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43 years ago today, May 1, 1981, the final episode of The Midnight Special aired. It is an American late-night musical variety series originally broadcast on NBC during the 1970s and early 1980s, created and produced by Burt Sugarman. It premiered as a special on August 19, 1972, then began its run as a regular series on February 2, 1973; its last episode was on May 1, 1981. The 90-minute program followed the Friday night edition of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Like its syndicated late-night cousin Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, the show typically featured guest hosts, except for a period from July 1975 through March 1976 when singer Helen Reddy served as the regular host. Wolfman Jack served as the announcer and frequent guest host. The program's theme song, a traditional folk song called "Midnight Special", was performed by Johnny Rivers. The Midnight Special was noted for featuring musical acts performing live, which was unusual since most television appearances during the era showed performers lip-synching to prerecorded music. The series also occasionally aired vintage footage of older acts, such as Bill Haley & His Comets. The program also featured occasional performances of comedians such as Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, and George Carlin. The pilot for the series aired on August 19, 1972. It was presented as a 90-minute special encouraging young people to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. Several months later, on February 2, 1973, it premiered as a weekly series. Within eight months of its premiere, The Midnight Special had proven that programming in the later time period was viable, and NBC would expand its programming in the time slot to five days a week with the addition of the talk show Tomorrow, hosted by Tom Snyder, the other four nights. The Midnight Special's original time slot was from 1:00–2:30 a.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (Midnight to 1:30 a.m. Central and Mountain). When The Tonight Show's run time was shortened from ninety to sixty minutes in September 1980, The Midnight Special was moved to 12:30 a.m. (ET/PT)/11:30 p.m. (CT/MT), maintaining its 90-minute run time. In 1978, at the height of the disco craze, the set was changed to resemble a disco nightclub complete with a platform dance floor. Wolfman Jack stood behind an elevated DJ booth. By fall 1979, as the genre's popularity waned, the disco set was replaced. The series was canceled by NBC at the request of Dick Ebersol as part of a deal for him to take over the then-ailing Saturday Night Live. Because there was no time for NBC to develop a new show from scratch in light of the urgent SNL situation, The Midnight Special was replaced by SCTV, a weekly Canadian sketch comedy series performed by members of the Toronto satellite of Chicago's The Second City improvisational troupe. That program, in turn, would later be replaced with another music show, Friday Night Videos, in 1983, also produced initially by Ebersol.