Talk Show Culture

Ellen Hume
University of Massachusetts, USA

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I	Overview: Talk Show Culture
II	History: U.S. Talk Shows from Radio to Television and the Internet
II	The Formats and the Personalities
IV	Criticism Builds: The Pros and Cons
V	Reform
VI	Impact on U.S. Politics and Journalism
VII	Talk Show Culture Goes Corporate

GLOSSARY

anger show A talk show on television, radio, or the Internet in which the host deliberately enflames participants to vent their anger at something or someone, especially someone who may be a guest on the program.

Internet chat room A talk free-for-all at a Web site or Internet listserv, with participants focusing on a specific topic.

relationship show A talk show about personal relationships, particularly sexual, family, and workplace relationships.

shock jock A radio host who specializes in shocking, obscene, and irreverent banter.

talk show A television or radio program which features a host, sometimes with studio guests, incorporating in the program some questions or comments from the audience; an Internet chat room with or without a host.

Popular and political culture in the United States at the turn of the 21st century was shaped in part by media talk shows, which often were designed for entertainment value rather than for public enlightenment. These programs, inexpensive to produce and widely imitated around the world, tended to elevate personal opinion and private experience over authoritative facts relevant to U.S. public life. Choreographed by entertaining hosts, these television and radio programs usually spotlighted studio guests who sometimes faced on-air audience questions and reactions. Any campaign to sway public opinion, sell books, or run for office featured appearances on radio and television talk shows. At their best, these talk shows expanded the political discourse beyond a few established voices, offered a close-up view of public figures, and broadened the U.S. policy agenda. But often, popular hosts degraded American public discourse with a freak show approach that focused on hostility, shocking revelations, and stories of sexual encounters. Shows purporting to take Americans to a more realistic understanding of modern life often did just the opposite: They entertained a voyeur audience with extreme or abusive behavior and ideas, distracting people from honest discussions of genuinely important public issues. This article will describe the combined cultural impact of relationship shows, shock jock shows, anger shows, political talk and call-in shows on radio and television, and interactive chat rooms on the Internet.

I. Overview: Talk Show Culture

A. Impact on U.S. Public Life

By the 1990s, U.S. radio and television were saturated with a proliferation of talk shows, which together:

Opened up the media to more diverse views and voices, imparting a sense of democratic legitimacy and vox populi which sometimes was misleading
Overcame geography, creating virtual communities by connecting the like-minded
Provided new avenues for swaying public opinion and winning votes
Promoted opinion over detached observation
Legitimized the deviant, providing a mass audience for previously marginalized behavior and ideas
Valued emotion, confrontation, and shock value over tact, wisdom, or facticity
Challenged the status quo's official experts and institutions
Seemed more authentic and spontaneous than mainstream politics or news
Helped to shift the political discourse from public issues to individual, often sexual, behavior
Emphasized drama and entertainment over verified information
Offered ordinary Americans temporary celebrity status

B. The Appeal of Talk Show Culture

1. Release from Constraints

Talk show culture was enormously popular with Americans of all ages and economic backgrounds, partly as an entertaining freak show and partly because it represented a release from cultural restraints. Some talk shows purported to offer a populist reality check on professional news and political discourse, while others created a no-holds-barred entertainment arena for taboo conduct and language of all kinds. On radio, the shock jock sexual voyeur shows and political conspiracy theorists appealed to a nation that seemed to want relief from sanitized public discourse. Internet chat rooms provided an instant, global conversation with unpredictable partners and outcomes. Talk show producers claimed they were performing a public service by offering a cathartic release and national platform for hitherto unexplored social issues; critics claimed the producers were mainstreaming hatred and pornography in U.S. public life.

2. Getting Real: Distrust of the Official Sources

The U.S. search for anti-Establishment news and information was sparked in the 1960s by an increasing distrust of government and cultural authority figures. After the seemingly predictable world of the 1950s was shattered by the unthinkable assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Americans wanted to know more about what was going on than the official version provided by politicians, newspapers, and the three broadcast television networks. The Watergate scandal, the "Pentagon Papers" revelations about the Vietnam War, and President Kennedy's sexual adventures contributed further to the sense of betrayal. The thrill of "talking back," which fueled talk show culture for the next 30 years, was epitomized by Paddy Chayevsky's fictional television talk show host Howard Beale in the film Network: He told his viewers to go to their windows, throw them open, and shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."

Like Chayevsky's hero, talk show hosts channeled popular resentment against being manipulated by the powers-that-be, especially the shapers of U.S. political culture in the 1970s and 1980s: the advertisers, politicians, and know-it-all journalists. Ironically, the popular talk shows these skeptics listened to were sometimes even less authentic than the image-makers they were challenging. Some reveled in ideologically driven false facts and entertainment-driven staged manipulations.

3. Gladiator Fights

Talk show culture was popular not only for its frank sensuality, candor, and slapstick entertainment value, but for the satisfaction of settling partisan scores. Some hosts, such as Jerry Springer, ambushed their guests with surprise confrontations, offering viewers a bizarre real-life morality play that enabled them to root for a victim and boo at a villain. It was like the thrill of the gladiator struggles of ancient times. Not surprisingly, another popular television trend in the 1990s was professional wresting, using exaggerated, muscle-bound warriors enflamed by fake feuds. One American pro-wrestler and talk show host, Jesse Ventura, crossed over in 1998 to a political career as the governor of Minnesota and wannabe presidential candidate.

II. History: U.S. Talk Shows from Radio to Television and the Internet

A. The Radio Host as Expert

The first U.S. talk show featuring a host talking informally to an audience probably was a prosaic farming program broadcast on radio in 1921 over WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts, according to historian Wayne Munson. During the 1920s, the radio networks had an estimated 21 "talk" programs, including public affairs, religion, and housekeeping. Hosts generally appeared as experts, educating their audiences. They offered a look into a more glamorous, exciting world. Alexander Woolcott on WOR in New York shared his urbane experiences, talking about the people he'd met and books he'd read. Walter Winchell struck fear in politicians with his political gossip show, which began on NBC in 1932.

