Comedy Central's First Talk Show

To cover the history of Night After Night, we have to go back in time. Back to a time before Cartoon Network. Back before the premieres of E.R. and Friends. Back to when MTV still showed music videos. Back to 1989. Back to when Viacom created a small network devoted to comedy. This was the Comedy Channel.

The first incarnation of the channel was composed of an MTV-like plethora of hosts. Rachel Sweet had her show, The Sweet Life. The Higgins Boys and Gruber hung out in a kitchen where they talked in between airings of episodes of Supercar and Clutch Cargo. Tommy Sledge, Private Eye was an anachronistic look at hard-boiled detective stories. Oh, and his show aired old Batman serials too. Then there was Rich Hall's Onion World, a skewed look at the world around us. And, of course, there was Allan Havey.

Night After Night was on for 3 hours, since all the hosts did VJ duty, introducing video clips from the latest comedy film out in theaters, or some classic comedy routine from Monty Python. But, there was something about Allan. He had the late shift. His set was the most intimate one on the network. When guests started getting booked on the show, the intimacy remained. His studio audience consisted of one person, who soon became known as the Audience (or Audient) of One.

By the time Night After Night was whittled down to an hour, things had changed. The Comedy Channel merged with rival comedy network HA! to become Comedy Central. Out of the many original shows the Comedy Channel had on its roster, only two managed to survive this merge relatively intact. One was the venerable Mystery Science Theater 3000. The other, a little show called Night After Night. Unfortunately, the show's days were ultimately numbered. Allan Havey said his final goodbyes in late December, 1992. Surprisingly, this was the same year Johnny Carson retired. Coincidence? I think not!

I really enjoyed watching NAN, and was very disappointed to see it canceled, despite loyal fan support. When I got access to the World Wide Web, I decided to look around and see if there were any pages devoted to this show. There weren't any out there, so I decided to make one. I'm hoping that this page will serve as a tribute to this wonderfully funny show.

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