Playboy Interview: Tom Snyder

Throughout his 25-year career in broadcast journalism, Tom Snyder has developed a reputation for on-air brashness and controversy, and continues to be the subject of industry gossip--whether it be that he might take over the "Today" show as host, replace Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" if and when he leaves or become NBC's anchor newsman on the "Nightly News" when John Chancellor steps down. Snyder's "happy-talk" approach to news, his opinionated opening comments and frequent attacks upon his own network's executives on the "Tomorrow" show, plus his introduction of often bizarre guests to the American TV public on his latenight talk fest, have made him a man few people are neutral about.

Although Tom Snyder has developed a loyal, steadfast following, his detractors are legion. He has been called, in public, a grandstander, shallow, ill advised, uninformed, monumentally egotistical and more. His comic imitators, especially on the original "Saturday Night Live" show, are well known. But through the years, Snyder has demonstrated a remarkable facility for drawing people out and asking the kinds of broad-based, middle American questions that make him a surrogate for the guy next door. He has done more to create a generation of insomniacs than anyone except, perhaps, Carson. And whether you agree with Snyder or not, he usually calls 'em as he sees 'em.

Snyder's diverse talents span both the news and the entertainment divisions at NBC-TV. He's been anchor man of NBC's various weekly "News Magazines," has hosted the newly expanded "Tomorrow" show (now in its eighth year), has done a number of prime-time celebrityinterview specials on the network and--over a period spanning more than two decades--has served as local anchor man in the nation's two major markets, New York and Los Angeles.

Snyder was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 12, 1936. He enrolled at Marquette University as a premed student before switching to journalism and, while attending college, got a job in the news department of WRIT, Milwaukee. He dropped out of Marquette during his final year and never received his bachelor's degree. Subsequently, he served with WSAV-TV, Savannah, WAII-TV, Atlanta, KTLA-TV, Los Angeles, and KYW-TV, Philadelphia, where, in the late Sixties, he hosted an innovative earlymorning one-hour live program called "Contact" and anchored the station's toprated evening news.

He then moved to KNBC, Los Angeles, in 1970, where he anchored the six-to-seven P.M. segment of the station's two-hour newscast. He became an instant success and attracted not only imitators but also the attention of the network brass, who made him host of the innovative late-night "Tomorrow" show in October 1973. The following year, "Tomorrow" moved from Burbank to New York and Snyder also became anchor man of the six-to-seven P.M. Portion of "NewsCenter 4," the two-hour newscast on WNBC-TV, New York. He remained in that dual role until April 1977. In June, "Tomorrow" returned to Burbank for two years. Returning to New York, in addition to continuing as host of "Tomorrow," Snyder inaugurated, in June 1979, "Prime Time Sunday," a one-hour news magazine that later became "Prime Time Saturday." It never made a dent in the ratings and, despite public pronouncements that he would stay with Snyder and the show, NBC boss Fred Silverman canceled the program a year later. "Tomorrow," however, remains on the air from New York, and in September 1980, expanded to 90 minutes, airing on NBC-TV from 12:30 A.M. to two A.M., with additional features and segments and--of course--Tom Snyder as host.

During his career, Snyder has won an Emmy for hosting "Tomorrow" (in 1974) and has cohosted a number of network specials, among them programs on medicine, crime, Legionnaire's disease, "The National Love, Sex and Marriage Test," "The National Disaster Survival Test" and "The Incredible Shrinking Gas Pump." Playboy sent free-lance writer and TV critic Nicholas Yanni to interview Snyder and find out what is really on his mind these days. Yanni reports:

"When Playboy asked me to do this interview, Snyder had just settled on his new four-year contract with NBC. It had been widely reported that he might even be replaced as host of 'Tomorrow.' Since it had come so quickly upon the failure of 'Prime Time Saturday,' I felt all this speculation might have been more than Tom's much-publicized monumental ego could take. That's why he wasn't granting any interviews until that contract was signed.

"During the several weeks in which I interviewed Snyder in his offices in New York, I found him to be predictably frank--but a man not easily pigeonholed in other respects. His fascination with gadgets is legendary, so his office brims with all kinds of games and props, including a pinball machine and an electronic TV device to embarrass interviewers who arrive a few minutes late. His staff seems to pamper him [catering to his every whim]. One gets the impression that they're all one big happy family and that whatever Tom does is just fine. They have been known to put up with his excesses and childlike indulgences because he's very protective of them.

"During our interviews, it became clear to me that Snyder was thoroughly enjoying getting a lot of gripes and pent-up frustrations off his chest, now that his 'ordeal' with the network had been resolved. I sometimes felt like a corporation psychiatrist might feel, as he let loose with near-stream-of-consciousness rantings about the TV industry today and especially NBC. He is angry, of course, but it is tempered with a surprising serenity for which I was not prepared. He does seem at one with himself these days.

"Surprisingly, I did not get from Snyder the sense of a man who needs constant television exposure as a psychological fix or reinforcement for his ego or career. At least not anymore. I came away from our conversations with the distinct impression that if he were to leave 'Tomorrow' tomorrow, he'd be on the next plane to California, where he really prefers living (but not working), to devote himself to his greatest outdoor passion--golf.

"Our interviews occurred in the late mornings, and Snyder held off his office calls so that we could continue uninterrupted. After a bit of small talk, we would get right down to business. He was very forthright about his disgruntlements--past and present--with the NBC management; and although he appeared resolved never again to hold a position of importance within the NBC News hierarchy, I felt that his attitude could change just as quickly as a new regime were installed at NBC. He took pains to try to convince me that he is happy 'just doing the "Tomorrow" show'--that this assignment, now going into its eighth year, is more than enough responsibility and drain on his energy. He seemed unduly concerned with growing old and often discussed himself in the past tense. During our talks, Snyder struck me as egotistical, as expected, but not pompous; willing to laugh at himself about professional mistakes but defensive about specific on-air goofs; highly guarded, sometimes even shy and secretive about his family life, but open about his views on sex and life in general.

"Snyder is a tall man (6'4") and often seems uncomfortable with his height. He hates standing up and moving around on TV, and sometimes is even quite defensive about his looks. He took umbrage at suggestions I made that he might be physically vain, since he hates wearing glasses on TV (there are always several pairs lying around) and often can't see his cue cards.

"Deep down, I felt--despite what he told me during these conversations--that Snyder very much would like to return to the news, possibly as anchor man or commentator. But his wounds on the news front are still too fresh. I believe he's given up for all time the idea of hosting the 'Today' show, but, despite his long-winded rationalizations about why he would not ever consider taking over 'The Tonight Show,' should Carson vacate that spot three years hence, I'm sure Snyder would jump at the opportunity, and be very good at it, too."

[Q] Playboy: As you're no doubt aware, there is something about you that makes people take sides. You've got a considerable cult following, but there are also a great many viewers who feel you are overbearing, self-indulgent and pompous. How do you plead?

[A] Snyder: I am, on occasion, overbearing. I do indulge myself, on the air and off. I have been pompous. But who hasn't been at one time or another?

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you also might intimidate people?

[A] Snyder: I suppose that's true. I talk loud, I'm 6'4" tall and difficult to get along with. But if people are afraid of me, that fear is ungrounded.

[Q] Playboy: What about the reverse: Have you ever been intimidated by any of the guests you've had on over the years?

[A] Snyder: Not in the slightest. I've had Ayn Rand on. Extremely intelligent. Yet you don't have to be an intellectual to carry on a conversation about her beliefs and philosophy of life.

[Q] Playboy: It might help, though, if you're trying to reach below the surface.

[A] Snyder: I do what I feel is necessary. The purpose of the Tomorrow show is not for me to demonstrate how much I know or how many clippings or books I've read. The purpose of the show is to engage our guests in conversations that bring out their better points and allow them to present themselves in an entertaining and informative fashion. There are many people who do talk shows who read all the books and newspaper clippings and go out with a yellow pad with questions numbered one through 100. I don't believe in doing a show that way. Those people who prepare so meticulously for interviews on Today or Good Morning America, which run seven minutes apiece ... well, what the fuck good does it do to read a whole book if you've got seven minutes and the answer to the first question runs three minutes? It's a joke.

[Q] Playboy: But your interviews are longer than seven minutes.

[A] Snyder: I've wanted people who read Irving Wallace and Jacqueline Susann to at least be exposed to Ayn Rand, to Will and Ariel Durant or Sterling Hayden. And I'm not afraid to learn something on the air while people are watching. After all, the audience is hopefully learning something when it watches the show. And I'm not afraid to reveal my own lack of knowledge in certain areas. I'm a conduit; that's all I am. I'm a transmission belt for information.

[Q] Playboy: Have we established, then, that you are not an intellectual?

[A] Snyder: No, I'm not an intellectual. I'm not a bookworm. I don't sit in this office and read books all afternoon. If I did, I wouldn't have time to do interviews for Playboy. I just don't consider myself a member of the intelligentsia.

[Q] Playboy: Would Dick Cavett admit to that?

[A] Snyder: I don't think he's as smart as he would like us all to believe.

[Q] Playboy: How would you compare his style with your own?

[A] Snyder: He's bookish. I'm sure he reads more than I do. I read maybe ten percent of my guests' books before they're on the show. He probably does read all the books. I don't know him that well.

[Q] Playboy: What's the difference in the way you and Cavett interview?

[A] Snyder: He'll talk with Luciano Pavarotti about opera and what makes great opera. I'd like to know what he likes on his Pizza.

[Q] Playboy: You've had Pavarotti on your show what does he like?

[A] Snyder: Pepperoni and anchovies.

[Q] Playboy: How much research do you do on Your guests?

[A] Snyder: I do my research in the two hours preceding the show itself. You know, people who come on don't have a great deal of time. I have to be their barometer and their metronome. Their concertmaster.

[Q] Playboy: But you rely on your staff to preinterview the guests, don't you?

[A] Snyder: Yes, heavily. But there's a difference between a preinterview and the actual TV taping. When crities attack me for doing a superficial interview with a supposedly "fascinating" man, they say I haven't done my job; but they aren't interviewing the man. Maybe the guy doesn't feel good or doesn't want to talk. Or maybe he's got stage fright. For example, I did an interview some years ago in Philadelphia on the old Contact show with Geraldine Chaplin, who was then touring the country in the Lillian Hellman play The Little Foxes. Now, that's not chopped liver! That's good. That's a great vehicle for that young woman to be in. Her father, Charlie Chaplin, was one of the great movie actors. You would think she'd have a wealth of thing to talk about. Well, I brought her into that studio and must have asked her 5000 questions during that hour, and to each one she answered "Yes" or "No or "Uh-huh." Now, that's not because I didn't do my research but because she did not come prepared to talk. But some might say I fucked up anyway, because I didn't do the research.