B. The Dawn of Interactivity: The Audience Speaks

While these first talk shows were one-way discussions from the expert host and studio guests to a passive media audience, that quickly changed with more interactive formats. During the 1930s, taped "man on the street" interviews became popular on Houston's Vox Populi radio program (1932-1947), which during its run on NBC, CBS, and ABC inspired many imitators.

In 1935 NBC pioneered America's Town Meeting of the Air, which encouraged the studio audience to offer opinions about the major issues of the day. Historians believe the first call-in shows began 10 years later, when Barry Gray on WMCA in New York took a phone call on the air from celebrity bandleader Woody Herman.

Popular music programming soon developed listener request lines which also led to chitchat on air about the weather, sports, and other topics. Broadcasting Magazine reported in 1966 that about 80% of all radio stations in the United States were carrying some talk programs.

C. Amateurs in the Spotlight

Early game shows on radio and television such as The Answer Man, Information Please, and Truth or Consequences contributed to modern talk show culture because they invited audience involvement, asking ordinary people to challenge the experts. Talent scout shows hosted by Major Bowes, Ted Mack, and Arthur Godfrey also helped to pioneer the formulas that underpinned talk show culture 40 years later: they offered the appearance of real-life spontaneity, including potentially embarrassing moments for the people in the spotlight, and they showed that an unknown amateur could outshine the experts. In the late 1990s, CNN had taken over this approach on television with the callers on the Larry King Show, the America's Talking call-in and e-mail chat show, and other programs.

D. Phil Donahue's Roving Microphone

It was Phil Donahue, considered the founder of today's talk show culture, who firmly established ordinary Americans in the audience as the stars of his show. Unable to attract many national celebrities to his television studio in Dayton, Ohio in the late 1960s, Donahue had few other options. Dashing through the aisles with a wireless mike, he "put a face on the faceless masses, as Howard Kurtz observed. This was an enormous hit with the audiences at home, who identified with the folks in the studio and relished their sudden celebrity status.

Roaming through the audience with a mike became every talk show host's standard operating procedure for the next 30 years. Indeed, the sight of Elizabeth Dole, wife of the newly anointed presidential candidate, using her televised speech opportunity at the GOP convention in 1996 to cruise the delegate audience with a mike, illustrated how thoroughly Donahue's talk show style shaped politics in the late 1990s.

E. Taboo Topics Become a Public Service

From the very first week of his Conversation Piece television show in November 1967, Phil Donahue offered what would become a much-imitated talk show formula: He used controversial, naughty material to prompt a "public-service" discussion. After launching his first show with celebrated atheist Madlyn Murray O'Hair he wound up the first week by asking viewers whether they thought children's dolls should include genitals, as some sexual revolution activists were advocating. The program so shocked his Dayton, Ohio audience that they jammed the town's telephone lines.

Sometimes talk shows did serve a valuable purpose by airing serious topics that were difficult to talk about in public, such as divorce, unemployment, AIDS, handicapped children, dangerous toys, and difficult family relationships. Such hosts as Oprah Winfrey and Montel Williams helped raise money for civic causes, particularly those helping the handicapped or those with addictions. The programs seemed to be a relief from the anodyne conformity of accepted social behavior and the isolation many Americans felt in a mobile society where jobs and neighbors were likely to change. They identified with the hosts, who were called by their first names and who seemed to value ordinary people over the "experts."

F. The Clicker Turns up the Heat

Soon scores of Donahue competitors were cramming the airwaves, and a new 1980s consumer product--the remote control "clicker"--meant that ongoing programs constantly had to grab for the audience's attention. Struggling to survive these pressures, even the most respected talk show hosts went tabloid. Donahue dragged his public forum ever more deeply into the depths, offering salacious subjects with scant public-service content. He offered such shows as "Woman Wins 8-Year Battle to Care for Disabled Lesbian Lover." He even wore a skirt to juice up a discussion about cross-dressers. Such gimmicks worked; Donahue's "Transvestite Shopping Spree" garnered his largest audience during the 1991 season. But he grew ever more desperate as his ratings slipped. In 1994, Donahue tried unsuccessfully to televise live the execution of a convicted murderer in North Carolina.

G. Economics: Talk Is Cheap

Talk shows on radio and television proliferated from the 1960s on because they were cheap and easy to produce and yet had broad audience appeal, especially for the daytime stay-at-home women's audience. Filling the broadcast schedule with dramatic programs required paid actors, scripts, props, and rehearsal time. Talk shows could be produced live to tape for much less-an estimated $25,000 to $50,000 per half hour in the mid-1980s, thanks to an unchanging studio set, one charismatic host, a booker-producer, and a few guests. If the big broadcast networks chose not to distribute a popular local talk show, they could still find a national or even international audience through syndication.

H. New Technologies Spread the Word

Innovative satellite technology that came into common use in the 1980s could beam a speaker from virtually any location to a mass national radio or television audience. At the same time, the U.S. government's deregulation of the telephone, radio, and television industries opened up a seemingly infinite number of inexpensive, decentralized opportunities for broadcasters and cable operators.

Radio call-ins got a big boost in the 1980s when local shows gained national audiences through syndication to other local markets, and callers could take advantage of new, cheaper long distance phone rates and free 800 numbers. By the end of the 1990s, some of the most popular U.S. television talk shows, such as the bombastic Jerry Springer Show, also were syndicated to international audiences. Broadcasters around the world were discovering, as government-run media privatized in their countries after the end of the Cold War, that they, too, could attract audiences and fill their airwaves cheaply with U.S.-style talk shows featuring local celebrities and audiences.

I. The Internet: The Virtual Talk Show

In the late 1990s, the Internet emerged as a new communications grid connecting people even more instantly and cheaply around the world. The older media had been hound by space, time, and regulatory considerations. This new global medium offered seemingly limitless opportunities for inexpensive content that could find an audience. The most efficient and inexpensive format was still the talk show--called "chat" or "interactive" in the wired world. These interactive Web sites featured everything from celebrities offering themselves up for questions posted online by any random and anonymous person to bulletin hoards and chat rooms where strangers could talk under pseudonyms with fellow chatters in a hosted or unhosted environment. Without any broadcasting or government regulations, the Internet allowed the creation of diverse virtual communities out of like-minded chatters, offering a sense of connectedness to everyone, no matter how bizarre their interests might he. One of the most popular of these was The Well, which originated in the San Francisco Bay area.

