The Early Early Show

Four and a half million Americans, according to a National Broadcasting Co. survey, are lolling awake at home at 1 o'clock every morning. And what do they have to watch on television? Little more than faded black-and-white movies interrupted by supercharged hawkers of old cars. Last week NBC started offering something else: a network early early talk show that runs Monday through Thursday from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. E.D.T., immediately following the Tonight show and a few hours before the Today show. It is called (what else?) Tomorrow.

Network censors, like almost everyone else, are a little less upright in the wee hours; thus Tomorrow plans to focus on controversial subjects and straight, even abrasive talk. "The Tonight audience wants to be entertained," claims Tomorrow's Producer Rudy Tellez. "But at 1 a.m. you have a different kind of audience, one that wants to be informed, that wants to know what's happening." Perhaps. Maybe some people simply want to get to sleep.

Brash and Loud. At any rate, the first Tomorrow was spent discussing group marriages with two "triads" of spouses, one with two males, one with two females. Subsequent programs included a round table of rock groupies explaining their avocation, and a confrontation between a young woman involved with a Jesus people cult and a former social worker who "deprograms" such kids at the request of their parents. Upcoming shows will visit a nudist colony and entertain a delegation of homosexuals. "The network knows everything we're going to do," says Tellez, "and they've given us carte blanche."

Not quite. At a press preview of the premiere (all shows are taped in advance in Los Angeles without a studio audience), Host Tom Snyder opened with a scathingly opinionated monologue on the Agnew resignation. He castigated the "pious and sanctimonious bilge coming out of Washington" and concluded with the comment: "How dumb do they think we are?" By the time the show went on the air the next morning, however, the network had forced Snyder to retape his opener, omitting his critical broadside.

Snyder, a radio and TV reporter since 1956 and currently anchor man for the evening news on Los Angeles' local station KNBC, has a reputation for outspokenness. Says a network acquaintance: "Snyder will say anything. He's brash, loud and unpredictable." Snyder, 37, claims that he is simply "a reporter interested in getting at the facts." Nonetheless, on the first few shows, his questioning was occasionally so insistent that his guests hardly had a chance to answer. Snyder also frequently rambles on as if he were more fascinated with his own opinions than those of his guests.

Tall (6 ft. 4 in.), tendentious Snyder may not turn out to be every insomniac's cup of warm milk. His perhaps too obvious intent is to be as unsettling as possible. But if the show's guests are as offbeat as promised, Tomorrow may help tomorrow creep in at a slightly peppier pace.

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