ARSENIO TIMES TWO

By JAMES COLLINS

Now we know at least one real, fundamental difference between the races: white hosts of late-night television talk shows sit behind a desk; black hosts of late-night television talk shows don't sit behind a desk. This truth was demonstrated last week by the debuts of two new syndicated entrants into the late-night wars, Vibe and The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show.

Vibe, named after the magazine founded by Quincy Jones, one of the show's producers, stars stand-up comedian Chris Spencer; Keenen is fronted by the creator of the sketch-comedy show In Living Color. Both hosts are black; both sit on an easy chair with a coffee table in front of them when they interview guests. Meanwhile, David Letterman has a desk. Jay Leno has a desk. Conan O'Brien has a desk. All three are white. With its monologue, its band, its celebrity entrances, the late-night show is highly ritualized, so this variation in iconography is surely significant. What accounts for it?

To answer that question, we have to go back in television history to 1989, when The Arsenio Hall Show went on the air. It was a broadcast phenomenon, bringing new viewers--young, lots of them black--to late night for the first time. Hall respected many of the genre's conventions, but his ethnicity, effusive personality and mix of guests broke with tradition. Also, Hall didn't use a desk. Curled up in his easy chair, he was loose and open and schmoozerific. Since his show was canceled in 1994, though, no one has served his audience, and now the producers of Vibe and Keenen hope to re-create Hall's success by using the same formula. Says Spencer: "We can do a show that's hip and full of energy."

On the evidence of the first few nights, the new shows are following the Arsenio model so closely that they are almost indistinguishable from each other. The hyperkinetic mood is the same, the wildly panning camera is the same, and the guests are the same, literally. Rap singer "Puffy" Combs and Samuel L. Jackson each appeared on both shows. True, it's unlikely that Vibe's very first guest will be seen on Keenen--Jones persuaded President Clinton to appear pretaped from the White House.

Neither host is an expert interviewer, and Spencer can be particularly awkward, but both are fairly relaxed and pleasant presences. Each has his mildly funny moments, mining the same vein of racial humor. Spencer's joke about his show in his first monologue--"How often can a brother go into a million homes without getting arrested?"--is typical. Wayans does more comedy bits than Spencer, and while not overly original, his overdubbing of a Japanese martial-arts film with hip-hop dialogue and singing was amusing. Nothing he has done so far, though, is nearly as clever as the best sketches on In Living Color.

Preliminary ratings last week for both shows were good--Wayans averaged a 3.6 over his first four nights, while Spencer measured 3.0. Leno, meanwhile, pulled a 5.9, Letterman a 3.8. Both newcomers may be able to survive, since despite going head to head in New York City and L.A., they are not seen at the same time in most markets and since advertisers yearn to reach young adults. Whether they both should survive is another question. There's a place for late-night programming that reaches out to bring fresh faces to TV. But who's going to watch if the shows are mediocre?