III. The Formats and the Personalities

A. The Relationship Show: Public Therapy

Private psychotherapy was a common part of the U.S. landscape in the 1980s and 1990s, legitimizing the airing of matters in a clinical setting that previously had been considered too embarrassing to discuss with anyone. Radio talk show hosts such as Bill Ballance in Los Angeles began in the 1970s soliciting titillating stories from callers in return for on-air advice from other callers.

1. Call the Doctor

Some talk show hosts even dispensed therapy during or after their free-for-all programs. Scientifically toned radio advice programs offered advice about health, romance, personal finances, and sex. Hosted by experts Dr. Joyce Brothers, Dr. Toni Grant, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and their imitators, these programs would invite anonymous callers to share their most intimate problems in a public, on-air radio therapy session. While Donahue sometimes justified his voyeur content with serious-sounding public opinion polls, these programs claimed redeeming social value for sex talk through expert counseling. Intimate discussion shows became a staple of morning and late-night television in the late 1980s. Donahue's success inspired scores of new relationship talk shows, making superstars out of hosts Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Springer Montel Williams, Ricki Lake, Sally Jessy Raphael, Jenny Jones, Geraldo Rivera, and others.

People were encouraged to abandon both their privacy and their good manners in order to talk frankly on these programs, whether it was to ventilate anger at the movements for women's, homosexuals', or ethnic minorities' civil rights (which had "gone too far"), frustration with big government, or disappointment about their most intimate relationships. By the 1990s, the anonymity of radio had given way to total exposure, in person, on television. People would tell all on television because "things aren't really important unless you can see them on T.V.," observed therapy host Dr. Joyce Brothers. Talk shows "made America one giant group therapy," according to comedian Joan Rivers.

People were willing to expose their private lives in order to gain instant (if fleeting) fame and what they hoped would be a sympathetic ear for their complaints. Indeed, many guests were delighted to get attention they could not find from their loved ones or official institutions. One woman said she turned to the Rolanda talk show to tell the story of her mother's murder because the police and other media were not interested in pursuing the case. "Rolanda made an on-air promise to further assist me in the search for my mother's killer," Danielle Parker wrote in Electronic Media in September 1994. "After 17 months of screaming into a media abyss, I'm finally feeling heard."

2. Oprah Winfrey: The Host as Fellow Sufferer

In 1984 Chicago television personality Oprah Winfrey emerged as Donahue's most successful competitor by infusing a new, more personal element into her talk show: she explored her own emotional struggles with her audience, including a history of sexual abuse and excessive weight gain. The audience rooted for her as she went on diets and exercise programs, at one point hauling on stage a wagonload of animal fat representing the weight she had lost. Her ability to share her emotions with the audience made her the richest woman on talk television. She earned over $100 million from her syndicated program, according to Gini Graham Scott; she had approximately 10 million viewers on 200 stations in 1987-1988.

3. The Ambush

But soon frank talk about sex and relationships was not enough. As producers competed for the largest possible audiences, relationship shows became showcases for deviant, taboo revelations that were titillating and dramatic. Geraldo Rivera televised a man's sex change operation; a transsexual lesbian from Kentucky appeared repeatedly on five different talk shows.

The ratings soared, especially when the sex chat turned nasty, enflaming participants in the studio. Guests who thought they were booked to talk voluntarily about one topic would find themselves ambushed on live television with a national audience, as some antagonistic family member or other acquaintance would expose the guest's embarrassing secrets. Jerry Springer was televised trying to revive a mother after she collapsed on-air following her daughter's accusation that "She doesn't even know who my father is!" The Springer and Jenny Jones programs developed the ambush into a high art. In some cases, the guest would react violently, spinning the show out of control with hair-pulling, fist fights, and other audience-titillating mayhem. During a Geraldo Rivera show on "teen hatemongers," one guest throttled another, a chair flew, and Geraldo's nose was broken.

4. The Kaiser Study

A Michigan State University study commissioned by the Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed 200 tapes and transcripts of daytime television talk shows over the summer of 1995. Not only did the study confirm that sexual disclosures were the staple of most of the programs, but hosts revealed an average of 16 surprise disclosures per hour about their show's guests. Of these surprise and ambush disclosures, the study found that typically five were about sex, four about a personal attribute such as addiction or health, three about abuse, two about an embarrassing situation, and two about criminal activity.

5. The Jerry Springer Show

It was host Jerry Springer who became particularly notorious-and popular internationally-for his show's salacious disclosures, fist-fighting, and other out-of-control behavior. But when Studio USA, who produced the Jerry Springer Show, ordered him in 1998 and again in 1999 to cut back on his foul-mouthed, face-slapping, hair-pulling, and chair-throwing tantrums, the ratings dipped. For the week ending June 13, 1999, the ratings on his chastened program fell 8% from the previous week and 27% from the same week a year earlier, to an average of 6,613,000 viewers.

People seemed to watch these angry relationship shows the way one might watch for a fiery car crash at the race track. Would someone's life be ruined? Would there be blood on the floor? Would the woman who was about to discover her husband's homosexuality--by unexpectedly meeting his male lover on national television--scream, cry, and punch his lights out? These were real life dramas, unfolding before everyone's eyes.

The combat talk show trend was popular around the world. Springer's syndicated program was watched with fascination by audiences all over Europe. Local Springer imitators proliferated, from Romania to Venezuela and Brazil. The Chrystal Rose show in England aired a program on January 26, 2000, with four bisexuals discussing whether there is a bisexuality gene. A Peruvian show, Laura in America, hosted by attorney Laura Bozzo, specialized in physical battles and insults. In a typical program, two sisters fought tearfully over a man, while the audience shouted insults at them.

