CBS News Nightwatch

For those that grew up in the 80s, you may have remembered this when you had a hard time getting to sleep at night, grabbed some cold pizza out of the fridge, and plopped in front of the television that still had the dials on it.

CBS News Nightwatch was a overnight news/talk block that many affiliates picked up on. It aired mostly after the old CBS Late Night program (which contained reruns of TV shows and a movie edited down to 80 minutes). Nightwatch was an alternative to the 'just news' shows. While NBC had Overnight, and some ABC affiliates aired CNN2 (later Headline News), Nightwatch had a different approach: Have news, but also entertain.

I remember segments with musicians, sports figures, and many actors. There would also be insightful stuff like stories on the dangers of smoking. After the piece on smoking, they had an in studio debate (podiums and all) on smoking. It got pretty heated and broke out into a fight lol. Around 1988/89, they changed the chic 'all black background w/skyline studio' into something that looked like a study or a dining room. I didn't really like it. Then in 1990, Charlie Rose left the program. This left the show without a host, so for the last two years, it would have a series of guest hosts.

Then in 1992, CBS finally decided to call it quits. They saw what kind of ratings ABC was getting with World News Now and NBC was limping in with Nightside, so CBS News Up To The Minute was created. All news, all night. But it looks like overnight news is on life support now as many affiliates prefer to show entertainment over network news in the graveyard hours.

I miss this show, and wish that one of the networks (including cable) would bring back the Nightwatch format. I miss it. My insomniac nights are incomplete without it.

These remarks are mainly about the first version of Nightwatch, the 1982-83 one. I've mentioned this elsewhere (in places like Jump the Shark), but this was a show that seemed to get no publicity to speak of, and no promoting by its own network to speak of, in spite of being, in several ways, a "groundbreaking" show (the format and so on). In many ways, it had the opposite problem of the show NBC Overnight (from the same year), which had a kind of cult following, but one that didn't prevent it from getting canceled (which in turn caused a lot of anger). I think that maybe one of Nightwatch's problems was just the opposite of what I mentioned about it being "groundbreaking" - in most ways it was very low-key, not an in-your-face, hugely controversial kind of interview show (there were exceptions of course, like the John Mellencamp interview). Maybe that kind of thing wasn't as big then as later, but it was already pretty big, with 60 Minutes and Barbara Walters and so on, and a show that didn't go in that direction, let alone a show that came on in the middle of the night, would have that (for no good reason) going against it. Even though I certainly liked the Charlie Rose version later on, and the others to a degree, this is the "Nightwatch" I became attached to, and I certainly liked everyone on it. But - I had (and have, for that matter) a thorough-going crush on the host named Mary Jo West. (I'm far from alone in that - I always remember the actor Michael Nouri embarrassing her, in a harmless way, by openly flirting with her on the show.) For quite some time, I've been trying to find recordings of this ' 82-' 83 version of Nightwatch, with some degree of luck (surprisingly or not), but I'm definitely looking for others. Would anyone reading this have any?