[Q] Playboy: Do other guest "misfires" come to mind?

[A] Snyder: Yes. Joey Bishop didn't work out, because we didn't have a studio audience for him to react to. And David Merrick didn't work out, because what he does is behind-the-scenes stuff. In both cases, I was surprised It didn't work, because the research read very well in the afternoon and I went out there expecting it to go well in the studio. Joseph E. Levine was another one--an interesting exercise.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Snyder: Well, here was a man who certainly had a wealth of experience in his lifetime as a great motion-picture producer. I asked him how he got from being a man who ran a restaurant in Boston to one of the world's most successful independent movie producers. What were the things that happened along the way? From Point A to B, and so forth.... Well, Levine looked at me and said, "I was in a movie studio in Astoria in 1939 and somebody showed me a script and the rest is history." And he stopped. And I looked at him and he looked at me and I looked at my watch and said, "You know, Joe, we have got 42 minutes to go here, and if you could give me a little bit of this history as we go along, it would be very, very helpful."

[Q] Playboy: How often has that happened?

[A] Snyder: I would say, out of the thousands of Programs I've done over the years the number that have been fucked up because I wasn't prepared to do my job could be counted on your fingers and on your toes. Now, that's not a bad batting average. I'm not perfect and I don't get as much as I should out of every interview. There are occasions when I fuck up, but I don't fuck up because I'm not prepared. I don't fuck up because I don't have an interest in the guest. I fuck up because sometimes there are circumstances beyond my control--it's too hot in the studio, I don't feel well, I've got a cold, I'm hung over, which happens occasionally.

[Q] Playboy: What's an example of a circumstance in which you fucked up?

[A] Snyder: We had a woman on the air--a sex researcher--who maintained after running a survey that women preferred oral stimulation to penile stimulation. And at the end of the show, I made a crack to the effect that, "Show me a man who doesn't do that and I'll steal his girl." A funny little line in the locker room, perhaps, but not on television. I don't know why I said that--probably to get a laugh from the crew or to give a sly wink to the camera. There is such a thing as a double-entendre, or an off-color remark, but that was just a vulgar line. And the minute I said it, I thought to myself, How could you do that? I just knew I shouldn't have done it. There was another occasion here in New York on the local news when I said, "Now here's Dr. Frank Field, Weatherman, to take a leak--I mean a look--out the window." I made believe it was a slip of the tongue, and that was part of being self-indulgent. But it was really in poor, poor taste. And the minute I said it, I thought, Oh, that's cheap. You're better than that.

[Q] Playboy: Of all your shows, is there one that stays with you, one that changed you or touched you?

[A] Snyder: We had a woman on a couple of years ago in L.A. who had been raped by a man in San Francisco know as Stinky. She went through the whole experience of being violated with her three-year-old child outside the door, knocking on the locked bedroom door. And she touched me. For that hour, I was ashamed to be a male. I was just ashamed of my gender, that a man had done this to a woman, violated her in such a fashion, raped her. And that show haunted me for a long time--one or two months.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you let your feelings show when you're affected?

[A] Snyder: I think I do. I know I do. This is going to sound self-serving, But let's talk about Phyllis Schlafly in regard to the subject of my feelings. She once asked me on my program If I'd want my daughter to go through basic training. Well, I gave her a long answer and she said, "We don't want our daughters to go through basic training and be taught how to kill. I said, "Phyllis, I went through basic training in the United States Air Force, and they did not teach me how to kill. They taught me how to polish floors, how to make beds, how to wax floors, how to clean latrines and how to scrub out pots and pans." I said, "Phyllis, there are many young women I know who would do very well to learn those basic skills." Well, I think that's saying something of how I feel.

[Q] Playboy: What did you think of Phyllis Schlafly?

[A] Snyder: Her opinions are archaic, She's in the Stone Age and she's living in a dream world when she talks about what women want. But that doesn't make her a bad person. That doesn't mean that she's not a nice lady. It just means I think her opinions are full of shit. I don't think that she is at all relevant to what's going on in the world today when it comes to E.R.A.

[Q] Playboy: We take it that Schlafly is not one of those guests you'd like to have had a couple of drinks with after the show. Have there been many guests with whom you've felt a certain chemistry--the kind that may have developed into something more than talk?

[A] Snyder: Absolutely. I've fallen in love with guests on the air on several occasions. You can't help it. There's chemistry, eye contact, sitting close to each other. Cooking is the world. You know, you're talking about ideas and you find that somebody thinks much the same way you do. I've had little "zipless fucks" on the air on a number of occasions. On one occasion, I desired that it would be more than zipless, but, unfortunately, she brought an entourage with her, and when I raced out to the elevator to invite her for dinner that evening, she was there with 18 people. And so it remained zipless. Now you would like me to tell you who that was, wouldn't you?

[Q] Playboy: Absolutely; who?

[A] Snyder: It was Liv Ullmann.

[Q] Playboy: When you're interviewing celebrities, do you try to get them to reveal new things about themselves?

[A] Snyder: I don't think that any of the so-called celebrities we've had on have ever been put in the position of having to reveal too much. For example, years ago, we interviewed Coretta king on a two-way from Atlanta. It was at a time when all that stuff that J. Edgar Hoover had assembled about Martin Luther King, Jr., was coming out in the press. And I couldn't avoid the question--"Mrs. King, have you read all this? What does that do to you?" And she said, "You know, I read all this, and I know that my husband knew other women. But I know that he loved me and me alone." That is the end of the question. I mean, I could have taken her nose and rubbed it in the gossip; but I didn't. I don't think you have to take people right to the edge of the furnace and put their faces in it.

[Q] Playboy: You don't, then, take a moral tone when interviewing your guests?

[A] Snyder: No. When you say a moral tone, you imply judgments. And most people who have watched my shows over the years know that we have had transsexuals, trisexuals, bisexuals, lesbians, gay men, people who have been divorced, women who are getting married.... I make no judgments on these people.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever feel, though, that you exploit them?

[A] Snyder: I think part of everything we do is, in some way, exploitation. We have them on because there is great curiosity about them. We have them on to find out about their different lifestyles--what they look and feel like and what their own personal morality is. In most cases, people who live in what are considered to be "bizarre" sexual circumstances have as good a code of morals and personal honor and integrity as anybody else in this country. When I was a boy, the word for somebody who was homosexual was queer. That was the big put-down, and you were brought up almost to think that they all lived in dirty houses, that they didn't have clean fingernails and that they didn't bathe and that they were somehow subhuman. From doing this program, I've learned that there are a lot of people who are involved in lifestyles that I thought at one time were sinful and unacceptable, who do have jobs and a code of personal decency and morality. They want better jobs, more money, a nicer place to live, just like everybody else.

[Q] Playboy: On the topic of exploitation, you've had a lot of guests who have more than just "different lifestyles." For instance, one night you interviewed a dominatrix, complete with whips and chains. But, in her case, you made a moralistic remarks "To me, this is sick." Wasn't that what you claim never to have done?

[A] Snyder: Well, yes, I guess that comment was a moral judgment. But this lady came on with the idea--you know, whip you, beat you, boil you in oil. And, to me, that is sick. If that's a moral judgment, then I am being inconsistent. I remember she said, "And if you want, you can kiss my feet." I looked at her and said, "Lady, you can kiss my ass." NBC blipped it out.

[Q] Playboy: Did she say anything to you after the show?

[A] Snyder: No, she just belted me around the studio and that was the end of it.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think you reacted to her as you did?

[A] Snyder: Well, I don't like to make moral judgments on things that are within the realm of reality. We aren't talking about somebody confronted with a decision to abort or not to abort, or who has been a victim of rape or incest. We are talking about somebody who advertises to those people who want to be physically dominated, act as masochists, and pay money for it. To me, that is not within the bounds of reality.

[Q] Playboy: There may be a lot of consenting adults who like that.

[A] Snyder: I don't know how many people there are, but I have been alive for 44 years now, and I have been in a lot of situations, you know, a lot of social and sexual situations, and I have yet to encounter anybody who wants to have his testicles put in a crusher or his nipples pierced. I just don't run into those kinds of people.

[Q] Playboy: You don't travel in those circles, eh?

[A] Snyder: I don't travel in those circles. I wouldn't go to Plato's Retreat. To me, all that group-sex business that everybody writes so wonderfully about is in the world of fantasy, and I am very comfortable keeping it there. My idea of beautiful people having sex is not in a steam-filled hotel on the West Side of New York on a huge mattress. How the hell do you avoid the wet spot in that kind of room? My idea of a great swingers' club is the Carlyle Hotel, with Dom Pérignon and beef Wellington. Don't give me the shitty snack bar with ham sandwiches. I want the real thing. If all the people in swingers' clubs looked like Playboy Bunnies and it all took place with that kind of opulence, then you would say, "Wow, this is great." But come on. You know, people talk about pornography and how great it is. How come all the pornographers operate in the shittiest part of town?

[Q] Playboy: Cheap rent.

[A] Snyder: Times Square is cheap rent?

[Q] Playboy: Do you enjoy porn?

[A] Snyder: Absolutely; I have been to X-rated motion pictures. I mean, God Almighty, one day an NBC colleague and I sneaked into Deep Throat at the Pussycat Cinema.

[Q] Playboy: And?

[A] Snyder: I thought Deep Throat was hysterical. But I still think flagellation and dominance and sadomasochism is sick.

[Q] Playboy: No wonder Screw's editor, Al Goldstein, once put you on his "Shit List"--you're bad for his business.

[A] Snyder: Al Goldstein wrote that "Walking anuses such as Snyder ... won't permit us on TV." After he put me on the Shit List, somebody on the staff suggested that we have Al on the air, and I said, "Fuck Al Goldstein, he's put me on the Shit List, I'm not putting him on the air." Somehow, he found out about this, and I was home one night--the first night I got my Manhattan cable TV hooked up--this was back in the early days of cable TV's Midnight Blue, when they had a "Fuck you" at the end of every show. Everyone was telling me I had to watch this Midnight Blue, tits on the air, you're going to go crazy. So I went home, and son of a bitch, there they were, tits on the air, and they went on through the whole show. And at the end: "Good night and fuck you, Tom Snyder!" [Laughs] I fell off the couch. I thought, How often can you watch television, the first night on Manhattan cable, and be told to go fuck yourself on the air? I loved it! Subsequent to that, we did have Al on the show.