In some countries, the free-for-all Springer format spilled over into the political programming. On the
Russian talk show One on One, a politician called a controversial presidential candidate a "scumbag" and a
"bastard." The men then threw orange juice in each other's faces. The film clip was shown on CNN all around the world.

In Mexico, salacious talk shows on Televisa and TV Azteca featured such soap opera themes as "Man by day, woman by night," "My children care only about their inheritance," and "My husband got our servant pregnant." The programs combined sentimental dreaming and scheming about the lifestyles of the rich with crude hair-pulling fights reminiscent of Springer's original shows. By July 2000 such talk shows took up more than 40 hours of Mexico's television programming per week. One Mexican media scholar decried these programs as likely "to discourage people from getting beyond their problems." But producers defended their high-rated programs, saying they give Mexico's poorer citizens new access to the media spotlight.

6. The Jenny Jones Murder Case

By the late 1990s, U.S. talk show culture had careened out of control. The corporate owners of the Jenny Jones Show were held responsible by a Michigan jury on May 7, 1999, when one guest, 24-year-old Lake Orion, Michigan waiter John Schmitz killed another guest three days after the March 1995 taping of the Jones show. Even though the program never was aired, Schmitz told police he was "humiliated" when he discovered the "secret admirer" he was to meet for the first time at the taping was another man, his neighbor, bartender Scott Amedure. Schmitz was convicted of second-degree murder. At his trial, the prosecutor said the Jenny Jones Show was also to blame because it "ambushed the defendant with humiliation."

7. Faking It

Ironically, the talk show format that stood for spontaneity and down-to-earth authenticity was becoming just the opposite. Shows were carefully set up to promote conflict and scandal, either by ambushing unsuspecting guests with surprise information or by other dramatic devices. Springer himself acknowledged that some of the programs were staged. The violence "seems real to me. The people are real, the stories are real, and when they are wrestling, it looks like it's real ... but the show is produced," Springer said in June 1999 testimony before critics on the Chicago City Council. "Has there ever been a case where there's been what you would call a fake guest? Yes. Has there ever been a case when someone made up a story? I'm sure. But I'm telling you, overwhelmingly, the show is real."
International spin-off shows also were rocked by scandal. The Caracas daily El Nacional revealed that guests on one popular Venezuelan show, who had told an emotional story, had been given a script and their story was completely fabricated. Producers of the popular BBC chat show Vanessa were disciplined after the London Mirror revealed that one actor had turned up on two different BBC talk shows just days apart, once as a "worried father" and once as a romantic advisor. A spousal abuse victim turned out to be a struggling actress who had never been wed, and her two feuding sisters were actresses who had never met before the program, the tabloid revealed.

8. The O.J. Simpson Orgy

The O.J. Simpson murder case in 1995 was the talk show culture's dream theme. Nearly one in four Americans was regularly watching the criminal trial, which was televised. Thousands of hours of talk show speculation flowed around the case, as the trial dragged on for months. Producers said they were performing a social service by airing views about racial prejudice and spouse abuse. But a more honest appraisal was that the O.J. murder mystery was television's perfect real-life soap opera, combining sex, race, celebrity, and violence in the kind of smoldering mix that had fueled tabloid newspaper sales throughout the 20th century. The O.J. phenomenon overwhelmed other news about world events for months and spun off new talk shows about crime and the law that survived even after the second verdict was returned. The story so dominated U.S. media that when the second (civil) verdict was returned, declaring Simpson responsible for the crime, virtually all television networks interrupted the President's 1996 annual state of the union message to broadcast the verdict.

In the end the judicial process, as well as the news, seemed overtaken by the presumption of guilt on the talk shows. What mattered, it seemed, was not what the jury said, but what most people believed. And what they believed was influenced by the endless speculation outside the courtroom, on all those endless O.J. talk shows. Naturally some of the key figures in the trial ended up with their own talk shows. Indeed, former Iran Contra scandal figure Oliver North, Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy, former governors Jerry Brown and Mario Cuomo, presidential children Michael and Maureen Reagan, and nearly everyone else in America had found a talk show to host.

B. Radio's Shock Jocks: Stern and Imus

Meanwhile, back on radio, Howard Stern, Don Imus, and others emerged as sex shock jocks, pushing the legal limits of obscenity with their constant barrage of irreverent, comic, and disgusting comments. Stern, who began in Philadelphia in the mid-1980s, led the way as he entertained commuters stuck in morning traffic.

Reveling in the discomfort he was causing traditionalists and FCC regulators, Stern relentlessly battered away at even the most minimal standards of taste and decorum. He created degrading parodies of television programs, such as "Hill Street Jews," and "Beaver Breaks." He joked incessantly about sex of all kinds, body functions, sado-masochism, his own genitals, and anything else considered taboo by the mainstream culture. Imitators sprang up in local markets, to piggyback on his success.

1. Backlash and FCC Fines

Stern's show was canceled in 1985 after he flaunted his embattled manager's request to "clean up" his act, instead sponsoring a new "Bestiality Dial-a-Date" program. But he reemerged to even greater fame in New York, was syndicated to a national audience, and earned a fortune for Infinity Broadcasting, despite continuing complaints from the FCC and conservative Reverend Donald Wildmon. The FCC fined three stations $2,000 for carrying his Christmas show in 1990, which featured a man purportedly playing the piano with his penis. In 1995 the FCC extracted a $1.7 million fine from Infinity, hut Stern's popularity as a cultural iconoclast was only reinforced by the action.

2. Don Imus

New York radio host Don Imus innovated a nationally syndicated program that managed to combine gross sexual banter with important political interviews. He ridiculed and wooed the media elite, attracting call-in chat from Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert, 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, CBS anchors Dan Rather and Connie Chung, and many others. NBC Anchor Tom Brokaw said listening to Imus was "part of my daily education." It was not just Imus's own humorous views that he liked, but the "real people" who called to talk about national issues. President Bill Clinton, Senator Bob Dole, and even talk show critic Senator Joseph Leiberman called Imus to chat on the air, recognizing that it was an important listening post for the key political players of the 1990s.

