Greed Drives Daytime Talk TV Shows Into Sleaze
The good news is, daytime TV talk is alive and well.
The bad news: Daytime TV talk is alive and well.
That means a decades-old genre of people getting together and chatting about pretty much anything is healthy and profitable, and it means the next talk shows may well be simple, pleasant celebrity chitchat.
It also means the screaming audiences, the guests from alien trailer parks and the impossible-to-shame hosts are still planted firmly on the airwaves.
To understand the talk industry today, all you have to know is this: Despite the success of the totally charming “Rosie O’Donnell Show,” despite the Hollywood buzz that she has shown producers how to make a decent and popular show, and even despite the pledge from Geraldo “The Chameleon” Rivera to clean up his show - really and truly this time - there is only one thing pushing the people who make talk shows: money.
This is no surprise, of course, but listening to a panel of talk show hosts and producers here explain themselves to America’s TV writers was yet another lesson in the obvious.
They do what they do because it gets ratings and earns money, and they have scores of ways of justifying themselves that come down to one theme: Being responsible is not my job.
“Viewers are served because they’re watching,” said Joel Berman, president of distribution for Paramount Domestic Television, the company that makes “The Maury Povich Show” and “The Montel Williams Show.”
“If stations don’t like what’s on their air, then they will call. If advertisers don’t like it, they will let us know.”
Translation: We’ll try anything we can get away with.
This has been the battle cry for daytime talk for nearly a decade as the success of progressively sleazier and sleazier shows has dominated the market. As for the mean-spirited, nasty tone of talk shows with whipped-up audiences and combative guests? Why, blame those darned people themselves.
“When you’re talking about family or relationships or something that matters,” said Rolonda Watts, host of “Rolonda,” “people get passionate.”