JOINING THE BOYS' CLUB

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

In planning late-night programming, television executives have traditionally taken their cue from the dictates of military history: keep women out of combat. The late-night wars, it seems, are meant to be fought by people in dark suits and cigars, not slip dresses and Virginia Slims. While Leno and Letterman steal the headlines, the ladies play host in the afternoons, minding and mending America's luridly fractious families.

With a few exceptions--Joan Rivers and Whoopi Goldberg both had short-lived late-night shows--women have been left to amuse from the guest chair. But the fall TV season has brought two new women to late night: Stephanie Miller, the brash former host of a top-rated Los Angeles radio show, and the husky-voiced former supermodel (and co-star of this season's Central Park West) Lauren Hutton. Both aspire to distinguish themselves with shows that are, in at least some respects, stylized and unconventional.

The syndicated Stephanie Miller Show, which has just debuted on 148 stations (with a starting time between 11 p.m. and midnight on most of them), combines interviews with sketch comedy. Miller, a former stand-up comic with a furrowed brow and frozen incredulous grin, has the mean challenge of competing against Leno and Letterman. But she is ready for the sniper fire. "I'm a complete unknown," says Miller, who is the daughter of William E. Miller, the conservative Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1964. "I'm a woman. If I made it, in a way it would be kind of a Cinderella story. Certainly we're going to need some time for people to get to know me."

To that end, Miller has tried to develop her own trademark features. She hopes to interview "offbeat celebrities you may not see elsewhere." Her guests on the first week, however, were the sort of offbeat celebrities TV has managed to overexpose thoroughly, like RuPaul and Roger Clinton. Miller's real twist on the late-night formula is to employ a trio of sketch players who perform three or four skits each night. So far, the material has been topical and clever: one sharp sketch featured a Woody Allen impersonator directing a teenage girl in a Calvin Klein ad.

Miller's own regular bits include jaunts to the ladies' room, where she bumps into surprise guests like Heidi Fleiss, who outfits her in new lingerie. In another recurring segment, Miller takes phone calls onstage from members of the studio audience, who are seen on a video monitor. The phone bits can be funny (a viewer revealed that she served her unsuspecting boyfriend a cat-food pie), but they would work just as well if Miller simply strolled down the aisles talking to guests the old-fashioned way. Least successful are Miller's opening monologues, which mimic those of countless female stand-up comics who joke endlessly about menstrual cramps and numskull boyfriends. (Miller's low so far: talking about a female runner on steroids, she quipped, "What tipped them off was that she forgot to put the toilet seat down.")

Fortunately Lauren Hutton doesn't dabble in comedy in her eponymous show (airing on 105 stations, mostly at midnight or later). Hutton's is a straight half-hour interview program featuring a single guest each night. "You can't carry out a thought in a four-minute appearance," says Hutton, 51. Her guests on the first two weeks have been an eclectic lot ranging from rapper L.L. Cool J. to marine biologist Sylvia Earle.

The show's major innovation, however, isn't its format or guest list, but a moody visual style that gives a viewer the feeling of walking into a bewildering installation at the Whitney Museum's Biennial. Created and directed by the photographer Luca Babini (Hutton's boyfriend), the talk show looks like no other. It is filmed, not taped, and the camera sways back and forth, not only between Hutton and her guest, seated across from each other at a table dressed with a fruit bowl, but also to TV-screen images of them looking alternately fascinated and confused.

The jarring cinematography at least distracts from Hutton's childish interviewing. So far, she has demonstrated a knack for questions it would take whole university faculties to answer. To Kathleen Turner: "Tell me about motherhood." To Gabriel Byrne: "Tell me about love." To L.L. Cool J.: "Tell me about the start-up of rap in the black community." Her later, less competitive time periods may ease the pressure, but if Hutton wants to be a late-night combatant, a few tutoring sessions with Oprah might help.

--With reporting by William Tynan/New York

With reporting by William Tynan/New York