Tom Snyder's dead.
Why did I never expect to read, or write, those three words in this precise order? After all, he was self-destructive. He did smoke, and quite heavily for many years. He was mortal.
But he was also Tom - a human so loud, so raucous, and so entirely, utterly original that he had seemed for a time to carve an entirely separate self on the screen, an immortal self, so to speak. (And certainly Dan Aykroyd's great Snyder mimicry has conferred that immortality).
By now, you're read the obits, and if you haven't, then here's a good place to start. But for some reason, I suspect that none will tell the whole Snyder story, and none possibly could. Too much of that story is a blur - a mind-numbing Hunter-Thompsonesque burlesque of booze, good times, bad times, self-immolation, and self-creation, and even (improbably) career resurrection. Whether you liked him or hated him - and plenty of people seemed to fall on both sides of the ledger - there was simply no one else like him in the history of the world. (Forget broadcasting.) I liked the guy. I liked him and knew him as most people did - on the air, usually late late at night, and viewed through a lens (as it were) clouded by lack of sleep or a beer too many. He burst through that fog, stiffened the spine, focused your attention, sobered you up. There was Tom on the screen - HA HA HA (that laugh, oh what a laugh) - with those crossed legs and the cigarette smoke curling around his head. A fatal habit for a man who seemed to be a fatalist. His questions were real questions - insistent and curious. He even put the "snyd" in Snyder: He dripped condescension (on occasion), was openly derisive, and smeared NBC, his longtime employer, as only a longtime employer like NBC (especially under the satanic guidance of someone like Fred Silverman) so richly deserved. It was gonzo derision, and it inspired David Letterman who would find NBC a target-rich environment as well, thanks to Tom.
I've written a lot about Tom Snyder over the years, and I'm not above quoting from myself at this sad moment. Here's what I wrote about that splendid, bizarre career back in '95, just as he was about to become host of "Late, Late Show" - a career gift from one of the most generous people in this business, Letterman himself (who controlled the time period and still does):
Born in Milwaukee 58 years ago, and trained by Jesuits, Snyder got a part-time job at a local radio station while attending Marquette, then dropped out of college for a reporting job at a TV station in Georgia (he got fired after belching on the air and blaming his gas attack on something he had eaten at the Howard Johnson's across the street - which also happened to be owned by the station manager). In the '60s he held a succession of TV news jobs around the country and eventually landed at Philadelphia's KYW, where the characteristic Snyder style - at turns, witty, acerbic and nasty - came to fruition. (After a barbed Snyder review of one of his productions, David Merrick reportedly made a half-serious public offer to get someone to cut the station's cables.)
In 1970, Snyder hit the big time as an anchor on Los Angeles station, KNBC - a perennial loser of a station that hadn't won the local news race in two decades. Snyder changed all that: a booming news delivery and a tendency to interject his own observations into news stories caught viewers' notice.
But Snyder's penchant for being difficult also began in earnest. One former NBC executive who knew him in those days says he was "unmanageable . . . and very self-destructive."
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Snyder says his rep for rudeness to co-workers and bosses is accurate, but "I was tough on myself too. I worked long and hard and I used to say that if I did my job as poorly as someone [in promotion or engineering] did theirs, then I'd be fired. I expected people to be as good as I was."
Snyder's on-air talent was indisputable and ratings at KNBC soared. He then got picked by the bosses in New York to head up a new post-"Tonight" project simply entitled "Tomorrow," which premiered Oct. 15, 1973, and would become a much-praised, much-vilified and much-parodied late night fixture for the next eight years. "Tomorrow," in effect, was Snyder: the tightly crossed bandy legs and the smoke curling from the omnipresent cigarette were as familiar as the Carson trademark golf swing. The interviews (Charles Manson, Jimmy Hoffa, James Earl Ray, Leon Jaworski) were sometimes splendid, sometimes tacky - but always memorable for the some 6 million viewers who bothered sitting through them at 1 a.m.
In New York, Snyder's on-air duties expanded beyond late night: there was a solo anchor stint on WNBC/4's "NewsCenter 4," a primetime news capsule, news specials (with Barbara Walters), a Saturday evening news program, and, finally, his very own news magazine, "Prime Time Sunday."
Grander things loomed. When Silverman took over the battered network in 1978, Snyder told him that "I want to be your most important talent. You're president off-the-air, and I want to be president on the air."
But, Snyder adds ruefully, "I now realize that was a goal that was really not worth pursuing. It really didn't bring me any satisfaction."
Indeed, with the onset of the Silverman era, things started to unravel. Part of the reason, says a former news executive, is that Snyder "was his own worst enemy. He never knew whether he wanted to be Johnny Carson or John Chancellor." Characteristically, Snyder never made it easy for his bosses to decide either. He was openly derisive of NBC management - often even on the air. And in those pre-Letterman days, such criticism, especially from a newscaster, was not taken lightly. Snyder scorned the trappings of network stardom even while he was ardently pursuing them.
There was discussion of pairing him with Barbara Walters on "Today," but the plan was dropped because "he and Barbara would have eaten each other alive," says the executive. Snyder was bitter about the loss - and even more bitter when NBC gave "Nightly News" to Brokaw.
"The tension and the pressure and the spotlight got to him at a very early age," says Snyder pal Andy Friendly. "It all got to him a little bit too much."
The worst was yet to come. Silverman had the singularly bad idea of jazzing up "Tomorrow" when it expanded from an hour to 90 minutes in 1980: a band was added, gimmicks (including, once, an exploding car) were used, and a co-host, Rona Barrett, was brought on-board. (She anchored from the West Coast.) It was a disaster. Snyder refused to acknowledge her on the air and Barrett then refused to go on. When the show was cancelled in early '82, Snyder was cut loose too.
Snyder now says that the '80s were not as horrible for him as many believe they were. There was that brief tenure as anchor at WABC / 7 - which Snyder says was an "honest" attempt at re-igniting his career on TV, as well as a way to pay some bills on expensive real estate ventures. Later he got a job as a late night talk show host on the ABC Radio Network in the mid-'80s that some interpreted as an even greater comedown. Snyder did not: "I see unemployment as a comedown . . . I wished I could have spent the rest of my life in radio. It was genuine fun. The three hours went by like twenty minutes."
So did the job. ABC later canceled the show, and Snyder was back on the street. But not for long. Friendly - who had been a producer on "Tomorrow" and had become CNBC's programing boss - called his mentor and offered a job on the cable network. Snyder now claims the CNBC gig was among the most satisfying of his career. It combined everything he loves about broadcasting - live TV, call-ins from viewers and spontaneity. Most important: he could handle it all from L.A., close to family and home (He was divorced years ago and never remarried).
Then last March, Snyder got another unexpected call - this one from another "Tomorrow" alumnus, Robert Morton, co-executive producer of "Late Show With David Letterman." In his negotiations with CBS, Letterman got the right to program the 12:35 a.m. time slot; there was some talk that CBS wanted Garry Shandling or Bob Costas. But Letterman's camp says there was only one primary candidate all along: Snyder.
Morton, who'll produce Snyder's late show with partner Peter Lassally, says "Snyder's still the biggest guy you'll ever meet. His voice is bigger than anyone else's in the room. His laugh is bigger than anyone else's. He's a head taller than anyone else. When you sit down with him, you feel like you're a guest on his show. He's made for TV."
Yes, he was indeed.