[Q] Playboy: Has he stopped picking on you?

[A] Snyder: I like Al Goldstein a great deal. Al and I share a number of common passions, none of which is sexual. He and I love gadgets. He and I adore electric trains, we both love his son, we both like our town houses in New York and we are forever exchanging notes on whether or not our tomato plants are doing well. I got a call from Al one night through the switchboard at quarter of one in the morning; "Al Goldstein has to talk to you, it's a matter of the greatest urgency." I figured he was picked up by the police or trapped somewhere. Al gets on the phone and says, "Listen, I just got the new automatic signal for the kind of trains we buy. Does the yellow wire go on tab A to make the light go on, or do you put it somewhere else?" A lot of people don't know this side of Al Goldstein--that he is a lovely man when he gets out of that sewer he operates called Screw. Now he'll probably put me on his Shit List again. Well, fuck you, Al Goldstein!

[Q] Playboy: Has anyone ever accused you of contributing to the demise of sex by diverting people's late-night attention with your show?

[A] Snyder: The most people we would play to on a given evening is 7,000,000. Now, if you subtract that from 220,000,000, that leaves 213,000,000 people. So my contribution to celibacy in this country, I think, is minuscule.

[Q] Playboy: What about the sexual revolution? Has there really been one?

[A] Snyder: As much as we all say we have been through the sexual revolution and are freer now of hang-ups than we were in the Fifties--in spite of all the talk of sexual revolution and freedom and the things that Hugh Hefner has written about and that he has done to free us all of our past hang-ups and our past concerns--America still views immorality as being sexual in nature. We are quite willing to forgive embezzlement, defrauding workers' wages, cheating on exams--those things are all forgivable. But to catch a man in bed with a woman who is not his wife, or a woman with a man who is not her husband, a woman with another woman in the Navy, a man with another man in a college situation--that is, in America's mind, the unforgivable sin. When we catch somebody in a "sexual crime," we behave as Christians and, as members of the Christian army, we do the noble thing--we shoot the wounded. When somebody commits a sexual transgression in the minds of moral America, that is the ultimate sin. It's perfectly proper to put one's finger in somebody else's ear. That is not a crime. But when we get to other parts of the anatomy, it is something that can never ever be forgiven, in spite of all our "liberalism." We are still a puritanical and moralistic nation when it comes to things sexual.

What killed Ted Kennedy's candidacy in 1980? Not his stand on welfare and not his program for jobs; not his liberalism. What killed his candidacy was Mary Jo Kopechne, the girl he left in the lagoon, to put it in the words of a Chicago writer. And people's preoccupation with the fact that Ted Kennedy had somehow sinned sexually.

[Q] Playboy: Roger Mudd's interview with him on CBS was instrumental in damaging his chances for the nomination. Mudd, of course, grilled him on Chappaquiddick. Had you done that interview, would you have handled it differently?

[A] Snyder: I would not have asked those questions about Chappaquiddick. In my mind, that is over and done with. That was a horrible tragedy, certainly for the young woman and her family, and for him being in public life. It is old ground. Why keep going over it? I don't think that was the issue in his campaign for the Presidency. I just don't see why that was so important.

[Q] Playboy Maybe that's why NBC replaced you and Prime Time Saturday with David Brinkley and NBC News Magazine. Maybe they felt you weren't hard-hitting enough. Do you think Brinkley will have the freedom to do what he wants?

[A] Snyder: No. The management exerts its influence on everything that goes on the air at NBC News and that show is being watched very closely. And all that stuff about "They now have a real journalist with the new magazine"--well, that show employs the same staff of producers and backup people that we employed on Prime Time Sunday and Weekend. So, window dressing aside, the basic philosophies of that program are about the same. And I can't believe that David Brinkley, who has been at NBC since the Forties, is all of a sudden going to put a whole new imprint on that program.

[Q] Playboy: You seem a bit rankled about some people's saying you're not a real journalist.

[A] Snyder: Columnists have written, "NBC insiders claim Tom Snyder is finished, Tom Snyder isn't a newsman, Tom Snyder isn't a journalist, Tom Snyder's a hot dog, Tom Snyder's an entertainer." Who the fuck are all these people? In a court of law, you're allowed to face your accusers; but when you work for the NBC television network, insiders are quoted at length about my failure to do my homework, to be a journalist, and I don't even know who these people are. I would never have done Prime Time Sunday if I'd known then what I know now. But who could know all the things that were going to happen? And I don't want to be in the NBC News Division right now, because it's been made painfully clear to me that there's no place for me there.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you led to believe that Fred Silverman had a great deal of confidence in you and in Prime Time Sunday/Saturday and that it was going to be on for a long time?

[A] Snyder: I heard that, too. I heard a lot of things about the "confidence" Silverman had in me and I heard a lot of things about the confidence Bill Small had in me and NBC News had in me. As it turned out, that confidence was bullshit. I think they were jerking me around, for whatever reason--whether they were waiting for Mudd or for Dan Rather. It's all part of their modus operandi.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds as though you're not satisfied with how things work at NBC.

[A] Synder: I don't like rumors, I don't like gossip. When I hadn't been told by NBC that Brinkley was going to do the new Magazine, I didn't like reading in the paper that he, in fact, would be doing it. I think somebody should come and tell me. Which gets back to "insiders say" or "sources close to NBC say"--that sort of thing. I said to an NBC executive, "May I ask a question? Could you ask Mr. Small during one of your séances down there whether I'm gonna be back on this show in the fall or whether I'll just find out by reading the paper?" I strongly resented that. I felt that if Bill Small didn't like my work, goddamn it, come down here and say so. I mean, say something! But the guy never called. So Prime Time Sunday became Prime Time Saturday and now it's evolved into Speak Up Brinkley!

[Q] Playboy: Has that experience finally humbled you? You've been quoted in the past as saying you're "a stranger to failure."

[A] Snyder: In Philadelphia, I put on a talk show, Contact, live at nine A.M., before there was a Phil Donahue, and it was a success. I did a news program there that was a success, and theater reporting, too. A talk show called Sunday, a traveling show--success. So, Prime Time Saturday is the first show I've ever worked on, local or network, in my life that's been taken off the air because it got shitty ratings. Well, now failure and I have been very well introduced. The whole thing was a negative experience for me. I don't like failures, but people have them in their lifetimes, and this is my cross to bear--Prime Time Saturday. Very disheartening.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that you've decided not to do any more prime-time TV shows?

[A] Snyder: Yes, I'm very serious about that. I don't want to do any more Celebrity Spotlights or News Magazines in prime time. I can't compete with Suzanne Somers' tits for ratings. There's no way. I can't compete with Charlie's Angels' legs. I simply cannot do that. And if you can't compete, you don't get ratings, and I don't want to read in the papers that Snyder got low ratings when, in fact, I'm competing against something I can't beat. I mean, if they run this interview on the same truck as the centerfold in the magazine, a lot more people are going to look at those tits than are going to read this interview. I can't compete against that and I won't compete against that.

[Q] Playboy: From the start, then, did you feel you didn't have a chance?

[A] Snyder: There was tremendous pressure put upon me to do that program featuring some kind of a breaking news story on Saturday night, to make it appear more of a newscast than a news magazine. That was not the philosophy that I had brought to the show. I felt myself growing more and more distant from the show and the people who worked on it, because it was going in a direction over which I had no control. We were on against Love Boat or Fantasy Island on Saturday night, against Trapper John, M.D. on Sunday night. You can't compete on Sunday, because the audience for that type of show has seen 60 Minutes and whether or not they want to see it again at ten P.M. is open to question. Saturday night historically is a big entertainment night on TV; viewing levels aren't as high as they are on Sunday night. If Silverman had put the show on Monday nights at ten P.M. for the first summer, we might have had a chance. We would have been on against baseball on ABC, which historically does very poorly in the ratings. We might have had a chance to develop an audience. Then I would have moved it right up against 60 Minutes at seven o'clock on Sunday night. We should have just gone tooth and nail with them and found out once and for all whether or not it had a chance to fly.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever suggest that scenario to the NBC executives?

[A] Snyder: No. They're very difficult to communicate with, because, in the main, they're all running for office. There's so much politics involved; friendships and alliances of the past. I mean, right now, there is a CBSization going on at NBC News. Salant, Small, Westerman, Manning, who was here before they came, are drawing from their friends out of their CBS past, which is logical. They know those people and trust their work. But I suppose in the mind of Bill Small we're those assholes who fucked up NBC News before he got here. I think he's dead wrong on that, but I can understand how he would feel that way. I would say that anybody who was with NBC News prior to the arrival of the new management is a dead fish. I think one by one we're all gonna be weeded out. You know, they got me out of there, and I hope they're happy about that. Small and Company drove me out of the news division, there's no question about that. All those who were onetime up-and-comers with NBC News--and I consider myself and Tom Brokaw to have been two of those--will eventually have to go. From where I sit, anybody who's worked for CBS News is now the bearer of the Holy Grail in the eyes of NBC management. I would guess that since they courted them for so long, they must have some plans for them, especially Mudd.

[Q] Playboy: You have quite a record of longevity. How many NBC presidents and news chiefs have you gone through?

[A] Snyder: Oh, my gosh, I think four or five presidents of news and seven or eight presidents of the network.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think they're switched around so much?

[A] Snyder: For the same reason that baseball managers get fired or football coaches get canned. Management just changes. Our team is in last place--fire the manager. It's a lot better than firing the players. But it's difficult for those who work in news when they change management--you have to start all over again. When Dick Wald was president of NBC News, he and I developed a relationship. He knew what I could do and would give me assignments. He had confidence in me, as I did in him as the executive officer in charge of the News Division. Well, one day, suddenly Dick Wald is gone and you've got Lester Crystal. We're right back to square one, as far as he's concerned with me. I've got to start all over again. I'm a rookie. The day Bill Small walked in here as president of news, I went back to square one. I'm not saying this out of personal rancor, because I don't know Bill Small personally. When he came in as president of NBC News, to him Tom Snyder was just another person starting on the very first day. Tom Snyder wasn't someone who had done news in Los Angeles and New York for him, had done documentaries for him, had done reporting for him, had done news programs for him. To him, I was, and am, just another one of the guys who are starting from day one. And when he leaves, all of the people who are in the news division will once again start from day one. Just as when the day comes--if it ever happens--that Silverman moves on. I'm still here and I go right back to square one again, and that's very difficult.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have much contact with Silverman?

