Night After Night with Allan Havey

I was watching THE INFORMANT! the other night and was pleasantly surprised to see Allan Havey. I've seen him in a range of things over the years but every time I see him, I always think about "Night After Night with Allan Havey" which ran from 1989 to 1992.

I'd hazard to say that few people will remember this show.

A late-night staple of the "The Comedy Channel"—which was the precursor to COMEDY CENTRAL—Havey's show ran for THREE HOURS each night.

"What the what?"

Some clarification. The original format of The Comedy Channel was similar to the old MTV model, which itself was modeled after the radio. Radio had DJs who'd play music and spout some personality in between blocks; MTV had VJs who'd intro blocks of music videos and project personality for a chunk of time; The Comedy Channel featured comedy clips, from movies and stand-up.

Thusly, you had shows like "Short Attention Span Theater" with Jon Stewart... and "Night After Night".

The budgets were near nil. One of Havey's signature bits was his "Audience of One": a generally-random stranger invited to be the sole audience for a night's program. It was emblematic of the shoestring costs of the programs and the quieter tone of the entire network. The all-comedy network took a while to find its voice and those early days resembled high-end Public Access television.

These were the days that spawned Mystery Science Theater 3000. This interview with MST3K's Joel Hodgson offers a sense of those more innocent times. Shot in April of 1990, before MST3K was officially picked up by The Comedy Channel for an extended run.

Nostalgia informs my affection for these old clips. This was a channel searching for its identity, trying new things. I was a lonely misfit kid, writing my little short stories throughout high school. Television was my best friend! It was a genuine source of solace and escapism. Of course, now I'm virtually married to television, but the world is always simpler when you're younger.

There were all sorts of interesting programs that ran through the early days of COMEDY CENTRAL. (There was a show called "Inside the Comedy Mind" which was like "Inside the Actors Studio" for stand-up comics, without being quite so pretentious.) "Night After Night with Allan Havey" served to define the early days of the channel as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" defines it now.

Kids need to be schooled on all the forgotten pop-culture that existed pre-internet. ("Higgins Boys and Gruber", anyone? Anyone?) I should teach a class...