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Article: Celebrity Profile: Tom Snyder, talk show host

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Celebrity Profile: Tom Snyder, talk show host

In 1973, Tom Snyder hosted a late night talk show called Tomorrow - an apt name since it ran at 1:00 a.m. - in which the all-star talker interviewed a wide range of guests with his trademark wit, brashness, and arrogance.  His future at NBC was considered so bright that he was considered a likely replacement for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, or John Chancellor on NBC Nightly News, or Tom Brokaw on Today.

But this was not to be. Snyder did not get any of these super high-profile positions, and grew increasingly bitter in the process, even airing some of his gripes about NBC management on his show. He bottomed out in 1982 when NBC executives let him go.

With a reputation of being difficult to work with and a tendency to be self-destructive, Snyder had many lean years in the 1980s, despite his generally acknowledged talent as a king talker. During this time, he briefly was an anchor for WABC/7, which promoted Snyder with the memorable tagline of: "He's bold. He's brash. He's smart. He's arrogant. He's a windbag." He followed up this gig with a job as a talk show host on the ABC Radio network.  This position didn't last long, either, as the program was soon cancelled.

Finally, Snyder received a big break when the aptly named Andy Friendly, an ex-Tomorrow producer who was then CNBC's programming chief, called and offered him a job as a talk show host on the cable network. Snyder quickly accepted, and his show proved so popular that David Letterman offered him a show that would go after his on CBS (it also helped that Robert Morton, a co-executive producer of Late Show With David Letterman, was a Tomorrow alumnus). Snyder accepted, completing his remarkable comeback.