The Arsenio Hall Show is an American syndicated late-night talk show created by and starring comedian Arsenio Hall.
There have been two different incarnations of The Arsenio Hall Show. The original series premiered on January 3, 1989, and ran until May 27, 1994. Nineteen years after the original series ended, Hall returned for a revival. It premiered on September 9, 2013, and was cancelled after one season, with the finale airing on May 21, 2014.
Both series were produced by Hall's production company, Arsenio Hall Communications. The original series was produced and distributed by Paramount Domestic Television and taped at Stage 29 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. The second series was shot at Sunset Bronson Studios in Hollywood, and it was produced by Tribune Broadcasting, Octagon Entertainment and Eye Productions. It was distributed by CBS Television Distribution.
First series (1989–1994)
Background
Hall had been a host on The Late Show in 1987, another talk show on Fox, after the dismissal of Joan Rivers. He was given a 13-week run, during which he became unexpectedly popular. During the monologue of his final appearance as host, Hall stated that the reason he had agreed to only do 13 weeks was because that was as long as he was able to stay, as he had plans "to do other things". He subsequently began working on the Eddie Murphy vehicle Coming to America. He ultimately signed with Paramount Television before Fox finally decided, after the fact, that it wanted to keep him. Hall had a fairly long connection with Paramount before this, having been the in-house comedian on Paramount's weekly music series Solid Gold for several years and co-hosting its final two years.
Arsenio, debuting on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 1989, with guests Brooke Shields, Leslie Nielsen and Luther Vandross, was one of two late-night shows to premiere that month. The other was The Pat Sajak Show on CBS, hosted by longtime Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak. Unlike Sajak, Hall benefited from prior experience hosting a late-night program, especially when compared with Sajak's lack of emceeing experience outside of his Wheel duties. Hall also had a clear demographic to serve (whereas Sajak was targeting the already-taken demographic that was watching Johnny Carson), and his show premiered the week before Sajak's, giving him a head start. While Hall's show became a near-instant hit, Sajak's show was a ratings flop and was canceled after little more than a year.
Recurring features and gags
Burton Richardson's long intro of the show's host (in which he holds the letter O in "Arsenio" for as long as ten seconds right before Hall came out onto the stage, and then in the same breath, immediately announced "HALL!") is a staple of the show. In the intro to the final episode, Richardson held his one-breath introduction for exactly twenty seconds, one of the few times he had done so. While being introduced (and as seen on show titles and promos), Arsenio stood with his head down, hands together and legs apart, in the shape of the letter "A".
One of the show's recurrent themes was affixing a humorous label to a section of the studio audience in rows behind/near the band, called the "Dog Pound", based on the Dawg Pound fan section of Cleveland Stadium and later FirstEnergy Stadium of the Cleveland Browns National Football League team. Members of the original band called "the Posse" included John B. Williams, Starr Parodi, Peter Maunu, Terri Lyne Carrington (later replaced by Chuck Morris) who were led by jazz pianist Michael Wolff, jubilantly interacted with Hall, standing up and making a pumping, whirling motion with their raised fists and howling "Woof, woof, woof". The labeling was a staple of Hall's opening monologue and almost always began with the phrase "Those are people who...." In one variation of Hall ridiculing the "Dog Pound", Hall designated the section as "People who are currently in a Witness Protection Program", at which point a camera pans over to that section to reveal a digitally pixelized view of the audience that made it impossible to identify them.
A frequent joke in Hall's opening monologue suggested that he still lives in Cleveland and drives himself to Los Angeles every day to host the show. While on these alleged long drives, Hall ponders certain thoughts, referring to them as "things that make you go hmmm...." The running gag inspired a 1991 C+C Music Factory song by the same title. "Things That Make You Go Hmmm..." reached No. 1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.