Quote Originally Posted by Sir Terrence the Terrible
As the house sound mixer for his show its entire run, this did not cause a huge dip in his ratings. What killed his show was his arrogance and defiance of the brass a Paramount, and a string of controversial shows on the riots in Los Angeles and his overall activism. During that time Arsenio turned his show into a "Phil Donahue" type forum on inner city problems, and I do clearly recall that one episode of his show during an discussion of this got really ugly and it was during a taping with a live audience. This is when the show got worse and from that point his audience was deserting him. Because of this, the show was pushed back into a later time slot. That is what killed him. His show mainly appealed to the hip hop, rap and R&B crowd, a crowd that neither Leno nor Carson was interested in. It was only when Leno and Carson started booking these acts, that Hall became irrelevant. By then, his show was already headed down hill.
I never said Leno killed Hall's show. But for me, its a mile post in downward spiral. Hall claimed later that it hurt his ratings. But yer right - Arsenio was his own worst enemy. Leno acknowledged later that he wasn't aware that his show's booking dept was trying to put the squeeze on Hall and he appologized (they musta patched things up because I've seen Hall on TTS twice in recent years).

The worst thing that coulda happened to Hall was to have Carson retire. Up until then Hall was the hippest thing on late night TV. Once Hall decided his show was of significant social importance, he became insufferable. I saw the show where hecklers(protesters) interrupted his show and he let the cameras roll, cancelling the show pretty much from there just to argue with these guys - I could only watch maybe 10 minutes of that. I saw an episode with a preachy Edward James Olmos that was equally bad. And then there was his on-air spat with Dice Clay. Not that the topics of the day were not worthy, but it wasn't why one would tune in.

Up until the last couple of seasons I counted myself a fan. Sure, Hall fawned all over his guests, was self-indulgent, and a nominally talented interviewer. But he had musical acts you weren't going to see anywhere else. And to my experience, the sounds quality for the musical acts were the best on TV. Is it true no one ever lip-synced on the show? After the LA riot, his show was a complete downer with Hall givng his guests a free forum to spout off on whatever they felt like. Unwatchable.