was probably not intended to be permanent to start with.
As such, while at SNL, a show that had just gotten back on its feet after some years of decline due to break-out cast members such as Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, Ebersol decided that he would attempt another Friday night music-based program and, instead of simply reviving The Midnight Special, his idea grew into what would become Friday Night Videos, which would replace SCTV in 1983; that show ran for one more year on the pay cable channel Cinemax in the U.S. before discontinuing production in 1984.[3]
In its early years, MTV was still a phenomenon that only a minority of Americans actually could see in their homes, as there were many areas not yet serviced by cable television (particularly rural areas and inner-city neighborhoods), and not all cable television providers offered MTV at first. Friday Night Videos took advantage of that fact and proved to be the next best thing for many viewers. While it primarily showcased music videos by popular top 40 acts of the day, unlike its cable rival, Friday Night Videos tended to offer more variety. As such, it featured artists from the genres of pop, rock, R&B, and rap.
In the beginning, like its predecessors The Midnight Special and SCTV, the show ran 90 minutes in length, and consisted of music videos introduced by an off-camera announcer. In addition to this, classic artists of the 1960s and 1970s occasionally appeared in "Hall of Fame Videos", major stars were profiled in "Private Reels", and new clips made their network debuts as "World Premiere Videos".
The most popular feature was "Video Vote". Two videos were played back-to-back, and viewers across the country, with the exception of the West Coast (where the program was seen on tape delay), could call in and vote for one of them, using nationwide 900 numbers for a small per-call fee. The winning video faced a new challenger the following week. When a video won four consecutive video votes, it was declared a "retired champion" and two new videos were introduced the week after, to start over. To increase the number of voters, FNV started to offer free T-shirts every fifteen seconds during the time period when viewers called to register their votes.
Nick Michaels and Scott Muni were the off-camera announcers.
For the show's first few years on the air, the audio portion of the show was presented as a stereo simulcast over FM radio on NBC's owned-and-operated radio stations, along with several affiliates of the NBC Radio Network. This arrangement continued until the launch of television stereo on the NBC Television Network under the MTS standard over a period of two years from fall 1984 until the fall of 1986; it was one of NBC's first programs produced exclusively in stereo.
Celebrity hosts[edit]
Beginning on October 18, 1985, FNV had celebrity guests as the weekly hosts. The first guest hosts were Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Lisa Bonet (who, at the time, were both co-starring on NBC's The Cosby Show). As a result of the host banter, the show often would have to slightly shave off bits of the end of the videos to conserve time. Guest hosts would last through March 29, 1991.
Notable hosts included: