Fernwood 2 Night

Fernwood 2 Night (or Fernwood Tonight) was a comedic television program that ran weeknights from July 1977 to September 1977. It was created by Norman Lear and produced by Alan Thicke as a spin-off/summer replacement from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. It was a parody talk show, hosted by Barth Gimble (Martin Mull) and sidekick/announcer Jerry Hubbard (Fred Willard), complete with a stage band, Happy Kyne and the Mirthmakers (featuring Frank De Vol as the dour "Happy" Kyne, and Tommy Tedesco as one of the guitarists). Barth was purportedly the twin brother of Garth Gimble from Mary Hartman. Like Mary Hartman, Fernwood 2 Night was set in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio. The show satirized real talk shows as well as the sort of fare one might expect from locally produced, small-town, midwestern American television programming. Well-known actors usually appeared playing characters or a contrivance had to be written for the celebrity to appear as themselves. (In one episode, Tom Waits's tour bus happened to break down in Fernwood.) After one season of Fernwood, the producers revamped the show the following year as America 2-Night. In this second version, Barth and Jerry's show moved to Southern California (actually, they claimed to be broadcasting from "Alta Coma, the unfinished furniture capital of the world!") and was broadcast nationally on the fictional UBS network (presumably a reference to the film Network), whose slogan was "We put U before the BS". The change to a Southern California setting made it more plausible for real-life celebrities to appear on the program as themselves. In 2001, Mull and Willard reprised their roles in a stage appearance and retrospective at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. The pair also worked together in other projects, appearing together in the final seasons of Roseanne as a gay couple. Reruns aired on Nick at Nite from 1990 to 1993 and TV Land in 2002 as part of their "TV Land Kitschen" block, also hosted by Mull and Willard.