The show launched in January 1992 and was hosted by the former Saturday Night Live Weekend Update anchor as an attempt by syndicator Tribune Entertainment to carve out a niche in the late-night television landscape; an opportunity to do so was anticipated due to Johnny Carson's retirement from The Tonight Show that May and his replacement by Jay Leno.
The show remained faithful to the classic talk-show format with a desk and three or four guests a night, while Miller carried forward the spirit of his SNL Weekend Update with a newscast segment that aired on Fridays.
Leo Benvenuti/Steve Rudnick (writers of "The Santa Clause" and "Space Jam") Guests included Mountain (with Leslie West and Corky Laing), Toad the Wet Sprocket (who made their national television debut on the show), Henry Rollins (who appeared repeatedly to chat with Miller and perform spoken word), Primus (who while performing "Tommy the Cat", had to deal with a member of the audience who jumped onstage—whom Miller playfully tried to "tackle"), King's X (who performed two songs, "Black Flag" and "It's Love" to empty seats in the studio due to the 1992 Los Angeles riots), and comedian Bill Hicks.
[9] Media watchers noted that, in contrast, Hall's 1989 debut had numbers between 3 and 3.5, and that the industry standard for long-term survival at the time was a minimum of 2.
[9] In order to address this shortfall and in anticipation of Carson leaving and his audience being up for grabs, Tribune began making changes to the show.
[9] In February 1992, Andy Summers announced that, after helping to launch the show and writing its theme music, he should move on to focus instead on his solo career.
[9] To facilitate this change, Ken Ehrlich was moved to being a musical consultant and replaced in his co-executive-producer duties by Laurence Ferber, who had been able to restructure The Joan Rivers Show to increase ratings by bringing it more in line with her personality.
[11][12][9] It was also at this time that Dave Thomas was brought in as a writer to "open up the comedy", with the hope he could develop bits for Miller where he would interact more with the audience.
[9] Tribune remained optimistic that the numbers could rise and pointed out that the show had strong demographics, skewing heavily towards young men—a target audience for many advertisers.
[9] To differentiate himself from Arsenio, Miller wanted to have a mix of Hollywood celebrities, authors, and political figures on the show, early on having guests like Larry Miller, Sally Kirkland, Clive Barker, Michael Kinsley, Tom Hanks, Christian Slater, Bonnie Raitt, Al Gore, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
In her piece, she characterized abortion as pouring Drano into a woman's vagina and said she wanted to "feminize the planet to overthrow this male control of our lives."
Donald Hacker, its president and chief executive officer, said, "After a tremendous effort on the parts of all parties involved, we've made a business decision not to proceed."
[19] Tribune issued an odd, single-spaced, five-page press release that praised the show, its ratings, its guests and its segments (while no mention was made of profits).
This included Miller jokingly looking into the camera and begging CBS Entertainment president Jeff Sagansky for a job; having Julia Sweeney appear as her androgynous SNL character Pat and serenade him, mimicking Bette Midler's song for the retiring Johnny Carson; and, when a skit began to fail, moving the man with the cue-cards on camera.
[22] On his last show, Miller, mimicking political party nomination races, said, "I release all my delegates to Arsenio and David Letterman."
He began openly accusing Leno's agent Helen Kushnick of unethical strong-arm booking tactics, a charge previously made by Arsenio Hall.
"[6] Reviewers held that, along with problems with booking guests, Miller had a tough time reconciling his caustic stand-up comedian stage presence that savaged his targets with that of an interviewer that would have to cozy up to his subjects—though he was getting better near the end.
"[23] When Leno's ratings began to erode a few months into taking the Tonight Show from Carson, Miller told a reporter that he had always anticipated as much but now was not in a position to capitalize on it.
"[6] Since Leno had taken over The Tonight Show, the program had begun competing with Miller and Arsenio Hall for the same younger-skewing audiences and celebrity guests.
Tonight Show insiders said Kushnick did not let Leno get involved in production or booking and lied to him if he asked questions about it, and the two of them "have this sick, twisted, Hitchcock mother-son thing going.
"[26] Miller, despite having been proven correct about his claims about Kushnick and The Tonight Show, expressed an air of resignation about the whole experience, telling a reporter in November 1992, "Everything that Arsenio and I were saying has been borne out to be true, but that's old news now.
Miller told a reporter, "I just got fed up in private and decided to call Jay earlier this week, because life is too short.