Show Business: Prince of Wails

If the networks seemed to take the strike rather calmly last week, it was because they had the programming problem taped. When they ran out of fresh shows, all they had to do was rerun old ones. Or so it seemed until midweek, when Johnny Carson, incomparable compere of the Tonight show, blew the whistle—and town. He was through for good, it was announced, because the National Broadcasting Co. was playing tapes of his old shows during the AFTRA strike.

One of his associates explained that Carson “thrives on topical humor. He looks like an idiot talking about Christmas in those old tapes they have been using.” That sounded reasonable, except that Carson had never complained before about the chopped-up, ad-ridden Tonight repeats that NBC runs every Sunday night of the year. At that point, Carson, who was lolling out the strike on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, came up with another and loftier justification of his stand. “I was required to join AFTRA in order to work for the network,” he said. “I know of no business except the broadcasting industry in which a performer becomes a scab to himself and his union because of films and videotape.”

The conclusion of insiders was that the rerun issue was just the excuse that Carson needed in order to break and possibly sweeten the three-year NBC contract that he had signed last April. This winter, he took on Show Business Attorney Arnold Grant, and last month they asked NBC about reopening negotiations. The present contract provides Carson with more than $700,000 for a 39-week year, but that is far less than the $40,000 a week that he can earn playing nightclubs.

In the meantime, NBC announced publicly that it “looks forward to welcoming Johnny Carson back to work at the end of the AFTRA strike,” but was privately negotiating with Comic Bob Newhart as a desperation replacement. All the while, Carson was describing himself as “a free agent,” or, as he put it in a beachside, bathing-suit interview with CBS, “an unemployed prince.”