3. Mike Barnicle and the Slide of Journalistic Standards

The journalistic and ethical standards of talk show hosts such as Don Imus and Boston's Mike Barnicle were often criticized, but to little effect. Barnicle, a beloved and controversial Boston Globe columnist, became an even higher profile Boston radio and television talk show host after being fired from the Globe for making up his "true" stories and lying about his deceptions. While press critics pilloried his journalism standards, his success as a media personality continued, thanks to talk show culture.

4. More Polite Radio Call-In Programs

There remained some oases for serious discourse with higher journalistic standards and respectful treatment of diverse views, particularly on National Public Radio. NPR's syndicated Diane Rehm show in Washington, the national Talk of the Nation, and WBUR's The Connection with Christopher Lydon in Boston were call-in programs appreciated by audiences for their expert guests, provocative topics, and polite discourse, without commercial interruption. Their audiences were dwarfed, however, by the national audience participating in the more entertainment-oriented shock and combat shows on radio and television.

C. The Anger Show: Tapping the Public's Frustrations

1. Joe Pyne

During the antiwar counterculture of the 1960s, underground radio stations such as KPFK in Los Angeles and other Pacific radio stations featured anti-Establishment, protest programming from the political left. While some of the audience rage was driven by the anti-conformist movement of the 1960s, a backlash audience was developing at the same time against Americans who seemed to flaunt traditional values. Capitalizing on this, conservative Joe Pyne pioneered the "insult show" on KLAC radio in Los Angeles and syndicated it nationally in the mid-1960s. Taking the show to television, Pyne goaded members of the studio audience to vent their verbal insults on his guests. Once he even waved a gun at a black militant guest on the show.

2. Morton Downey Jr.

Picking up where Pyne left off was Morton Downey Jr., who specialized in berating his television talk show audience in the 1980s. On one program, for example, Downey goaded a man in the audience, who suggested that even rapists should be forgiven. Downey taunted him, saying aggressively that he would murder rather than forgive a man who raped his wife and children. "You're a murderer!" shrieked the man in the audience over and over again. "Why don't you suck my armpit, all right? Get outta here. Get out, get, get, get ... or I'll show you violence!" Downey shouted back. While Downey eventually failed in daytime television, he survived as a radio talk show host, going on to scream insults at his callers in Washington and Dallas.

3. Radio: From Talk to Target Practice

Talk shows helped to keep radio alive during television's rise. Michael Deaver said he believed Ronald Reagan, whose radio commentaries were syndicated in the 1970s, was elected president in 1980 because he was on the radio reaching 50 million people each week for five years.

According to Broadcasting magazine, the number of stations describing their formats as "talk" in 1992 jumped to 875 from just 238 five years earlier. Unlike popular radio newscaster Paul Harvey, who told stories about ordinary people, the new talk show hosts in the 1990s actually put folks on the air. Soon talk shows in every community were providing a platform for talkers--made up disproportionately of angry, conservative, white men. About 70% of the estimated 8,000 hosts identified themselves as conservatives, according to one talk magazine survey.

Government and the journalism establishment were the most popular scapegoats. What had been a popular political target in previous eras-big business-may have been more acceptable in the 1980s and 1990s because much of the angry talk came from the pro-business conservative right, and for many Americans, the economy was booming.

a. Rush Limbaugh

Conservative host Rush Limbaugh emerged as talk radio's number one force in national politics in 1992, using a mixture of humor and anti-Establishment rhetoric to win an estimated 20 million listeners each week on 625 radio stations across the United States.

While his facts were sometimes distorted to fit his colorful opinions, he touched a deep chord of discontent with the mainstream political Establishment. He made fun of journalists, Democratic politicians, the 1960s counterculture, and the women's and civil rights movements. He ridiculed "feminazis" and adopted the label "the most dangerous man in America." As biographer Philip Seib observed, Limbaugh lived the politician's dream of having authority without responsibility. He selected callers' comments not to show the true diversity of public opinion, but in order to showcase his own conservative ideas.

Fans who called themselves "Dittoheads" met in special rooms set aside in restaurants around the country to have lunch together and listen to Rush on the radio. Sometimes they made their unhappiness heard in Congress, flooding the switchboards with calls on such subjects as federal spending, foreign affairs, and homosexual rights. Yet Limbaugh himself seemed reluctant to use his political muscle. He preferred to call himself an entertainer rather than a politician. "Remember, this is a business, not some boring public service foray," Limbaugh told biographer Seib. "My success is not determined by who wins elections; my success is determined by how many listeners I have."

b. Bob Grant

Even more controversial than Limbaugh's politically potent barbs was a new forum for hate speech and rebelliousness that was hosted by Bob Grant on WABC in New York. In the mid-1990s it drew the biggest local talk show audience in the country, according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a left-wing consumer group. FAIR, which monitored his broadcasts, sought to get him fired for his slurs against blacks, Jews, Muslims, gays, and others. They reported, for example, that Grant said after a gay pride parade in 1994, "Ideally, it would have been nice to have a few phalanxes of policemen with machine guns and mow them down."

Grant was fired in April 1996 after he expressed his "pessimism" that black Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown might not have died with the others in a Bosnia air crash that did, indeed, kill Brown and everyone else on board. But a few weeks later Grant was back on the air, earning ratings at rival WOR-AM.

c. Chuck Baker

Another incendiary anger show on radio was hosted by Chuck Baker on KVOR in Colorado Springs, Colorado in the 1990s. Broadcasting on occasion from the Monument Gun Shop, he encouraged the anti-government "patriot" movement, militias, and callers who contended there was a government conspiracy headed by Attorney General Janet Reno to spy on citizens with black helicopters, plant microchips in babies, and restrict guns. He liked to imitate a firing pin sound on the air, and when a caller complained that this might he inciting people to "an armed rebellion," Baker corrected her: "An armed revolution." When self-professed Baker fan Francisco Martin Duran drove his pickup truck from Colorado Springs to Washington and fired 30 bullets at the White House on October 29, 1994, Baker stopped broadcasting for a month to let things cool off. By December, he was back on the air.

d. G. Gordon Liddy

Perhaps the most notorious talk show host of the 1990s was G. Gordon Liddy, a convicted felon from the Nixon Watergate break-in. An FCC complaint filed against him said he instructed listeners on August 26, 1994, how to kill agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms: "They've got a big target there, ATF. Don't shoot at that because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots... . Kill the sons of bitches."

