Night Stand with Dick Dietrick

Night Stand with Dick Dietrick is an American television comedy show that satirized American tabloid talk shows. The series was originally broadcast in first-run syndication from 1995 to 1997, as well as on the E! Entertainment Television network. Night Stand was co-created by Paul Abeyta, Peter Kaikko and actor/writer Timothy Stack, who also starred as the show's host Dick Dietrick. The show benefited from contributions by writer/friends of the creators, namely co-exec producer Larry Strawther (the first season show-runner) and the long-time comedy writing team of Bob Iles and Jim Stein.

Night Stand premiered September 16, 1995 in syndication, running in over 87% of the US markets, mainly as a Saturday evening program airing against, or if carried by an NBC station, after Saturday Night Live. It also aired on E! Monday-Thursday at 10:30 p.m. (between Talk Soup and the Howard Stern) and was distributed internationally. The partnership with E! led to a follow-up second season.

Unlike other shows, each hour-long syndicated episode was actually divided into two separate half-hour programs which yielded 96 episodes for E! reruns. (E! kept the show for several years but only in reruns.)

Much of the Night Stand production team went on to work with Howard Stern on Son of the Beach, with some of their "guests" also making appearances.

A well-received parody of tabloid talk shows, Night Stand had plenty of funny scenes, but one scene unexpectedly went too far when Dietrick (Timothy Stack) tore the clothes off a male model named Kal (played by Kevin Light) to see if he could impress a seemingly uninterested young woman guest, Gloria Holt (played by Beth Tegarden) looking for dates in the episode "Love on the Internet," produced in 1995.^[1] After ripping off his shirt, the model's trousers were next, but Stack accidentally pulled Kal's underwear down as well; as a result, there was a brief, unscripted showing of Light's genitals, much to the shared shock of the audience and the performers. This scene has sometimes turned up on outtake and blooper programs such as It'll be Alright on the Night.

Night Stand was the first production from Big Ticket Productions, the company formed by former Warner Bros. development executive Larry Lyttle. Strawther had worked with Abeyta and Kaikko at Merv Griffin Productions and later worked with Lyttle on the shows My Sister Sam and Night Court. Strawther brought on Night Court director Jim Drake and they developed the tape-four-shows-a-week format that made the show financially practical. Strawther did not return as showrunner for the second season after he and Stack differed on when silliness went "over the top."

The show's original slogan "If you don't have Night Stand, you don't have Dick" and The Comedy That Makes Up Talk was later changed to The Comedy That Makes Fun of Talk.

Night Stand helped Big Ticket Productions get started. They did even better on its next project, Judge Judy. The show's original publicist was Howard Bragman, who is now considered one of Hollywood's top publicists.

Produced: 1995–1999 (96 episodes, 2 shows per syndicated episode)

The show's writers and executive producers watched episodes of tabloid talk shows, such as The Jenny Jones Show, for inspiration.^[2]

• Timothy Stack as Dick Dietrick, the show's host and namesake
• Peter Siragusa as Miller, Dick's long-suffering assistant on the show.^[3] Beginning midway through the first season, the role was taken over by Robert Alan Beuth and the character renamed "Mueller".
• Lynne Marie Stewart as a character variously referred to as "Audience Member", "Lady in Audience", and so forth along those lines. As her name indicates, she was part of the studio audience in almost all episodes and often asked inane questions of the show's main guests. However, in one second-season episode she was invited onto the panel, where she identified herself as the president of Dietrick's fan club and proceeded to discuss her pen-pal romance with an incarcerated murderer.
• Judy Toll was the female announcer who introduced Dietrick at the beginning of each episode and narrated most of the interstitial bumpers (including the ubiquitous "you can get Dick on the World Wide Web" promos advertising the show's website), and was also on the writing staff.^[4]

• Dwayne Barnes as gangsta rapper MC Carjak
• Jordana Capra as Dr. Susan Sonspeen, feminist lecturer, author, and "Professor of Lesbian Studies at Lily Tomlin Women's College"
• Steven Cragg as Peter Mithelmet, a snooty, pretentious, and sexually ambiguous European fashion designer
• Christopher Darga as Bob, a frequent guest involved in various exploitative and depraved endeavors. When confronted by Dietrick, he would inevitably offer the unconvincing excuse, "I'm sick. I need help." Darga and Vic Wilson (who also auditioned for the role of Bob) were well-remembered by Abeyta, Kaikko and Strawther who cast them as announcers Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship a few years later on their cult hit, "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC)."
• Vinny Montello as Vinny, a belligerent man with a Brooklyn accent who frequently appeared in the studio audience, often making crass comments or threatening to beat up panelists he doesn't like. However, in one episode he was invited on the panel, where he discussed his plight as a struggling drag queen who hoped to get breast augmentation surgery from Dr. Hamilton George.
• John Paragon played two recurring roles. He appeared three times as "Bachelor #3", an asbestos miner and laryngectomy patient who speaks (and sings karaoke) through an electronic voice prosthesis. This character first appeared in one of the show's earliest episodes as the unlikely winner of a Dating Game-style contest, hence his name, and subsequently revisited the show twice more along with his newfound beau, though his real name was never revealed. Paragon also played the unrelated role of sex education expert Dr. Edward Burns in two second-season episodes.
• Shirley Prestia as Mattie Gelman, unlicensed therapist and self-help book author
• Andrew Prine as Dr. Hamilton George, a world-renowned plastic surgeon who's considered the "Father of Nipple Replacement". Dr. George's skin is deeply tanned (like his name, this is a reference to actor George Hamilton) and he moves his body slowly and stiffly like a robot, presumably from having performed numerous cosmetic procedures on himself.
• Tim Silva as Dr. Lonnie Lanier, psychologist, self-help book author, and founder of the eponymous Lanier Institute. Like Stack himself, Silva was one of the many Groundlings graduates who appeared on the show.
• Steve Valentine as "The Astounding Andy", hypnotist and magician
• Steve White as Tupac Zemeckis, acclaimed African-American director of films about gritty urban street life, along the lines of Spike Lee or John Singleton. (Appropriately enough, White's best-known roles as an actor were in Spike Lee's films Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, and Malcolm X.)

• Night Stand with Dick Dietrick at IMDb
• "Salvo's Night Stand w/ Dick Dietrick Home Page". Archived from the original on April 11, 2005.
• "E! Online – E! On Air – E! Originals -Nightstand". E!. Archived from the original on October 8, 1999.
• "EPGUIDES.com Online – Nightstand". EPGUIDES. Archived from the original on September 4, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)