Talk Shows

Talk Show Research

A talk show (as it is called in the U.S.) or chat show (name in Britain) is a television or radio program where a group of people come together to discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host. A convention, which is used in television, is the panel of guests, usually consisting of a group of people who are professional or have great experience in relation to whatever issue is being discussed on the show for that episode.

However, Tabloid talk shows are a genre of American television talk-shows that achieved peak viewership during the late 20th century, ran mostly during the day, and were distributed mostly through syndication. The tabloid talk show genre, which was pioneered by Phil Donahue but popularised by Oprah Winfrey was extremely popular during the last two decades of the 20th Century.

Talk shows have been broadcasted since the earliest days of the medium (television). Late night talk shows are among one of the oldest, the oldest of which is RTE’s (company) The Late Late Show, which is shown in the states. Current late night talk shows in the states such as ‘The tonight Show with Jay Leno’ and ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ have aired for years, featuring celebrity guests and comedy sketches. T.V. news pioneer Edward R. Murrow hosted a talk show entitled Small World in the late 1950s and since then, political T.V. talk shows have predominantly aired on Sunday mornings.

Syndicated daily talk shows range from tabloid talk shows, such as The Jerry Springer Show to celebrity interview shows like ‘The Sharon Osborne Show’.

One of the popular tabloid talk shows ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ is an internationally known television talk show, hosted by Jerry Springer, a former politician. It is videotaped at the NBC Tower studios of WMAQ-TV in Chicago and distributed by NBC Universal. It has aired during the morning and afternoon hours of many syndicated T.V. stations since the early 1990s.

The Jerry Springer Show debuted on September 20th, 1991, with fellow talk-show host Sally Jessy Raphael as its first guest. It started as a politically oriented talk show, a longer version of the commentary Springer had gained local fame for giving as a reporter and anchor. Guests early on included Oliver North and Jesse Jackson, and the topics included homelessness and gun politics. Low ratings led it to be picked up by a new producer. The search for higher ratings led Springer towards tawdry and provocative topics, becoming more and more successful as the show turned more and more lowbrow (although even the it successfully focused on more sensitive and less sensational issues). It became, through Springer’s own admittance, a “freak show” where guests seek their 15 minutes of fame through discussion and demonstrations of deviant behavior. Its extraordinary success has led it to be broadcast in dozens of countries.

The Jerry Springer Show is basically a talk show where troubled or dysfunctional families come to discuss their problems before a studio audience so that the audience or host can offer suggestions on what can be done to resolve their situations. In actuality, the show has come to epitomize the so-called “trash T.V. talk show,” as each episode of the show focuses on a lurid topic that usually involves sex, racism, martial jealousy, the Ku Klux Klan, and other prurient subjects. Typical topics of discussion on the show include unusual extra-marital affairs, vicious rivalries between families, rebellious and promiscuous teenagers, strippers and adult movie stars, and the like.

The ‘discussion’ of each episode’s subject usually involves an insult-laden verbal exchange between members of the studio audience and the featured ‘guests’ on the show. Due to the emotional topics covered on the show, and the tendency of the crowd to encourage the guests, minor fights between guests are commonplace. As a result, the show has several security guards to break up fights, and the director of security, Steve Wilkos has become a fixture on the show.

‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ is an American nationally syndicated talk show, hosted and produced by Oprah Winfrey and is the highest rated talk show in television history.

It is the longest running daytime television talk show in the United States, with 20 seasons - currently in its 21st season - and thousands of episodes since it debuted on September 8, 1986.