IV. Criticism Builds: The Pros and Cons

FCC Chairman Dean Burch and Senator John Pastore attempted in vain in the 1970s to attack the rise in sexually explicit programming as "smut." But they were overwhelmed by the growing power of the broadcasters, along with the public's desire to talk about forbidden topics.

After the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed by U.S. anti-government fanatics in 1995, President Clinton denounced "the purveyors of hatred and division," referring to extremist radio talk shows. In an April 24, 1995, speech to the American Association of Community Colleges in Minneapolis, he said such talk shows "spread hate. They leave the impression, by their very words, that violence is acceptable."

Along with the violent hate speech, explicit sex talk troubled the critics. With more than 20 nationally syndicated television talk programs on the air by the fall of 1995, moderate senator Joseph Lieberman joined those on the religious right to decry many of these programs as "pornographic" and degrading to U.S. culture. In an editorial in Electronic Media, he noted that during a February 1995 "sweeps" week, Rolanda showcased porn stars reuniting with their first loves, Jenny Jones had men and their girlfriends who wanted to be porn stars, and Richard Bey set up a competition between housewives and strippers. Lieberman complained that the constant confrontations, emotional violence, and sexual messages children could see regularly on talk shows taught them perverse lessons about adult behavior and problem solving.

Not only were an estimated 8.3 million children under the age of 17 watching some television in the United States, according to Nielsen Media Research in the 1994-1995 season, but, he said, "the preponderance of perversion on daytime talk shows is affecting our entire society.., pushing the envelope of civility and morality in a way that drags the rest of the culture down with it."

Defenders argued that their programs enhanced the diversity and honesty of U.S. culture. Host Geraldo Rivera said that talk shows have "been ahead of the cultural curve since Phil Donahue shocked millions with his pioneering programs on lesbians, atheists, feminism, gender confusion and male exotic dancers" in the mid-1960s. Rivera 's on-air brawl with skinheads on his program "did more to focus negative attention on the epidemic of hate in our country than all the Anti Defamation League bulletins ever issued," he said.

Sally Jessy Raphael also argued that her programs were providing a positive education to young people. "These shows are like morality plays. The audience always tells the bad people off--the young girls who are getting pregnant, the men who are abusing their wives, the women cheating on their husbands." Other hosts said they were offering help, rather than exploiting their humiliated guests. Paramount Television Group's Montel Williams Show boasted on its Web site in September 1999 that through the show's "after-care program" it "successfully arranges for guests to attend psychological treatment, motivational camps, drug and alcohol rehabilitation and treatment for eating disorders." But critics were not buying that excuse. One outraged citizen, Elayne Rapping, concluded in an online rant in 2001 about talk shows that the real harm was "that they co-opt and constrain real political change. They are all talk and no action."

In countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, and Germany, governments went farther, forcing some programming to late-night slots and fining them for degrading content. Germany's Vera am Mittag was fined 200,000 marks (about $122,000) for inviting a diaper fetishist to share his experiences with the audience and Sonia was fined for airing a slugfest between a mother and her 11-year-old daughter.

V. Reform

A. The Oprah Winfrey Show

As many talk shows became more manipulative and bizarre, veteran host Oprah Winfrey was one who decided she had had enough. She deliberately revamped her top-rated program in the 1990s to offer a more wholesome product, even though it meant that her show lost some viewers. "I am in disbelief about things that are happening on television talk shows. How low can we get?" she said in a February 1999 interview with the London Sunday Times. She described her reluctance to continue "interviewing more dysfunctional people" on her 200 hourly programs each year. As part of her positive civic effort, Winfrey began hosting a regular on-air book club segment to promote literacy. It proved so popular with her estimated 7 million viewers that it created instant bestsellers for many authors featured on the show.

B. Talk Radio Changes Tone after World Trade Center Terrorist Attacks

Talk radio offered people a chance to talk through their fears after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the days following the hijackings and devastating attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and Pentagon in Washington, radio stations reported that talk show calls were up by 50% or more.

G. Gordon Liddy immediately urged that the United States attack at least five nations that he said were harboring terrorists. Callers also vented their anger and frustration. Host Howard Stern did not challenge one anti-Muslim caller's proposal to shoot everyone with "a towel on their head" in Patterson, New Jersey. But many of the vitriolic talk show hosts cooled their rhetoric. Across the nation, there was less frivolity and willingness to pander to hate speech, according to Michael Harrison, publisher of a talk radio trade magazine, Talkers. Police in Seattle, worried that anti-Muslim attacks might he incited by talk shows, found that a precautionary statement they issued denouncing such talk show rants seemed to have a positive impact.

When televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell tried to blame liberals, feminists, and abortion rights advocates for inviting such terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush, who had relied on their support during his campaign, denounced their statements. Some hosts who previously would have played into the nation's paranoia and anger seemed chastened when confronted by such genuinely shocking events. Sex shock jock Tom Leykis invited callers sympathetic to the radical Muslims to explain their views. Even Rush Limbaugh, who made a career out of slandering liberals, chided a caller who denounced the "Hollywood liberals" who staged the fundraising telethon to help the victims of the September 11 attacks. Liberals had been emailing him that they wanted to put partisanship aside at this time of crisis, Limbaugh said, concluding, "Let's give them the benefit of the doubt."

VI. Impact on U.S. Politics and Journalism

Politicians learned by the late 1980s that appearing on a talk show was the cheapest, most available means to connect with the U.S. public. Talk shows became a primary venue for official political discourse, augmented by paid political advertising during the candidate or issue campaigns. Press conferences, political conventions, and formal interviews shrank in importance next to the constant search for chatty "face time" on local and national talk shows. Instead of having to rise through the ranks of a political party or machine, the politician of the 1990s found he or she could rise to prominence independently by connecting directly to financiers and voters through television and radio.