[A] Snyder: None whatsoever. I think the last time I saw Silverman was over a year ago, at a Man of the Year Award dinner here in New York. I have absolutely no contact with him, and that's probably just as well. He has a lot of things to do, you know, and we're not here to be personal friends--we're here to get the job done. When Silverman was hired to work for NBC, he didn't say, "I'm going to make NBC number one." We almost sealed his doom, because we set a standard for him that Jesus Christ couldn't live up to. We said this man--the Wunderkind, the master programer, the arch television strategist, the child of television--must make NBC number one.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us, would you like to be president of NBC?

[A] Snyder: Yeah, I would like to be president of NBC. I would really like to run NBC. Because I think I know what to do. Now, of course, that is a very immodest statement, because Silverman is president of NBC, and when he was given the job, I am sure he said to himself then, as he does now, "I know what to do." As it turned out, in some areas, he didn't know what to do.

[Q] Playboy: Can you give an example?

[A] Snyder: Well, by his own admission, he has made some mistakes, such as rushing shows like Supertrain onto the air. I know where the problems are. If you're going to spot problems in television, I don't think you gather up executives and go to a meeting in Hawaii and discuss them. You go to the lots and to the TV studios and you sit around and watch what is happening and talk with the cast and crew--and they will tell you exactly what's wrong with the show.

[Q] Playboy: Don't you believe Silverman has done that?

[A] Snyder: I know he hasn't done it. That is not the way television executives operate. Very few TV executives come from the ranks of talent. You know Johnny Carson ain't going to be president of NBC and neither am I, nor is John Chancellor. But those of us who have been working, not in the executive suites but in the studios and the trenches for the past 25 years know pretty much how to make that little box work. We know how things should be handled far better than do those who've been in the executive suites for 25 years.

[Q] Playboy: So you really would like the job?

[A] Snyder: Yeah, I would take it in a second.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever thought of going up to Silverman's office and saying, "Hey Fred, here is what you ought to do!"?

[A] Snyder: Well, there is a wall between talent and management at every station where I have worked. We have very little communication, and in some ways, we are mortal enemies. Don't ask me why, but that's the way it is.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel, at least, that your bosses care for you?

[A] Snyder: They don't care, they really don't give a shit. I'd been on the air for four years when they sent me a telegram: "Congratulations on your first anniversary." This is going to sound like Snyder's going after the executives, but God Almighty, sometimes you have to wonder about some of the things that management does and why it does them. There are layers of management at all networks that are totally superfluous. There was a time at NBC, in Burbank, when there was one vice-president there. Now there must be 25. There's an island in Hawaii that nobody's ever allowed to go to, I forget the name of it. I'm convinced that they clone network executives there. When one set of executives is fired, they call that island and send in a new set. I see it from within: the positioning, the jockeying, the politics, the duplicity, the phoniness, the chaos. If I wrote it all down, nobody would ever believe some of the things that went on.

[Q] Playboy: Including the way top executives are axed?

[A] Snyder: NBC historically has a way of handling things badly. It's not so much a question of cleaning out your desk; it's preparing yourself emotionally for what is to come. If leaving is what is at the end of the trail, we ought to be allowed to emotionally prepare for that. NBC fired Herb Schlosser in a most unglorious way when Silverman was hired. It was done in the press. When Wald was fired as president of news, he was allowed to twist in the wind in public for a week. When Crystal was fired as president of NBC News, it was handled very badly. I asked an executive with this company if Crystal was in trouble and he bald-faced lied to me. He said no, when at the same time he was out trying to recruit someone else. When Jane Cahill Pfeiffer was fired, it was done in a very, very bad way. I don't think you should read that in the paper; you should hear that from your chief executive officer in the privacy of his office. NBC, when it has somebody walk the plank, makes people suffer.

[Q] Playboy: Who is your strongest NBC ally?

[A] Snyder: I don't have any. Mine are all gone. I don't feel that there's anybody here I can really go to if there's a problem with the Tomorrow show, and that's sad, because this is a money-making show. Especially now, with the 90-minute expansion. All the people I knew here who would probably put up with my shenanigans or let me holler and yell to get something off my chest are gone now. I don't feel comfortable communicating with anybody, because they don't return calls or respond to letters. If a network executive calls me and says, "Let's have a drink," I break out in a cold sweat, because I don't want to go out with them or speak to them. For the most part, they are boring to be with and don't have much that's interesting to say.

[Q] Playboy: As a man who's making a considerable amount of money, you might have a hard time finding people who would sympathize with you.

[A] Snyder: We make a lot of money. They pay us extemely, extemely well. And that helps ease a few of the bruises. The recognition helps a little bit.

[Q] Playboy: We're glad to hear they're only bruises and not wounds. Do you still harbor a desire to be a news anchor?

[A] Snyder: No. I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. There was a time when I would have given my left testicle to be one of "the four horsemen" of the convention--the floor reporters--back in the late Sixties. When I joined NBC in 1970, it was a goal of mine.

[Q] Playboy: Have TV newsmen themselves become the celebrities?

[A] Snyder: They have. You know, there's only one thing phonier than showbiz, and that's newsbiz. In the TV news industry, people fight each other when they really should be working together. Roger Mudd is a fine reporter, but when he found out he wasn't gonna get the star job at CBS, he quit. Yet they continued him on salary. Well, when Marilyn Monroe didn't show up for a picture, they suspended her without pay. When you start to talk about newsbiz versus showbiz and the phoniness involved, I think you have to think about things like that.

[Q] Playboy: Are television executives afraid of your outspokenness on the air? Is that why you didn't get a news anchor spot?

[A] Snyder: I think that was part of it. I once asked Wald, who's now over at ABC, why I was never allowed to become more a part of the network news operations at NBC when I was anchoring local news in New York and had done the same in L.A. And Dick said to me, "Well, I always was afraid that you would embarrass me on the air." I had the reputation of being outspoken.

[Q] Playboy: How have they tried to constrict you?

[A] Snyder: I was once asked to be a presenter at a Dean Martin roast in New York. No shtick, just appear as myself, host of Tomorrow. I was told by network execs in the news department, "No, you can't do that, because it'll destroy your credibility as a newsman." And I told them, "I don't know what you people are talking about. I don't appear on the conventions, I don't do any primary coverage, I don't anchor the nightly news as vacation relief or anything else. My primary news identification is to introduce Frank Field and Betty Furness on News-Center 4 in New York."

[Q] Playboy: Have any of your "embarrassing" moments on the air ever resulted in legal problems for NBC?

[A] Snyder: I anchored the six-o' clock news in L.A. for four and a half years, I've anchored in New York for two, done a three-hour NBC special, Of Women and Men, the Sunday-night news for a year on the network and the News Update for a year--in all that time, I've not lost NBC one single station license, there have been no lawsuits and there have been no picket marches out in front of 30 Rock [30 Rockefeller Plaza, NBC headquarters in New York].

[Q] Playboy: How do you want your audience now to perceive you, as a journalist or as an entertainer?

[A] Snyder: As a communicator. I have a friend out in L.A. who every now and again will see me and say, "You know, my wife and I think you're a very fine announcer." In the minds of many people, everybody who's on TV who doesn't sing is an announcer. And that's basically what we are. Some of us do talk shows, some of us anchor the news, some of us do station breaks--but in the minds of many people who watch us, we are just announcers. And I'm not uncomfortable with that term.

[Q] Playboy: Do you take your responsibilities as a TV journalist seriously?

[A] Snyder: I don't feel that the stories I've covered in my career have been of great significance. While the greats in broadcast journalism were covering wars and conventions, I was covering protest marches and fires, city-council meetings and mayoral races--more local and regional stuff. Great journalism is when you dress up in a uniform and go over to Afghanistan and identify yourself with the natives there.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't there talk a while ago of your defecting to ABC to become an anchor man?

[A] Snyder: Yes. I wanted to go to ABC if I could have done late-night television. But there was no place for me there to do that. I don't want to read news anymore. The Tomorrow show is an individual show with a personal format, and I wanted to continue doing that.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of ABC's World News Tonight?

[A] Snyder: From the first time it went on, you could say Roone Arledge was on to something. He flew in the face of all the negative predictions. He had a show that in the beginning had no anchor man, no star, no discernable talent, and he's made it work. And if I were Frank Reynolds, I think I would feel like I was cock of the walk, because Frank Reynolds had been kicked around through a number of administrations over there at ABC News.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think Arledge has brought a lot of the flashiness and excitement of live sports coverage into news?

[A] Snyder: There was a time when everybody was up in arms over the simple line "Good night, Chet. Good night, David. And good night for NBC News." They thought, Oh, they're having too much fun with the news. Somebody wrote a couplet one time about Brinkley and Huntley--"Huntley-Brinkley, Huntley-Brinkley, one is droll, the other twinkly." Happy-talk news started with Eyewitness News on channel seven in New York, but there's always been presentation and production value in broadcast news. When Ed Murrow sat with the phone on the desk, the cord went into the drawer, but it didn't go anywhere from there. People who get all upset about the flash in TV news say Arledge did it. Arledge didn't do it, for heaven's sake. It's been there for a long while.

[Q] Playboy: Is there any chance you might one day return to those "happy-talk" days of anchoring the local news and forget the internal politics of coast-to-coast exposure?

[A] Snyder: Anchoring local television news now is a young man's business. They hire young men with no gray hair. The only ones with gray hair are those who've been there for 20 years. When I made my mark in Philadelphia in local TV news, I was 26 years old. I ain't a Young Turk of television news anymore. I was. I was the role model. I changed it forevermore. Not just myself but those of us who worked in Philly and Los Angeles--we didn't know it at the time, but we were inventing something that went on to be called happy-talk news, personality news.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel you were the last of a dying breed of TV newspersons?

[A] Snyder: This is going to sound terribly immodest, but fuck it. There are two great sins, false pride and false modesty. I was the last of a breed, I'm the end of an era. There are no more single anchors in the major markets on television news. They're boy-girl teams now.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you exaggerating just a bit? Isn't your ego showing?

