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Les Crane and His Shotgun Microphone

From Sue N – Mr. Pop – I’m doing a paper on the history of TV talkshows. In your opinion or factoids, what was the one TV talkshow was a little different – a trailblazer.

Mr. Pop History – TV talkshows all looked and felt the same back when. You had the host who sat behind a desk and guests who sat stage right of the host, on a couch or chairs, and perhaps an announcer/sidekick. They were about entertainment. Nothing taboo. Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, David Frost, Joey Bishop – all fell into this category. 

Around 1963 and 1964, one talkshow dared to be different. “The Les Crane Show” was originally a San Francisco late-night talk show, seen over KGO-TV. It had something different. The topics could be avant-garde and the host was hip. Crane took the show to WABC-TV (New York) then ABC-TV put it against Johnny Carson in 1964. Crane won praise from critics with his combative style who also shunned mainstream guests. While the others were about entertainment and mainstream, Crane’s was more firebrand.  Better to have folks such Malcolm X and Bob Dylan on the show. Les Crane sat on a revolving stool in a circular studio. Not a desk to be found. 

There’s one other thing Crane was known for: a microphone that looked like a shotgun. With it, he’d go into the audience to solicit questions or comments. Years later, the self-deprecating Crane commented, “Looking back, I can’t think of anything more stupid than pointing a shotgun at people.”

 You gotta love it!    

Les Crane, then Phil Donahue, whose footprint is all over current shows such as Oprah Winfrey, both gave talk TV a new dimension. Kudos to David Letterman and his 1980’s daytime show.   

But, the best of them all – even though he didn’t do the kind of shows Crane and Donahue did – was Johnny Carson.

Come back soon, as I answer, to the best of my knowledge, another one of your pop history/culture questions.