Journalists also were profoundly affected by talk show culture. Talk shows filled the empty space in the all-news radio and 24-hour cable news television formats that proliferated in the 1990s. It was far cheaper to put on a lively pro and con discussion with guests in the studio than to send a crew out to investigate the details and background of a story or political issue. This eroded the value of journalism, however, by reducing news to a clash of opposite opinions. The more dramatic the contrast in views the more energized the show, producers believed. Controversy and combat became more valued than intelligent, informed political discussion or than the dispassionate imparting of verified facts. The political center seemed to disappear on television and radio talk shows.

By the 1990s, talk show culture was overwhelming the professional journalism ethic of impartiality and verified facts. Even CNN's weekly media criticism program, Reliable Sources, was inflicted with talk show values, bringing partisan conservatives such as Brent Bozell, Tony Blankley, and John Podhoretz on the show to draw the program's more impartial professional journalists into verbal combat. The program also lingered on pop culture topics, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, instead of looking more systematically at the challenges and failures of America's fourth estate.

A. In the Beginning, the Civilized Shows: Meet the Press and Washington Week in Review

From the earliest days of television, powerful journalists would sit and talk with government officials in a civil, formal discussion about policy and politics. Meet the Press was moved from radio to NBC television in 1947 and was, in 1999, broadcast television's longest-running program. For decades, This Week with David Brinkley on ABC and Face the Nation on CBS competed with Meet the Press to invite the most newsworthy officials of the week. These Sunday morning programs became popular vehicles for political officials to "spin" the selling points for their policies, to launch political campaigns, and to win national attention for themselves. Thanks to these talk shows, obscure policymakers became household celebrities, helping to promote their careers within the political establishment as they pushed their party's agenda with the public.

In 1967, PBS created Washington Week in Review, a live roundtable talk show for journalists to discuss the meaning and background gossip surrounding the week's events in Washington. But by the 1990s, the show was barely hanging on as more aggressive, opinionated, and dramatic political talk attracted the newer generations of viewers. Television overwhelmed print journalism and party politics, shifting the balance of power from influential Washington newspaper columnists to a whole squad of television "pundits" who might not know as much, but could express their opinions forcefully. As James Fallows lamented in Breaking the News, print journalists who appeared also on television began drawing huge lecture fees because the television political chat shows had made them famous.

In the 1990s there were many more options to choose from as new technologies exploded the number of television channels. Stolid discussion programs were losing audience share because they were the very "insider" expert discussions that average Americans found boring and irrelevant to their daily concerns. Thanks to the remote control, more entertaining television--from shopping to sports, cartoons, movies and pay-per-view pornography--was just a zap away.

B. The McLaughlin Group and Crossfire

Two shows which transformed polite political talk to ideological combat were The McLaughlin Group and Crossfire. John McLaughlin, a former priest and defender of President Nixon in the final days of Watergate, carefully cast his journalist roundtable to include a liberal "goat" whom he could debate and berate. As Suzanne Garment wrote in the Wall Street Journal after appearing on his program, it was not as spontaneous as it appeared. Crossfire on CNN was hosted by partisan politicians, including perennial presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and a former GOP White House chief of staff. Some journalists were unwilling to participate in these deliberately provocative talk shows, noting that instead of recounting what they knew, the show's journalists were constantly being urged to express snap opinions and predict the future.

C. Politicians Interchangeable with Talk Show Celebrities

When their electoral careers hit a dead end, politicians often turned into talk show hosts. Thus Geraldine Ferraro, Jesse Jackson, George Stephanopoulos, Mario Cuomo, and countless other political figures joined the talk show ranks. Partisan ideologues sometimes were identified as consultants or commentators and audiences were clueless about their real agendas.

Talk show culture infected politics in other nations as well, and it did not always have a salutary affect. In Taiwan, for example, talk shows became influential showcases for political candidates. But as political observer David Huang lamented in February 2000, partisan political figures often appeared as if they were scholars or experts and tried to use this false authority to sway the audience.

a. Larry King Replaces the Political Convention

If politicians were turning into talk show celebrities, so were talk show hosts turning into political gatekeepers. In a class by himself was Larry King, a former radio deejay whose CNN television program became in the early 1990s a favorite springboard for political candidates. Ross Perot's announcement on King's November 20, 1992, show that he would be willing to run for president was a watershed moment in U.S. political history. Despite his failure to ask the difficult questions journalists try to pose to their subjects, King ran one of the more newsworthy talk shows in the late 1990s. It was also one of the few that still carried on friendly conversations, sparked periodically by questions from callers. King's ingratiating style was the opposite of Springer's ambush attacks; his flattery disarmed his guests and led them to say more than they intended.

D. Talk Shows and the Character Police

Talk show culture, fueled by societal shifts in sex roles and behavior, helped to push previously intimate topics onto the political stage. By the late 1980s, establishment journalists had joined the tabloids in sexual witchunts, tracking down allegations of adulterous or predatory sexual misbehavior by politicians, televangelists, businesspeople, and even other journalists, including television talk show host John McLaughlin.

Competing to outdo each other with ever more shocking revelations, journalists erased prior professional barriers between public and private, between news and entertainment. Following career-ending revelations about sexual behavior by such elected officials as Senator Robert Packwood, the door was open to public judgments about every official's private life. Media disclosures prompted the excruciatingly detailed 1991 Senate testimony by Anita Hill on live television about alleged sexual harassment by Supreme Court Justice candidate Clarence Thomas. This was followed seven years later by Congress's even more graphic impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, with a worldwide television audience following every lurid detail of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Talk show information did not have to be true to hit its mark. All kinds of rumors and political dirt ricocheted from radio and the Internet to television and print. The suicide of Clinton White House counsel Vincent Foster fueled right-wing radio talk show conspiracy theorists for years, as did a subsequently discredited story pushed by leftists that crack cocaine was introduced deliberately into the black community by the Central Intelligence Agency.

