Familiar Night Bird Reclaims a Perch

‘Arsenio Hall Show’ Returns After a Nearly 20-Year Hiatus

Robert Yager for The New York Times

From left, Neal Kendall, executive producer; Arsenio Hall; and Leon Knoles, director. Mr. Hall intends to emphasize music and to bring back stand-up comics.

LOS ANGELES â€" Arsenio Hall is on his feet, juking his hips back and forth in a steady rhythm.

Arsenio Hall and Gov. Bill Clinton, who was a guest in 1992.

“You ever seen little black girls doing double Dutch?” he says as he swings to the beat of the invisible double ropes. “There’s always one little girl standing, waiting to get in. And you’ve got to get your rhythm. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing this: waiting to get back in.”

It’s been a long wait. Mr. Hall’s well-remembered late-night talk show, a phenomenon in the early 1990s, encompassing moments as varied as the candidate Bill Clinton playing saxophone and Magic Johnson revealing he had contracted AIDS, has been gone since 1994. But after several false starts, when the rhythm wasn’t quite right, he is ready to jump back in, starting Monday night.

“If I was a guy who had never done a talk show before, you could say, ‘What’s this show going to be?’ ” Mr. Hall said. “But this is going to look like Arsenio took a long hiatus â€" a long, long hiatus â€" but I came back, and redid the set.”

A few things have happened while Mr. Hall has been away. Late-night hosts have proliferated like Starbucks franchises, with their desks and couches seemingly on almost every television corner; and the Internet has changed the way new late-night hosts inveigle their ways into the hearts of fans.

Is there room for Arsenio Hall again? At the age of 57? Is there an audience for his brand of hip party, mixing comedy and music more evenly than any host before or since? One long-experienced late-night hand, Robert Morton, gives him a shot.

“He’s got his finger on pop culture, sports and politics, and he seems to be a guy that knows what he wants and has figured out a way to get it,” said Mr. Morton, the longtime producer for David Letterman and most recently for George Lopez. “Will America buy it? Anyone’s guess. He and his team are aware of an older audience” that is “hungry for a show that’s aimed at them. If he can capture that segment solidly, he could be a contender.”

“The Arsenio Hall Show” will be available on about 180 stations, reaching virtually the entire country, according to CBS Television Distribution, which is syndicating the show. In New York, it will seen on WPIX.

At least, with the late-night landscape so carved up, Mr. Hall doesn’t need nearly as big a rating as he once scored.

“I’m not going to take people from Jay, from Kimmel, from Conan,” he said. “My audience is going to come from iPads, from radios. It’s going to be coming from people who don’t have a talk-show host.”

Some of them may have been fans of the “Arsenio” show that began in 1989. That show thrived until CBS hired Mr. Letterman and knocked Mr. Hall off some of his better stations. Mr. Letterman and the “Jay” Mr. Hall often refers to, Jay Leno, then staged a heavyweight brawl that sucked up most of the attention in late night.

Mr. Hall, who had famously dismissed Mr. Leno before that comedian replaced Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show,” seemed to disappear for a time, resurfacing as a frequent guest of Mr. Leno, whom Mr. Hall now cites as a close friend.

But, of course, Mr. Hall has many friends. Characteristically, he sprinkles their names throughout a conversation about his plans for the new show: “Eddie” (as in Murphy) had suggestions for writers. “Jerry” (Seinfeld) offered advice. “C K” (Louis, that is) will come on and perform stand-up. “Prince” (no other name necessary) asked for a date to come in and sing.

In person, Mr. Hall is effusively his old self, brimming with ideas for the new show, while underscoring the similarities to the old. “I do have a previous persona,” he said. “My challenge is how to blend in the new a little bit.”

The show will still eschew a desk, going with a couch-centric set. The Dog Pound of whooping audience members will be back, “slightly different this time,” he said. The band will still be the Posse, though with new members, led by the drummer Rob DiMaggio (grandson of Dom, the other baseball star in the famous family).

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Familiar Night Bird Reclaims a Perch .