[A] Snyder: Listen, do you know how much money I've made for this company? Do you have any idea? I don't, but you look at the news in Los Angeles and the news in New York, where they told me a rating point was worth $1,000,000 a year, each point! And I think, of the years I was here in New York, it went up three or four points. I'm being modest! That's at least $3,000,000 a year for three years. That's $9,000,000 right there. Now let's go to Los Angeles, where they made a shit pot of money off the news out there from six to seven, absolutely a shit pot full of money. I mean, if I were an executive and had helped turn things around, I would have been promoted to president of the NBC television network, if not president of NBC, Inc. Once, with Silverman, when we were talking, he said, "What do you want?" I said, "Fred, if NBC had come to you when you were at ABC and said, 'Listen, we want to hire you as a programing executive, vice-president at NBC,' you would have told them to go fuck themselves." He said, "That's right." I said, "Because you wanted to be president." He said, "That's right." I said, "Fred, in my own area, I want to be president, too. I want to be the single most important on-air talent at National Broadcasting Company. I think you know that."

[Q] Playboy: When was that conversation?

[A] Snyder: About two years ago.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still feel that way?

[A] Snyder: No, I don't anymore.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Snyder: Because they have fucked me. You know, it's when I still had ambitions in the Nightly News area.

[Q] Playboy: Are you dispirited?

[A] Snyder: No. But it ain't all been fun and games, you know. I haven't had the easy ones to do. Nobody said, "Here's the Nightly News." Nobody said, "Here's the Today show." Nobody said, "Here's The Tonight Show." They said, "Here's one o'clock in the morning. Here's the local news in New York." It's not exactly what you'd call a Christmas present.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever suffered an identity crisis or a confusion of personalities, from having done a variety of programs, including news and talk show simultaneously?

[A] Snyder: When you do all kinds of shows, you have to be all kinds of people. The Tomorrow show is one person, the news is another kind of format and you're expected to bring a different demeanor to the reading and reporting of the news. And that gets very confusing in my own head, or it did at the time I was doing both. Being the straight news reporter for one hour and Mr. Nice Guy Talk Show Host for the other hour. And there was a conflict in my own mind. I started to wonder who I really am when I'm on the air. You can't really be yourself on the news program--you're the prisoner of that format.

Five years ago, I was still of a mind that the more time you spent on the air, the happier you were going to be. When you start out, you equate success with visibility. But I found out that the amount of time you're on the air doesn't have any relationship to how happy you are in your job.

[Q] Playboy: Did any kind of happiness enter your life when NBC sent you back to Los Angeles in 1977?

[A] Snyder: For reasons that I have never understood--and will probably never know--somebody at NBC decided it would be a great idea to get me the hell out of New York. Maybe this is my own paranoia, but I had the feeling that there was this concerted effort to get me back to L.A., where I couldn't cause any trouble, where I wouldn't be as visible and where I wouldn't attract the attention of the press. I was there with Tomorrow for two years. The press release said I was "delighted" to move back to L.A.--but that is always what it says in the press release: "Mr. Snyder is 'delighted,' or Mrs. Pfeiffer is 'delighted.' " Everybody is always delighted when NBC announces something. They never say, "Well, we finally got rid of the son of a bitch. He is gone. We don't have to talk to him anymore." At this little farewell party in the news department, they gave me a map of the island of Elba. And we all know Napoleon went there for his exile.

[Q] Playboy: What about your return to New York in 1979?

[A] Snyder: Well, I returned from exile with great triumph on Prime Time Sunday, which we all know was not one of the great hits of all time.

[Q] Playboy: Would you describe yourself as a paranoid person?

[A] Snyder: I don't think I'm paranoid. If I were, I would have left NBC months ago, when they had all this stuff in the papers about Steve Allen taking over the Tomorrow show. If I were paranoid, I would believe that there was some kind of grand plan to get me out of here--but I am not paranoid. I knew that it was press agentry and negotiation and bullshit. And so I sat right here in this office and did my job.

[Q] Playboy: Have the executives changed their attitudes toward you, now that you're doing the "new" Tomorrow show?

[A] Snyder: We get a lot of attention right now from the executives. Prior to the announcement of the new 90-minute show, we received no attention from any executives. But I have some resentment about that particular descriptive term. There is no new Tomorrow show. There is the Tomorrow show.

[Q] Playboy: To what extent are you in control of the show?

[A] Snyder: I am in control to the extent that when it gets into the studio, I run it. But prior to that, it belongs to Pam Burke, who's the executive producer, Pat Caso, the producer, Bob Morton--all these people I work with, they are the idea-generating machine. Producers produce, writers write, directors direct and stars star. Everybody has his area of expertise. Every now and again, it misfires, but in the main, they know what plays.

[Q] Playboy: So you trust these people more than you do the NBC executives?

[A] Snyder: Absolutely. I would not trust the judgment of any NBC executive when it came to deciding what was good for the Tomorrow show. And that's bad. I simply don't think they have any comprehension of what they're talking about. Which is OK, because that's their job. And they have never interfered.

[Q] Playboy: There have been various reports about your new salary. Are you making $1,000,000 a year

[A] Snyder: I do not earn $1,000,000 a year. NBC does not pay me that amount of money.

[Q] Playboy: Would you elaborate?

[A] Snyder: When I negotiated with NBC in 1974 to come to New York the first time to do NewsCenter 4, I negotiated a contract that was beyond my wildest dreams, moneywise. Yes, they paid me a lot of money. There were reports in the newspapers that that contract paid me, as I recall, $400,000 a year.

[Q] Playboy: Were those reports correct?

[A] Snyder: That was a ball-park number--very close. Now, when I agreed to extend that contract in 1979 to do Prime Time Sunday and the Tomorrow program here in New York, there was no increase in salary. That ball-park number remained the same, which was fine with me. How much money can you spend? For doing the three additional prime-time Celebrity Spotlight specials, they paid me extra money. My new contract, as measured against the total sum of money paid to me for the Tomorrow program, Prime Time Sunday and the three specials, gives me an increase of, I think, $35,000. Which is not a great big increase. So it's not that I play hardball for great big sums of money. I don't do that. If I did any additional programs for NBC beyond the 90-minute Tomorrow program, it would have to be negotiated separately.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you just say you would not be doing any more prime-time shows?

[A] Snyder: If NBC were to say, "Let's put together a show that uses you to your best advantage, as an interviewer, a conversationalist, a personality--involving the things that you do on the Tomorrow program, tailored for prime time, unedited and live on tape," well, that would be appealing to me. That I would consider. But not a celebrity-interview show, not a show that is formatted by the network or by the entertainment division and gets in the way of what I like to do. I don't want to be crammed into somebody else's format. But then, it's highly possible that after the performance on Prime Time Sunday, the NBC television network never wants to see me on prime time again, anyway.

[Q] Playboy: Can you expand a bit on your contract negotiations with Brandon Tartikoff, the president of NBC Entertainment?

[A] Snyder: Well, we didn't sit in a room and go hammer and tong at each other negotiating. The only thing that I wanted to know from NBC was what kind of show the expanded Tomorrow was going to be. What kind of staff? Would I have to relinquish my role as the single host? Would there be a studio audience? Etc. There was some talk of the show's going back to Los Angeles, which I didn't want, because I think it's dumb to have the two late-night programs coming from the same coast and the same studio. We didn't talk about money but about conditions and terms.

[Q] Playboy: How do you think you came out in those negotiations?

[A] Snyder: It was not a question of my winning over NBC or NBC's winning over me. Historically, there's been tension between The Tonight Show and the Tomorrow show, not because of the personalities involved on the air but because we are both dealing in the same area. And The Tonight Show has been very jealous of its prerogatives in terms of the people it books on the air, the regulars that Johnny Carson has on his program. Just as we have been jealous of ours. When you work in Burbank, The Tonight Show and the Tomorrow show are side by side, with both staffs on the same lot. There's an apprehension that we can't book a person without The Tonight Show getting pissed off at us. Will they feel that we're infringing on their territory? We don't want to produce a show that looks like The Tonight Show or a continuation of that show. That would be dumb for us to do.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Snyder: Well, we're not a George Burns, Robert Blake, Angie Dickinson type of show; we're an author-politician-person-in-the-news-interesting-character type of show. That was the primary reason for my telling Tartikoff that taking the Tomorrow show back to California would be a mistake. It creates a lot of internal political tensions that nobody really needs. Now we're 3000 miles away here in New York and Freddy De Cordova runs his show out there and Pam Burke runs her show here in New York.

[Q] Playboy: But you're booking California people with the new Rona Barrett celebrity segment, aren't you?

[A] Snyder: Rona has her own little staff of people out there that will be doing that, and she will not be doing a celebrity every night; perhaps only if that person is currently newsworthy.

[Q] Playboy: Do you worry that she might upstage you with her West Coast reports?

[A] Snyder: I have no worry about anybody's upstaging me, including Rona Barrett. The show is 90 minutes long and there is plenty of room for Rona and Tom and whoever else comes on it. I said that to Tartikoff when he asked me that very same question, and to Rona Barrett when she asked me. I said, "Rona, whether I do 90 minutes or ten minutes, the check is the same!" And that is the way I feel. I am secure enough in my own presence on television, confident enough in my own work that I don't worry about being upstaged.

[Q] Playboy: Who decided to bring Rona to the Tomorrow show?

[A] Snyder: When we were talking about the new Tomorrow show in June 1980, Tartikoff and I were having a conversation about some of the elements he thought should be in there and one of those things was a personality reporter. He used the words "somebody like a Rona Barrett." And either he or I said, "Why don't we get Rona Barrett? Why go for an imitation?"

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever thought of having a permanent side-kick on TV?

[A] Snyder: Well, way back, I wanted to develop a series of regulars. I don't know why we haven't done that. I could envision somebody like Allan Carr or Marvin Hamlisch or Mel Tormé. But not every night, like Carson and Ed McMahon; it would be too obvious. Just once a month or so.

[Q] Playboy: What about the proposed news breaks on the new Tomorrow show? Was it you who killed them?

[A] Snyder: The news bursts are out because we'd have to leave a hole in the tape, a blank two minutes or so, and somebody would come on live from New York or Burbank and do the news and then go back to the tape. But what if the Pope died and we were to come back and we had a ventriloquist on? What happens if there's an air crash and 255 people are killed and we come back to tape with a comic who makes no reference to a great tragedy? That's the thinking that prevailed. It would have made the show look insensitive.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel there is a dilution of your role on the show?

[A] Snyder: I suppose, if you look at it that way, it's a dilution of my role, since I'm no longer the sole person on, doing everything as I have been for seven years. But I like the idea of variety, change of pace, so that it isn't just me (continued on page 156) Tom Snyder(continued from page 82) and somebody talking for an hour and a half.

