According with New York Post Cavett’s staff was already in the process of digitizing his shows when the Library of Congress approached him about establishing an archive. Numbers do the talking, that’s 2,000 hours of programming from 2,500 shows.
There’s one catch, however. “You still have to come to Washington,” says Mashon. Tapes can be watched in the reading room of the library’s Motion Picture and Television division. “You sit at a terminal now and through an online system you can watch it right there,” he says.
Fifteen hundred hours (or 78 days of viewing) of the Cavett archive are available immediately (the archive also includes shows he did for PBS and CNBC) and are stored in a Library of Congress facility in Culpepper, Va. Cavett interviewed over 5,000 guests on his amalgamated series, with lineups that were unpredictable and would be unheard-of in today’s publicist-controlled universe.
The Dick Cavett Show refers to television programs on the ABC, PBS, USA and CNBC networks hosted by comedian, comedy writer and author Dick Cavett between 1968 and 1995 in New York. The first daytime
show featured Gore Vidal, Muhammad Ali, and Angela Lansbury. ABC pressured Cavett to "get big names," although subsequent shows without them got higher ratings and more critical acclaim.
During the late 60's and early 70's, The Dick Cavett Show was beloved by critics and hailed as an intelligent alternative to the other more frothy interview shows. In addition to the standard-fare of celebrities, he often booked controversial and opinionated guests like Gore Vidal, Timothy Leary and Georgia's segregationist governor Lester Maddox."
Dick Cavett hosted "The Dick Cavett Show" on multiple networks for more than 35 years while interviewing a wide range of guests, from authors and politicians to musicians, actors and other creative types. He often featured controversial people and topics which weren't the norm for the variety talk shows that were airing at the time. He won three Emmy Awards for his work and is currently is a contributing blogger to the New York Times.
