NORTHPOINT – Like Carson, Leno, and Letterman, Paisley Beebe chats with guests, invites some to perform, and takes commercial breaks during a professionally produced broadcast with a live audience. But when was the last time you saw an entire studio engulfed in flames—deliberately—on a RL TV talk show?

That’s what happened during the October 21 broadcast of Tonight Live With Paisley Beebe, Second Life Cable Network’s answer to the titans of RL TV talk. Beebe’s guests that week included members of the Linden County Fire-Rescue squad (RL firefighters who use SL for role-play training purposes), and setting the studio on fire gave them a chance to show the audience how they create and combat virtual disasters.

“The good thing about having a talk show in SL is that you can do things you can't possibly do in real life,” explains Beebe, munching on dinner during an interview conducting using SL voice chat. Beebe speaks in a pleasing Australian-accented voice; in real life, she’s a jazz singer (listen to her lilting soprano during the closing credits) who also runs a talk show on community radio in Oz.

Beebe’s half-hour show is broadcast live Sunday evenings at 6 p.m. SLT (which is lunchtime Monday for her); if you want to catch up on back episodes, most of the machinemas are posted on SLCN’s web site. Some 150 people typically watch the show streaming live on TV sets (free SLCN flat-screen sets are available at the studio, or from SL Exchange, and some third-party TV sets support the network, according to the network’s web site).

Additionally, on average, each show is downloaded an average of 5,000 times from the archives on SLCN’s web site, Beebe says. You can get them as podcasts, or simply view them on the site. Each show is rebroadcast several times on SLCN during the week that follows the live production.

Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe has been a weekly SLCN fixture since May. “It’s a show all about Second Life for Second Lifers,” Beebe said.