[Q] Playboy: With the additional segments and a talent showcase, it sounds as if Tomorrow is, in fact, becoming more like the old Tonight Show.

[A] Snyder: It does seem that way.... I do have misgivings and anxieties about whether it's going to be my show any more. But that's true any time you make a change. And after seven years, it's not a bad thing to play around with it a bit--to see if we can change it without destroying it. We don't want to fuck it up and we don't want NBC to fuck it up. But you never really know until it gets on the air. It's a chance you take, and I'm taking that chance.

[Q] Playboy: Is the pressure for ratings more or less intense with the new time slot?

[A] Snyder: It's more intense now, because of the revenues involved. Advertisers pay so much more money for that half hour--12:30 to one--than for the old Tonight Show, because the audience is so much greater. There's a tremendous dropoff of sets in use after one A.M. I don't have the exact figures on what a 30-second spot costs on The Tonight Show, but it's around $30,000. A commercial rate on the Tomorrow program after one A.M. is maybe $8000. So the pressure is on us to maintain the Carson rating from 12:30 to one A.M.

[Q] Playboy: With all this talk about the pettiness and the subterfuge among the decision makers, do you ever sit back and reflect on the significance--or the insignificance--of what you do for a living?

[A] Snyder: I often wonder, Is what I do really meaningful? Is it purposeful work? Or is it just frivolous and ephemeral and of no great value? That's a frustration that I have. You wonder, Is it really important to do an interview with Don Rickles on television? Is it really important to do a television program? In the grand scheme of things, is being a television personality really meaningful? I asked that once of Jack Lemmon and I guess he answered best. He said, "Yeah, because there are those rare moments when we can really touch people."

[Q] Playboy: And will that sustain you in the years to come?

[A] Snyder: To me, the Tomorrow show is my final assignment in television on a regular basis. I don't want to do any more new projects. I am no longer the brash young arrogant newscaster from the West Coast who shoots from the hip. I consider myself a senior citizen in terms of my own personal lifestyle. I have been doing this now for 25 years, and four more years on the Tomorrow show is coming close to 30 years. I think that is enough for me and for the people who watch me. I don't want to be one of those people about whom it's said, "Oh, my God, does Bob Hope have to go on again? Why the hell doesn't he quit?" Or, "Jesus Christ almighty, does Steve Allen have to do this--do we have to watch this again?" I am sure there are people now who say, "God Almighty, Carson has been there for 18 years; how many more years does he have to do this?" My audience is getting older with me. And the new audience that is coming along doesn't want to watch some gray-haired guy sitting up there, interviewing people and making believe he is a hip late-night broadcaster.

[Q] Playboy: What about when Carson's time is up? Does taking over The Tonight Show appeal to you?

[A] Snyder: In the minds of people who watch what I do, I may be the natural successor to the Carson show. But in my mind and the minds of NBC, I am not the natural successor to the Carson show.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Snyder: For a very simple reason. Four years from now, I will be 48 years old. The next person who takes over The Tonight Show should be there for at least ten years. They don't want to hire somebody who is going to be there for a year or two and go away. When I am 48 years old, I don't want to embark on a project that has ten years in front of it. I have to be realistic enough to say to myself that I am now nearing the end of the road. I am not going to sit there like Walter Cronkite until I am 65 years old, doing television. I don't think it is fair to me or the audience or the young gals and guys who are coming up behind me to hang on for as long as I possibly can simply to satisfy my ego and earn another $1,000,000. And NBC wouldn't want anybody there for just three years.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying flat-out that you would turn down The Tonight Show?

[A] Snyder: Yes, I am saying flat-out, unequivocally--if selected, I wouldn't do it and if I was forced to do it, what did Sherman say? I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected. I have never considered the Tomorrow show to be a stopping-off point on the way to The Tonight Show. When I move to the West Coast the next time, I don't want to tape nothing. I have no interest in or desire for taking over The Tonight Show when Johnny leaves.

[Q] Playboy: What's your opinion of Carson?

[A] Snyder: Johnny is a ten and transcends all of us. He's an institution in this country. He has taken, by the sheer force of his personality, a program, The Tonight Show, and made it the Johnny Carson show. It is his vehicle, it is his platform, and he transcends being a talk-show host. I mean, Johnny Carson is in the rank of supersuperstar. I don't envy him anything. He has rare talents. He is absolutely perfect.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any other talk-show hosts who are a ten in your opinion?

[A] Snyder: Mike Douglas. Mike Douglas was on the air, and has been, for 19 years. Mike's was the first syndicated talk-variety show in my memory that made it big, really big. Mike Douglas is a ten. He was an originator, while the others are followers. John Davidson is a clone of Mike Douglas. They picked him because he probably fills the qualifications that Mike originally filled 18 years ago: a young, good-looking singer and entertainer, who--if we do research for him properly--can carry on an interview on a very surface level.

[Q] Playboy: Don't like Davidson, huh?

[A] Snyder: John Davidson has no business doing a talk show. He's a singer. To my way of thinking, his show is a bastardization of the talk show. I don't mean that he's a bastard, I mean that they've taken a TV form and adapted it to John Davidson, who does very well at nightclub singing. They've tried to capitalize upon his reputation and fame.

[Q] Playboy: Like Dinah Shore?

[A] Snyder: Dinah did a talk show because that was the only thing that was available for her to do. And she wanted to be on television. It's a vehicle for Dinah Shore. She sings but is not basically an interviewer. And it shows.

[Q] Playboy: Do you resent the fact that she and Davidson are singers doing talk shows?

[A] Snyder: No. I don't resent it one bit.

[Q] Playboy: And Merv Griffin? Another singer doing a talk show?

[A] Snyder: He's an excellent communicator. But if you ask me to rate his style, I'm not especially a fan of his. That doesn't mean his show is bad. The things that Merv talks about are not topics in which I find myself greatly interested.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Phil Donahue?

[A] Snyder: Phil Donahue is doing something that a lot of us did in the late Sixties. Contact in Philadelphia was like the Phil Donahue show. We had five sure-fire topics on Contact, which was on from 1966 to 1970 at nine A.M. The topics were sex, children, schools, diets, and the fifth was all the other things of interest--whether it be ESP, witchcraft or things that go bump in the night.

[Q] Playboy: How do you account for the program's success, then?

[A] Snyder: His morning audience of women was starved for that kind of program. It was a chance for them to solidify their own views or acquire new views on things that were affecting them. Those things that Donahue talks about every morning are often the only chance that (continued on page 168)Tom Snyder(continued from page 156) audience has to hear anything about them.

[Q] Playboy: Do you like what Donahue is doing?

[A] Snyder: Donahue has seen daylight and he has run for it beautifully. There isn't anybody I've seen on television who is able to relate to a studio audience as well as Donahue. I was on his program once, and he is awesome in his command of the people in that studio. But he always makes sure his guest has an opportunity to say the things that he wants to say. He's remarkable. I think he has almost become the surrogate husband for legions of women who have never had conversations with their husbands on certain topics--such as birth control, transsexualism, the use of Valium and sleeping pills, and on and on. They can participate in a conversation about something that is really on their minds, without having to confront the old man when he comes home at five o'clock and probably isn't considerate enough to talk about it, anyway.

[Q] Playboy: Going back to the original Tonight Show host, what are your feelings about Steve Allen?

[A] Snyder: Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve. I mean, I grew up with Steve Allen. When I was a kid, he was the first host of The Tonight Show. I like Steve Allen. I don't want Steve to be mad at me, but I think it has passed Steve by.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think there are too many talk shows?

[A] Snyder: Yes, there are too many talk shows on the air, because it's the cheapest kind of TV program to produce and to syndicate and to make the most money on. But, in my view, we have enough talk shows. We don't need Today, Tonight and Tomorrow, and Good Morning America, and Meet the Press, and Face the Nation, and Issues and Answers, and John Davidson, and Mike Douglas, and Merv Griffin, and Dinah Shore, and Toni Tennille. There aren't that many guests! It's the fault of the quick-buck artists. What's going to happen is, one by one, they're going to go!

[Q] Playboy: You almost sound angry.

[A] Snyder: It's not that I'm angry or even upset. I'm concerned, because my livelihood depends upon the continuation of the talk show as a television form. If they continue to proliferate, it weakens all of us and dilutes the effectiveness.

[Q] Playboy: Do you resent the fact that they're ripping off a format that's already been done?

[A] Snyder: You've got me in a box here. I don't want to start a war here or piss all over other people. That's never been my intention. And the people who do those shows that we mentioned work very, very hard, and their motivation, I'm sure, is honest. But, if they're pissed off, I can't help it!

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of pissed off, are you and Mike Wallace feuding?

[A] Snyder: I've made some comments about Mike Wallace that may have sounded disparaging, but they weren't intended to be. But let's never forget that Mike Wallace enjoys pouncing on people. "Are those your undershorts?" You know, that kind of stuff. That's not my particular kind of questioning tack. How would Mike Wallace like it if he were to come on a show and we forever dredged up the fact that he used to sell cigarettes on TV? Or that he did quiz shows? Or that he used to be the announcer for a newsreel and at one particular point in time was extolling the virtues of sending men to Vietnam to keep that country free? None of what Mike Wallace did was a mortal sin nor does it disqualify him from doing what he does now. It's all part of his growing up, his maturing and building his reputation in the business. I mean, there are video tapes of me hosting something called the Channel 3 Dance Party on WSAV-TV in Savannah. It was awful and I wish I had never done it.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds like you've always been something of a ham. How far back does it go--to high school?

[A] Snyder: Absolutely.

[Q] Playboy: The star of the school play?

[A] Snyder: A star of unbelievable proportions. We had one hell of a high school dramatics program, because we did shows like Harvey, Home of the Brave. In my senior year, we did Stalag 17. I played a lead. I was 6'4" tall and weighed 200 pounds and had a potbelly. I had to play Animal. Stalag 17 was sort of a comedy. You know, people have caricatured my laugh. I love to laugh and I love to make people laugh. I was 16 years old with an audience of 1200 people and because of the lines I spoke, people would laugh and applaud and respond. That was heady wine. Like shooting heroin into my veins. I loved it.

[Q] Playboy: What was your dream as a kid?

[A] Snyder: To someday be the news anchor man on WTMJ in Milwaukee.

[Q] Playboy: By now you must have made your parents proud. Are they still alive?

