I should have written this yesterday.

Tom Snyder died. Since all three of my readers are in their mid-30's, you are aware he hosted The Tomorrow Show right after Johnny Carson's Tonight Show on NBC through the 1970's. He got cancelled in 1982 and was replaced by David Letterman, who inspired me to want to get into broadcasting when I was just 11.

A decade later Snyder resurfaced on CNBC, and my pal Scroll became a huge fan. I started watching, too, and I also got pulled right in. Letterman had been my original inspiration, followed by Howard Stern, but Tom Snyder gave me real focus. I wanted to interview like he did: "I don't think of myself as doing interviews, I'm just having conversations." He had spent just a couple of years as a cub reporter in Savannah, Georgia, but he seemed to have 100 years of great stories about that time. He also made a pit stop at 11 Alive here in Atlanta before moving on to the rest of his broadcast career, and every night he started the show with some anecdote that made you hope your life could be so interesting. "I keep thinking one day an alarm clock will go off and I'll find out this has all been a very, very pleasant dream," he was recently quoted as saying.

Though Tom Snyder had been canned to make way for him, David Letterman later brought Snyder back to the airwaves on CBS as host of The Late Late Show. Around this time I got my first (and only) radio job in Cartersville and sent Snyder a note thanking him for the inspiration. I was surprised when I got an autographed photo back that said, "Congratulations! Keep up the good work!" Some have doubted, but I think he really signed it! When I would feel like I couldn't stand to go in, I would look at that photo and think, "But Tom is counting on me! He said to keep up the good work!" (My pic appears to be from the same session as the one above, except it's closer up and he's smiling.)

On his CNBC show he would call the show "the Colorcast" and would invite viewers to "fire up a Colortini." First on Southern Tech radio and then in Cartersville I called my show "The Radiocast" in homage to Snyder's "Colorcast."

Kinda like had happened at NBC, CBS decided they wanted to get younger viewers at 12:30 and dumped Tom in favor of Craig Kilborn (where's that guy now?). Shortly afterward I read that Snyder had closed his Colortini.com Web site and only said it was in regard to illness, then yesterday I read he was gone.

Fire up a Colortini in memory of Tom, and "watch the pictures as they fly through the air."