A Columbia Journalism Review poll of 147 senior U.S. journalists taken in November 1998 found that most felt having reporters appear as commentators and pundits made their journalism worse. Only 15% thought it improved their journalism quality. Even though talk show culture distorted the content, mission, and credibility of journalism, news organizations still encouraged their reporters to join the fray. The Chicago Tribune hired a television coach to work with its reporters. Time and Newsweek paid their writers cash bonuses each time they chatted on a television or radio program; some magazine staffers even had regular contracts with television networks. Journalists and politicians seemed so interchangeable on the programs, debating their opinions, that journalism became just another part of the talk show culture, a blur of rumor, fact, propaganda, and infotainment.

a. The Clinton Impeachment

Bill Clinton became in 1992 the first talk show president in the United States, elected despite the Jennifer Flowers allegations which he talked away on a brilliant joint appearance with his wife on CBS's 60 Minutes. He made political history by taking his presidential campaign to the talk and late-night comedy shows, playing his saxophone and confessing that he wore boxer undershorts. These informal appearances were thought to be a boost for all concerned; they gave Clinton free air time, enhanced the shows' ratings, and gave viewers a chance to see the informal, "human" side of the candidate at a time when official politics and policymaking were out of fashion.

Despite their efforts to catch up with the runaway popular culture, by 1992 the professional journalists no longer served as gatekeepers to the nation's political discourse. There were too many new outlets on cable TV and radio luring politicians out of the old press box. Talk shows had come into their own; they could no longer be overlooked as an important political resource. Mandy Grunwald, a Clinton advisor said that he went on the entertainment and talk shows during the campaign because "this is how people get their information." The talk shows such as Larry King Live and Arsenio Hall had done an end run. U.S. journalism and politics would never be the same again.

When the Senate in 1998 impeached Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, politics had become even more outlandish than the talk shows: In order to inoculate themselves against charges of hypocrisy as they prosecuted Clinton, a parade of conservative GOP congressional representatives abruptly admitted their own extramarital affairs, from longtime moralist Representative Henry Hyde to Representative Bob Livingston, who abandoned the Speakership of the House after disclosing his own sexual indiscretion. All of this was shown around the world on live television, thanks to CNN and Rupert Murdoch's television network.

If the American people had agreed with the conservative Republicans and tradition-minded journalists that Clinton's sexual misbehavior was properly a public concern, the impeachment would have forced him from office. But the public made it clear in opinion polls and media interviews during the House's lurid televised trial that most did not want their political system to hinge on such matters. Talk show culture helped make it possible for such intimate details about the president's sex acts to be exposed in the first place. But it also meant that the public was not especially shocked at Clinton's affair or even at his lying about it. What he had done was actually pretty tame compared to what many Americans were confessing daily on talk shows.

After more than a decade of talk show culture, it seemed unlikely by the end of the 1990s that private consensual sexual behavior would again be the doomsday weapon it had been in the 1980s. But it also seemed clear that the public would no longer assume the moral rectitude of its political leaders as it had in the 1960s with John F Kennedy. In the l970s and 1980s, the women's rights movement, including the incursion of women into the political press corps, helped to elevate sexual hypocrisy as a public issue. By the end of the 1990s, the excessive attention to such previously private matters on talk shows had finally liberated Americans to think about something else.

E. Talk Show Culture and the 2000 Election

By 2000, even the stiffest of candidates made the talk and comedy show rounds, hoping to improve their image as likeable guys who could relate to the average American. Moralistic Ralph Nader, the Green Party crusader, appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, the senator who earlier had joined with conservatives to campaign against talk show excesses, burst into song during his own late-night debut. George Bush scored points with the pundits when he charmingly planted a kiss on the cheek of talk show superstar Oprah Winfrey, after Al Gore had simply shaken hands professionally with her during his own guest appearance. The kiss became a headline--and a symbol of Bush's "compassionate conservatism"--at a time when the notoriously wooden Gore needed to persuade voters that Bush was scary.

Talk shows were just as important to the two candidates after the voting was over November 7. Struggling for advantage amid a confusing vote count, the two parties staked their victory on two battles: the legal fight in the courts and the public opinion fight, conducted largely on television. Boston Globe media critic Mark Jurkowicz decried the "polarizing pols and pundits" of the cable TV talk shows, who, he said, "follow the three sacred rules of engagement: see no nuance, acknowledge no merit in the opponents' argument; and agree not to agree on anything." Scholar Deborah Tannen also criticized the post-election analysis programs as "just one more TV extravaganza in which the polarizing civic dialogue of the talk shows' "argument culture" had submerged public affairs into entertainment.

A survey by the Pew Research Center before the election found that only 14% of respondents felt they were regularly learning something about the presidential campaign from the political talk shows. Yet the candidate who failed to make the required stops on the late-night shows did so at his peril. Talkers magazine bureau chief Ellen Ratner, a Democrat, declared shortly after her candidate Gore lost the election that he had made a big mistake by not making a campaign stop, as George W. Bush did, at a New York City gathering of talk show broadcasters. Instead, Gore "listened to the polls, the focus groups, and forgot that those of us in the talk media are the keepers of the water cooler buzz," she said.

VII. Talk Show Culture Goes Corporate

By 1999, U.S. talk show culture was heading out in another direction: the information-age corporate board room. Business consultants were advising corporations to stage their own company-wide talk shows as opportunities for employees to collaborate more creatively by listening to each other. "We're always looking for ways to break down barriers in the company," said marketing executive Emma Carrasco of Nortel Networks, explaining to Fast Company magazine why she was hosting a teleconferenced international talk show for Nortel employees, starring the company's regional director. The firm's employees "watch talk shows in every country in the (South American) region, and they've learned that it's okay to say what's on their mind. In fact, it's expected."

Businesses like the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, and Home Depot adapted talk show culture's interactive, anti-hierarchical, informal, and story-oriented approaches, hoping to improve communication both inside the company and outside, with their customers. However, they did not take on all of talk show culture as they adapted it for business. Left behind, these companies hoped, were the ambush surprises, the hostility and combat of Jerry Springer, and the sexual distractions that would continue to propel talk shows into the next millennium, through every available medium.