[A] Snyder: My mother is alive and lives in Milwaukee, and she enjoys my success greatly, as all mothers do. My father died in 1974, which was a difficult time. It is more difficult for me now then it was at the time.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Snyder: Well, when my father died, I was caught up in trying to be a TV star. You know, that's how dumb we are when we're younger, although that was only six years ago. But I was working in L.A. and I was starting to think about New York 24 hours a day. And on May 28, 1974, my father died. I won an Emmy Award and I never stopped to say, "You know, my father died." I went in and did that show. The next day, I got on a plane and substituted for Frank McGee, who had died, on the Today show.

[Q] Playboy: Why are you upset now about that?

[A] Snyder: Looking back, I say to myself, Why the hell did I come here and do their goddamned Today show? I lost my father, for heaven's sake. I lost my link with my whole past, with my ancestors, with my family tree! But I didn't have time for that, because I was so goddamned busy trying to be a television star. And it was bullshit! I should have taken some time to reflect upon my father and the fact that I never got to know him as well as I should have. I was so caught up in television and in doing what NBC wanted that I didn't stop and think.

[Q] Playboy: Thinking about it now, what was the most important thing your father left you?

[A] Snyder: The one great legacy of my father was that I never had to worry about topping him.

[Q] Playboy: What was his profession?

[A] Snyder: In the best sense of the word, he was a salesman all his life. He was a peddler. My father was successful in his own way, but it was never success that had to be competed with. If you are a child of Nelson Rockefeller's, how do you top that? If your father is President of the United States or president of NBC, or if your father is Bob Hope or Johnny Carson or Walter Cronkite, how do you top that success? And, in my time, a boy especially competed with his old man.

[Q] Playboy: How did you get along with your parents?

[A] Snyder: For years, my father wanted me to be a doctor. I have an uncle who is a doctor. I enrolled in the premed course at Marquette University because I was living out my father's fantasy. Well, after one semester, I knew I did not want to be a doctor. I dissected the first frog and said, "Fuck, this I don't want to do. I don't want to know nothing about what goes on inside the human body."

[Q] Playboy: What did interest you?

[A] Snyder: I was always interested in tape recorders, phonographs, microphones, radio stations, television--that was what I had a great interest in and love for. So I had this great confrontation with my father. The day I told him I wanted to transfer to journalism school was a great day of decision for him, too, because he then realized that his first-born male was not going to be a doctor. When he accepted that, he was very supportive.

[Q] Playboy: Was he supportive throughout your college days?

[A] Snyder: I was a child of the Fifties and did not complete college; therefore, I thought I wasn't going to become a great success. To the everlasting amazement of all the people in my family and all the people I went to school with, I got so fucking lucky it's a joke. And it has nothing at all to do with my intelligence, with whether I went to college or not--all it has to do with is that I happen to look pretty good on television and I am able to make my mouth operate and words come out without appearing to be nervous. And that is, in my mind, no great accomplishment; but to some, it is a tremendous accomplishment.

[Q] Playboy: Does it bother you that you didn't graduate from college?

[A] Snyder: No. It used to make me uptight. I used to be very defensive about it, because I found that many of the people I worked with had graduated. And the more I perceived them, the more I realized that they weren't any smarter than I, that they didn't have any answers to problems quicker than I, easier than I.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't you graduate?

[A] Snyder: My grades were never that good. I got mixed up in academic politics with professors whose intelligence I did not think was as good as mine at the time. And since I have grown older, my original opinion is confirmed. I got mixed up with some very dumb and some very venal professors who had absolutely no business making judgments on my abilities or anybody else's abilities. They themselves didn't know what qualified one for an A or what qualified one for an F. But they were the professors and, therefore, you had to accede to their desires, and I didn't want to do that.

[Q] Playboy: Don't you have a younger brother?

[A] Snyder: Yes, and he, too, is not a doctor. A double whammy for my father.

[Q] Playboy: Are you close to your brother?

[A] Snyder: No. We are six years apart. When I left home in Milwaukee, I was 21 and he was only 15. We speak on the telephone now, but we have always lived in disparate locations. He lives in Dallas now. He's the one who did graduate from college, after generations of Snyders' trying to graduate from college. He's a successful businessman, has a wonderful wife and son who are dear people. Recently, we talked on the phone and he said, "You know, I'm getting goddamn sick and tired of people asking me if I am your brother and if I am on television."

[Q] Playboy: Can you empathize with him?

[A] Snyder: Sure. I love him and I know what he is saying to me. Just as when I was married. You know, it was horrible for my wife, because wherever we would go, she was just somebody who was with Tom Snyder in the minds of people who would see us because I worked on television. It is hard to be in the family of somebody who is in a visible occupation and who receives recognition.

[Q] Playboy: What caused your marriage to break up?

[A] Snyder: That is something I am not going to respond to, because I made her a promise when our marriage ended not to drag it through publication. I don't talk about her, she doesn't talk about me. She has a life with privacy and I have my life and my privacy.

[Q] Playboy: Since you're a bachelor again, do you go to singles gatherings?

[A] Snyder: When I moved to New York and my wife and I separated, for about six months I went to those gatherings and I had the eye out for this and that lady. At that time, I was not a great believer in celibacy. But I'm not good at one-night stands. And after 17 years of marriage, I'm not out fucking everything I can. I like flowers, I like violins, I like holding hands. But for now, I'm giving divorce a chance.

[Q] Playboy: Are you really interested in only three things--golf, bridge and toy trains?

[A] Snyder: Those are my three interests. I like to play bridge, I like to play golf. I like electric trains. I like friends. I like a restaurant. I go to a movie. I go to a play.

[Q] Playboy: Are most of your friends in show business?

[A] Snyder: Most of my good friends are in the television business. I have a friend who is the publisher of Modern Bride magazine, another who is a cosmetic surgeon, another who runs a meat-packing plant in Los Angeles.

But the reason that television people stick together--and we do, we're very clannish--is that when you are with people who are not in the industry, they know far better than you how to run it. And I learned early on I don't want to spend an evening discussing what's wrong with the television industry.

[Q] Playboy: We understand. So, Tom, what's wrong with the television industry?

[A] Snyder: It's all the same between eight and eleven o'clock at night. There's a certain formula to it. There will never be any new ideas, or there'll be very few new ideas. There's very little great writing done on television any more. The Honeymooners was fantastic writing. But everything has got to be incredible or unbelievable. For all the guff that Silverman has taken, Lifeline was a tremendous idea. Live from Studio 8H, with Zubin Mehta and the Philharmonic, is a fine idea in theory; in practice, it's a lousy idea. Because the minute you say cultural, something happens in the minds of the electorate out there. Live from Studio 8H may have gotten only a nine or ten share of the audience, which translates to 8,000,000, 9,000,000, 10,000,000 people. That's a very valuable audience for somebody, for some advertiser. More people than read The New York Times every day, than read Newsweek and Time, than read any publication, saw that program. Yet, in terms of its success against a program seen by 75,000,000 people, they say the one that got only 10,000,000 people is a dud. How many millions do you have to have before you say, "This program has a viable audience"? We've made television into something where people think they have to sit down in front of it and be hyped, be excited, be almost orgasmic because they're watching a certain show.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think it has come to that?

[A] Snyder: It's the win syndrome and the money syndrome. Dollars, revenue. Although most Americans read about TV in terms of what's on the air or who's getting fired, the executive managements of all three networks are really concerned about the financial pages and profits. They all speak in terms of quality TV and being responsive to public need, but what they really respond to are the annual financial reports that are given at stockholders' meetings. That's the bottom line--the money.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think that's wrong?

[A] Snyder: It's wrong when you become so preoccupied with earning money by attracting audiences for programs that are not really substantive or of quality. Does every program have to have an enormous rating and make tons of money? Or can there be a few--like United States and Lifeline--of value and quality that are kept on the air even though they fail, simply because they should be there?

[Q] Playboy: Do you think cable TV will change that?

[A] Snyder: With cable TV and "narrowcasting" on the horizon--that is, specialized TV programs for viewers--the influence of the three networks is dissipating. There's no question about it, as technology continues. I think the day of huge ratings will soon end. It's like the man who says, "I want to make $75,000,000," and works himself into a heart attack, as against the man who makes only $10,000,000 and lives a happy life.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Ted Turner and his CNN network?

[A] Snyder: Ted Turner's a good man and he's on to something--CNN, Cable News Network. But right now, watching CNN is like watching local news in a middle market, not a top market. He's got to attract advertisers to support all those correspondents, anchor people, film crews, etc. I just wonder whether there is a real market, an expanding market beyond the 2,000,000 homes that he has. What would happen if, down the road, Turner's ego would allow him to merge with Getty Oil's network--with sports and movies? If Turner brought his news operation and his baseball team into a real supernetwork amalgam with Getty's, that combined technology would be a blockbuster. They could come on the air at six P.M. with an hour of news, followed by a live major-league baseball, football or basketball game from seven to nine, followed by a first-run movie from nine to eleven, with another hour of news from eleven to twelve, and then another R-rated blockbuster movie at midnight. With that, I think you could say goodbye, ABC, goodbye, CBS, and goodbye, jiggle TV. It's awesome when you think of the possibilities of what those two corporations could bring in terms of cable service to America if they decided to consolidate their products and their technology.

[Q] Playboy: Would you consider working for cable someday?

[A] Snyder: Yes, that's a possibility.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think TV critics might give you as hard a time if you did that as they do now?

[A] Snyder: Well, there are some who have made my life miserable, because they've written things that have been very injurious to me. There's one in particular who coined the phrase "California hot dog," which hurt me a great deal at NBC. That same man once wrote that if I ever came to New York to work at NBC News, it would send John Chancellor scurrying for his bottle of Maalox. Look, if you want to call me a jerk based upon what I do on the air, that's fine. But to write that I'm a fraud without even knowing me, that's hurtful.

[Q] Playboy: In general, how would you characterize TV critics today?

[A] Snyder: Well, the old-line critics are those guys at the newspapers who had trouble covering news or who had trouble handling the bottle. And so they were assigned to places where they couldn't do much harm. And that's where a lot of them still are. But more and more, the younger crop of people who are assigned to cover television view it as a legitimate assignment, which it is. They report on trends in TV, the personalities and how they relate to the whole business of television. But, you know, television criticism is not fastening upon whether or not somebody has crooked teeth or a funny nose.

[Q] Playboy: What is it that you're self-conscious about?

