606: Staying Up For The Late Shift
Extra Hot Great: This Week In TV
Extra Hot Great: This Week In TV
4.7 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is an un-vaulting of EEHG 376. For this year's special This Week In TV History episode, we're journeying back to 1996 for February sweeps -- specifically, the week of February 21-27 -- and investigating all the starry stunts the networks AND premium cable channels were busting out to capture audiences. Leading (with its chin) is The Late Shift, HBO's TV movie take on Bill Carter's nonfiction book about Jay Leno and David Letterman's battle to replace Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show. Did these stupid human tricks enthrall us? Adam Sternbergh returns to talk about it. Around The Dial takes us to an all-CBS-Monday-sitcoms event featuring Elizabeth Taylor, a string of black pearls, and her new Black Pearls fragrance; the many non-Friends and Seinfeld sitcoms NBC tried to launch on Thursday nights in the 90s; ER's Season 2 episode "The Healers"; and the sci-fi drama Nowhere Man. Dave pitches "Homer The Smithers" from The Simpsons for induction into The Canon. Then, after naming the week of February 21-27's biggest Winner and Loser, it's on to a VERY questionable game time. Listen in -- you don't have to do it crouched next to a phone playing it in the next room, but you might be surprised by what you get out of it if you do!
GUESTS
👤 Adam Sternbergh
TOPICS
Lead Topic: 🌙 The Late Shift
Around The Dial: 💎 CBS's Elizabeth Taylor Night
Around The Dial: 🪦 NBC's Must-See TV Graveyard
Around The Dial: 🏥 ER S02.E16: The Healers
Around The Dial: 🗺️ Nowhere Man
The Canon: 🥣 The Simpsons S07.E17: Homer The Smithers
Winner & Loser: 💯 Almost Perfect
Winner & Loser: 🖖 Over-invested Star Trek Fans
Game Time: 🤔 19 Questions: 1995-96 TV Season Edition
SUPPORT THE SHOW
🔥 Join the EHG Club for bonus episodes, no ads, community Discord and more!
🎧 Subscribe to EHG on Apple Podcasts for bonus episodes and no ads!
🛍️ Shop our merch store!
NOTES
🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our site
📚 Adam Sternbergh's website
📰 Dick Cavett's review of The Late Shift in the New York Times
🌴 Again With Again With This 161: Let's Watch Nicholle Tom In The Series Premiere Of The Nanny! [subscription required]
🫥 "10 Forgotten 90s Sitcoms That Still Work Today" at Cracked
👩🏻⚕️ Our ER draft episode
💯 Almost Perfect on Wikipedia
📷 Photo: HBO
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | How could a television show be worth this much embarrassment? |
| 0:04.8 | This is the Extra Extra Hot Great Podcast, episode 376 for the week of February 19, 1996. |
| 0:22.8 | I am eavesdropper David T. Cole, and I'm here with fucking fossil, Therodebunting. |
| 0:28.4 | Fine, I'll retire, Jesus. |
| 0:30.7 | Doritos guy, Tara Ariano. |
| 0:32.6 | Crunch all you want. We'll make more. |
| 0:34.2 | And gargantuan car phone, Adam Sternberg. |
| 0:37.8 | Hello. |
| 0:38.4 | I'm losing you. |
| 0:39.3 | I'm losing you. |
| 0:43.7 | Welcome to an extra extra hot grate. |
| 0:47.5 | It is time for our special once a year bonus episode. |
| 0:52.1 | It is the This Week in TV history history extraaganza. We're putting the |
| 0:58.3 | extra extra in extravaganza. We are covering February 21st to the 27th, 1996, since that was Wednesday |
| 1:04.7 | to Tuesday in the style of weeks on extra hot grade as we do them based on our drop date. And everything we're going to talk |
| 1:12.0 | about is from that week of TV. And it was a pretty packed week because it was sweeps. And that |
| 1:17.7 | used to really mean something. Some of the things that we could have done if we had found them, |
| 1:24.1 | a TV movie about Heidi Fleiss's dad, two different movies where grandmas get into |
| 1:31.2 | big trouble, one with Anne Margaret, where she has an affair with a student, Giles her |
| 1:34.8 | kid, and one with Kate Jackson from Charlie's Angels, where she gets a kid gets kidnapped, I think. |
| 1:41.9 | There's also that with a Shannon Doherty movie that Sarah and I already talked about on Again with Again with this called Gone in the Night. Actually, not even TV movie. It was a miniseries. But we're not talking about any of that. We'll get to our lead topic in a moment. So enjoy this trip down memory lane. And now our guest, he's a writer, editor, and novelist. You've heard with us many times before. |
| 2:01.3 | It's Adam Sternberg. |
... |
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