Click here for Altrok 90.5 HD2
Get the app for your iPhone and iPod Touch.
Now bringing Modern Rock to the Jersey Shore, at 90.5 HD2



 

There's more ads down here, and they help support us so, y'know, check 'em out...

Monday, April 20, 2009

There Are Six Hosts (Kovacs On The Tonight Show)

Over the past few years, The Tonight Show has become a better way to get exposure for your up-and-coming indie band than radio play - somehow, in the time between the "everyone gets backed up by Doc Severinsen" days (Morrissey notwithstanding) and the present day, radio became far more conservative than NBC's 50-plus year old institution. (Steve Allen would not approve, of course - he thought anything more populist than Jazz was an aberration.)

With Conan O'Brien taking over the reins from Jay Leno in a bloodless coup, they've seen fit to put up a "Tonight Show Experience" site celebrating the lineage of hosts for the show over the past fifty-plus years. The site's been up for a while (since it still says it's celebrating fifty years) but with its recent update to include O'Brien, the all-seeing eye of Internet fandom has noticed something missing. Mark Evanier goes into some detail over at his blog, but the gist of the matter is that there's one person - fully given control over the show for two nights a week while Steverino prepped his prime-time show - who's been completely forgotten.

Which, if we were talking about someone who failed utterly in making a mark on history, would be reasonable, but it turns out the host in question is Ernie Kovacs, who is pretty much legendary in our eyes here at Altrok. (And for a more direct link, Kovacs did routines set to the music of Esquivel!, who has worked with Combustible Edison, who we play here at Altrok...and they also like a nice cocktail. Bonus!)

Well, a little controversy never hurt from a publicity standpoint, we suppose, so we echo The Ernie Kovacs Blog's clarion call to go and add your voice to the Tonight Show Experience message board at NBC.com and let 'em know they should put all the hosts up (even if they just photoshop in Kovacs looking over Steve's shoulder.) If anything, it'd get their kiester in gear trying to find some clips of that permutation of the show; so far, they've only been able to locate about a half-hour of Kovacs' Tonight Show stint, but perhaps if we turn the volume up, it'll be more likely to reach the ears of some itinerant kinescope collector who hasn't had a reason to YouTube his collection...'till now.

And, if you've read this far, you've probably got the time to tune into Altrok Radio today...we might even be playing some Combustible Edison.

1 Comments:

Blogger Al Quagliata said...

Fantastic post! Thanks for joining the fight with us.

Al Quagliata
The Ernie Kovacs Blog

12:21 PM, April 22, 2009  

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home

 
Please Look At Our Advertisers (Or The Website Gets It)
Congratulations, you've found the hidden text.
 
Welcome to Altrok.com, also available at AltrokRadio.com and AltrockRadio.com. Here's where the remaining listeners of several fine radio stations have retreated, regrouped, and built a replacement strong enough to stand on its own. It builds on the independent legacy of New Jersey's FM106.3, New York's WPIX and WLIR, Oklahoma's 105.3 The Spy, the pre-buyout mindset of KROQ, WBCN and WHFS and of every other alternative station that was destroyed at a moment's notice - not because they weren't making money, but because there was bigger money to be found elsewhere.
 
We've stood by as truly independent alternative rock radio died. Sure, something called "alternative" took its place, but we know for sure that anything that "tests well" with soccer moms just ain't alternative. (Even if some of us happen to be soccer moms.) So we've taken matters into our own hands.
 
This really is independent alternative rock radio, visible here at Altrok.com and audible at our web radio station. It has the classic music that fired our passions back in the day - or that we maybe only heard about from our elders - but it's mostly made of the new music that does precisely the same for us now. We're paying attention to scenes all over the world, watching the energy build, and waiting to see what it creates. Wherever it happens, we'll make sure you can hear about it here. We've been slowly building all this since 2001, and now that you've noticed us, we're glad you're here.
 
Of course, it's only here because you want it to be here, and it can only stay if you help it along - especially by checking out our advertisers (they support us) and by listening (the more that listen, the more visible we are.) Please use the "feedback" link above to let us know whether it works for you, and what you want it to be as the future unfolds. (And if you need help hearing it, let us know that, too.)