[A] Snyder: I have a gray spot on the side of my head and I don't care to be photographed from that side. I'm self-conscious about it. It's dumb, but I'm self-conscious about it.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Snyder: Because from the time I got this thing, when I was hit in the head with a baseball when I was 13, people have been saying, "What's wrong with your hair?" So, kids are very impressionable, and in my mind, I thought, There's something wrong with my hair over there. Now, there really isn't. It's just that it's a different color. I've been called Old Paint, Old Spot, all that stuff.

[Q] Playboy: One of the highest-rated TV shows each year is the Miss America pageant. This past year, you were a judge. Didn't you feel silly doing that?

[A] Snyder: It's very fashionable to knock the pageant and I was one of those who knocked it loudest. I thought it was bullshit, frivolous. But, you know, it is the Rose Bowl. It is the Super Bowl for those young ladies. They don't get to go out and have scholarships and run for glory on New Year's Day. This is it.

[Q] Playboy: Did any part of that pageant bother you?

[A] Snyder: Well, judging the swimsuit part of the pageant, I was embarrassed to look at those girls in bathing suits in Convention Hall. I kept seeing my daughter there. And I kept seeing her parents sitting somewhere in that hall. I felt, as a man, embarrassed to have to judge somebody on a qualification over which she has no control. People can't help the way they look, basically.

[Q] Playboy: So you averted your eyes during the swimsuit competition; is that what you're saying?

[A] Snyder: [Laughs] I looked them in the eye, only in the eye. I suppose I was being remiss as a judge. I even suggested to the chairman of the judges that I might lodge a protest. I felt that strongly. Now, if they had had the swimsuit competition out on the beach, OK; but not in Convention Hall. It was just, to my way of thinking, out of whack.

[Q] Playboy: Let's go back to TV news. Who do you think will replace Chancellor as NBC's news anchor?

[A] Snyder: It's no great big secret. It's obvious if you read the papers and the signs in the wind, it's going to be Roger Mudd. But they make such a great big secret out of it. Being "talent" for NBC or any other network, you're kept guessing right up to the last minute. I didn't know if I was gonna host the new Tomorrow show--I read Steve Allen or Dick Clark or somebody else would host it. Well, they finally called--six weeks after I read all this shit in the papers, they said, "Well, hey, that was all bullshit; we were just trying to get our minds made up." But you tell me why they operate that way, because I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of women as anchor persons?

[A] Snyder: We probably will have an anchor woman on the network news, on a regular basis--aside from the weekends--but right now, weekends are the convenient dumping ground. For instance, Jane Pauley and Jessica Savitch on NBC. However, in the presentation of this program we call Nightly News, it's highly possible that the role of anchor person is not meant to be played by a woman. That is my own theory.

[Q] Playboy: Any grounds for that theory?

[A] Snyder: Well, having watched Barbara Walters go through the agony of anchoring the news at ABC and having watched the way women are cast as anchors on local news programs--they are never there alone--it's always boy-girl. The day of the single anchor man on local news is gone. I don't know why, but when I see them side by side, the woman always appears to be uncomfortable. There is something coming through the tube that says to me she's just not right for the part.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't that rather chauvinistic?

[A] Snyder: Yes, and I really hope my theory will be shot to smithereens, I would love to see, for example, a station that does two hours of news have one anchor person for each hour, with a woman on all by herself, without some guy sitting there to give you the impression she can't carry it alone.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that Walters was made uncomfortable co-anchoring the ABC news with Harry Reasoner?

[A] Snyder: Absolutely.

[Q] Playboy: Might she have done better alone?

[A] Snyder: Possibly. I said in 1974, after Frank McGee died, Why go through this bullshit of finding a cohost of the Today show with Walters? Why not let Barbara do the show alone as host?" God knows, she had been doing it for a long time, and to people who watch that program, she was the Today show.

[Q] Playboy: What's wrong with the Today show these days?

[A] Snyder: It's tired.

[Q] Playboy: What about Jane Pauley?

[A] Snyder: I'm really not qualified to comment on her work. She had a tough act to follow. To many, she is still following Walters, and that's hard to do.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of Walters reminds us of her interview with Richard Nixon. What would you ask Nixon?

[A] Snyder: I would like to talk with him as a person, rather than as a politician, and say, "Hey, listen, Dick, how did this thing get so fucked up?" Because he is not a dumb man. I would like to get something of his feelings.

[Q] Playboy: What are your politics?

[A] Snyder: In all the years I've voted in Presidential elections or in those for mayor or Congress, I've usually voted for the person who was the more liberal. And, like many of the people who have done that for the past 20 years, I'm very frustrated, because all the things they've promised me have not come to pass. You know, we don't have equal opportunity, we don't have great public transit, we don't have health care, we don't have all those things they said they were gonna deliver to us. I'm very frustrated by it.

[Q] Playboy: Has it ever occurred to you that if you got into politics, you would have quite a platform?

[A] Snyder: Not really, because the platform I have is very ephemeral--that of a television show. And I don't have the discipline--mental or physical--to run for office. I don't think I'm smart enough. And I wouldn't want my life opened up as you have to do when you run for political office. You've got to talk about why you got divorced, your marriage, your finances. Why, I'd have to defend why I didn't get a college degree. I think I can watch it and comment on it, but I don't know if I could do it.

[Q] Playboy: Has your respect for political leaders increased or diminished after seeing them close up?

[A] Snyder: Diminished.

[Q] Playboy: What angers you most about people?

[A] Snyder: I don't like to be lied to or conned. I don't like surprises or to be told one thing and then something else happens. I'm not talking so much about on the air as I am off the air--in my dealings with my colleagues at NBC.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any fears?

[A] Snyder: No, not about my career. I don't wonder where my next job is coming from and I don't have any great apprehensions about whether or not the Tomorrow show goes off the air. I don't fear for tomorrow, small T, meaning the future, and I don't wonder what television holds in store for me beyond this program. I really want this to be it. I'm not running for office. But there are times when I'm afraid for myself and my own personal safety. And my privacy.

[Q] Playboy: Would you give us examples?

[A] Snyder: There've been occasions when I've been walking on a darkened street at night and all of a sudden I'll hear two people running up behind me and I get very, very frightened. As it turned out, they wanted autographs. I was scared to death. I've had telephone calls to the office or to the security department that Snyder is going to be attacked on his way home tonight, that there's going to be a bomb in his car, that sort of thing. Anybody can walk into my office, but Silverman and the executives are protected behind a glass door with buzzers and there are security people there at all times, so, apparently, their lives and their safety are more valuable to NBC than mine.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think of yourself as an eccentric?

[A] Snyder: Yes, I'm strange, I am strange. I'm a loner. I don't do well in big crowds of people. My house is full of toys. All the computer games, the electric trains, the Teddy bears, Monopoly boards, backgammon games, airplanes; I mean, I love all that stuff--gadgetry, things. I'm crazy that way. Most of my leisure time is devoted to piddling around with things that high school kids play with. And I suppose that would make me an eccentric person.

[Q] Playboy: Are you also a loner?

[A] Snyder: Yes. I don't like to be with groups of people. I enjoy playing golf in foursomes, but also by myself on occasion. And I ask the caddie to please walk 50 steps behind me, because I want to be alone.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever get lonely?

[A] Snyder: No. I get lonesome, but there is a difference. You know, lonesome means you want somebody around. Lonely means you are really unhappy with yourself. I never want for something to do. I don't have periods when I sit and think about being alone.

[Q] Playboy: What do you do when you go out to have fun?

[A] Snyder: I don't do things people gossip about. I don't snort cocaine, I don't go to discothèques, I don't go to the clubs here in New York where the beautiful people are seen. I don't go to a lot of parties. I don't entertain women who are in the news, so they can say in the columns, "Hey, Tom was out last night at Regine's with so-and-so," or "He got shitfaced at Studio 54 with so-and-so." I just don't do those things. Suzy isn't interested in reporting that Tom bogeyed the 18th hole yesterday and threw his sandwich down in disgust. I mean, that's not great gossip! Of course, I do go roller-skating. I go to Central Park. I have street skates.

[Q] Playboy: Have you been recognized on skates?

[A] Snyder: Not too much. I put sunglasses on and my hair is all blowing around and I wear old funky clothes and look sweaty and dirty. And that's what I sometimes do on a date.

[Q] Playboy: What misconceptions do you think people have about you?

[A] Snyder: Probably a lot of people think that what I do for a living is easy. That I don't work very hard. That I don't have any feelings for some of the people who come on. They describe me as insensitive, boorish, arrogant. But not aloof.

[Q] Playboy: And how do you consider yourself?

[A] Snyder: I have always considered myself just an ordinary guy going through this thing called life and I'm fortunate enough to have a little television program.

[Q] Playboy: Have you felt yourself aging over the seven years you've been doing your little television program?

[A] Snyder: Yes, and it's going to keep happening to me. We think, Well, it's not going to happen to me. I'm not going to get gray. I'm not going to feel my chest slip down to my waistline. But I'm starting to feel it, and there's nothing I can do about it. I don't fight it anymore. But it's scary, especially when I see some of those early shows and look back and say, "Jesus God Almighty...." What it really brings home to me is, "Good God, it's been a long time." Seven years!

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to go back in time?

[A] Snyder: The doors are closed. Remember that great movie campaign after World War Two--"Gable's back and Garson's got him"? Well, I had this great fantasy of going back to Los Angeles when the Tomorrow show and my days at NBC here in New York are over, and going to a different station. "Snyder's back and channel two's got him." But it's a fantasy, because I can't go back. I can't go back!

"I'm not afraid to reveal my own lack of knowledge in certain areas. I'm a conduit; that's all I am. I'm a transmission belt for information."

"I said, 'Now here's Dr. Frank Field, Weatherman, To take a leak--I mean a look--out the window.' "

"When we catch somebody in a 'sexual crime,' as members of the Christian army, we do the noble thing--we shoot the wounded."

"Anybody who was with NBC News prior to the arrival of the new management is a dead fish. I think one by one we're all gonna be weeded out."

"If I were paranoid, I would believe that there was some kind of grand plan to get me out of here--but I am not paranoid."

"I have no worry about anybody's upstaging me, including Rona Barrett. I am secure enough in my own presence on television."

"How would Mike Wallace like it if we forever dredged up the fact that he used to sell cigarettes on TV? Or that he did quiz shows?"

"I'm not good at one-night stands. I like flowers, I like violins, I like holding hands. But for now, I'm giving divorce a chance."

"It's highly possible that the role of anchor person is not meant to be played by a woman. That is my own theory."