Hepcat and I used to watch Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show, which was replaced by Dave Letterman’s “The Late Show” on WNBC back in the 1980’s.

Tom Shales has a nice piece about Snyder in today’s Washington Post with this quote from a CBS colleague. “The big man is gone,” said CBS News Vice President Steve Friedman, 60, who knew Snyder for 37 years. “Tom used to say, ‘Writers write, producers produce, and stars star,’ ” Friedman said, “but he only said that to make us feel better — because he was a better writer than any of us, a better producer than any of us, and the biggest star in our universe.”

Dan Ackyroyd did a hysterical impersonation of the talk show host on SNL. He really got the Snyder’s cadences just right. According to Lorne Michaels, producer of SNL, Snyder loved it.

Snyder interviewed everyone: John Lennon, Spiro Agnew, Marlon Brando, Charles Manson and Johnny Rotton. Defending himself against charges of pomposity and abrasiveness he told the New York Times:

“I’m a human being, I have opinions and biases and beliefs and standards and I have to inject them into that program. Otherwise we might as well have an empty chair and give the gues a list of written questions.”