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A tabloid talk show is a subgenre of the talk show genre that emphasizes controversial and sensationalistic topical subject matter. The subgenre originated in the United States and achieved peak viewership from the mid-1980s through the end of the 1990s. Airing mostly during the day and distributed mostly through television syndication, tabloid talk shows originated in the 1960s and early 1970s with series hosted by Joe Pyne, Les Crane, and Phil Donahue; the format was popularized by personal confession-filled The Oprah Winfrey Show, which debuted nationally in 1986. The format has since been emulated outside the United States, with the United Kingdom, Latin America and the Philippines all having popular shows that fit the format.
Tabloid talk shows have sometimes been described as the "freak shows" of the late 20th century, since most of their guests were outside the mainstream. The host invites a group of guests to discuss an emotional or provocative topic and the guests are encouraged to make public confessions and resolve their problems with on-camera "group therapy". Similar shows are popular throughout Europe.
Tabloid talk shows are sometimes described using the pejorative slang term "trash TV", particularly when producers appear to design their shows to create controversy or confrontation, as in the case of The Richard Bey Show, Geraldo (such as when a 1988 show featuring Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and anti-racism and Jewish activists led to an on-camera brawl) and Jerry Springer, which focused on lurid – often between family members. Vicki Abt, a professor of sociology and American studies , criticized tabloid TV shows, claiming that they had blurred the lines between normal and deviant behavior. The genre experienced a particular spike during the 1990s, when a large number of such shows were on the air, but which gradually gave way during the 2000s to a more universally appealing form of talk show.
Tabloid talk shows often post a "cart" during an episode in order to recruit guests. According to Elizabeth Kolbert of The New York Times: "Almost all the talk shows, from Sally to Ricki Lake, post notices, known as 'carts,' in the middle of a show that ask viewers to call if they have, for example, 'been trying to tell a loved one that their spouse or lover is cheating' ( The Maury Povich Show), or if they're 'going crazy' because their parents have split up ( Donahue)."
Richard Bey and Jerry Springer would gain reputations as the most confrontational and sexually explicit, with stories of lurid trysts – often between family members, and with stripping guests and audience members. The Richard Bey Show started this trend, and for a time, was the most graphic of the TV talk shows. For Springer, although the show started as a politically-oriented talk show, the search for higher ratings in an extremely competitive market led Springer to topics often described as tawdry and provocative, increasing its viewership in the process. Bey and Springer were different in their subject matter: Bey, which was more popular before 1996, attracted an audience similar to that of VH1, involving common themes which would be copied by The Ricki Lake Show, The Montel Williams Show, and even the more family-oriented Sally: adultery, dysfunctional families, and bad children. Bey also had Booty shaking contests and games which featured dates with an attractive woman as the prize. Both shows had numerous features on the Ku Klux Klan and racism (one of the most famous Bey episodes was "White Male Paranoia" in 1993 in which guests complained about anti-white racism), a shock rock exposé (sometimes also featuring music or appearances by artists such as Aerosmith, Motley Crue, Eldon Hoke and Gwar), and paternity test. Bey was also the first to use sex hotlines, featured on bumpers for the show during commercial breaks/interstitials, first on WWOR-TV, its original broadcaster, and then in national syndication, from 1995 on. Common topics on Springer were essentially the same, such as partners admitting their adultery to each other, with fights breaking out.
Walter Goodman wrote in a 1995 column (after the Murder of Scott Amedure):
Springer also featured women or men admitting to their partners that they were transvestites who had convinced their partners that they were a different sex, or revealing that they were pre- or post-op
/ref> Morbidly obese babies and an 800-pound man who was unable to leave his house were also featured – with Springer and a contracted construction crew demolishing the man's wall to get him out. Violence and fights between guests became almost ritual, with Springer
Maury would go on to become one of the most enduring examples of the format, albeit less sensational. Debuting the same season as Springer and likewise initially having a more serious focus, host Maury Povich over time developed a largely formulaic series that carved out a niche: by the 2010s, Maury had become almost synonymous with adversarial DNA paternity testing and polygraph. A typical episode of Maury features a poor woman, often with a checkered sexual background, accusing a past sexual partner of being the father of her child, which the man will categorically deny. At the end of the segment, Povich dramatically reveals the results of the paternity test, and the affected parties react with strong emotion. By the 21st century, Maury had already earned a reputation as being "miles further down the commode" than Springer, and the name of the show would become a proverb for dysfunctional parental situations. Maury would continue until Povich, at age 83, announced his retirement in 2022; the basic format is to be continued in a follow-up show hosted by Karamo Brown.
Amedure's family filed a negligence lawsuit against the producers of The Jenny Jones Show. The show informed Schmitz that his secret admirer could be a man or woman; however, Schmitz claimed he was intentionally led to believe that they were a woman. The trial court initially found for Amedure's family and the show was ordered to pay $25 million in damages. However, this decision was later overturned by the Michigan Court of Appeals, who held that the murder was "unforeseeable" and that the show "had no duty to anticipate and prevent the act of murder committed by Schmitz three days after leaving the studio and hundreds of miles away". However, that decision was later overturned
The Phil Donahue Show, seen by many as originating the genre, was cancelled in 1996 as it could not compete with the new crop of shows. Donahue and Rivera would attempt to re-establish their journalistic credentials on cable television: Donahue with a short-lived talk show on MSNBC, and Rivera going back to his "roving reporter" roots, filing reports on CNBC, NBC and Fox News. Maury Povich began hosting a weekend news show in 2006 with wife Connie Chung on MSNBC while still hosting his daytime show. Weekends with Maury and Connie was cancelled after six months due to low ratings, and received harsh reviews by many of the same critics who criticized his daytime talk show. Jerry Springer, while continuing to host his televised "freak show", also hosted Springer on the Radio on Air America in the mid-2000s. The syndicated Judge Hatchett dealt with many of the topics of tabloid talk shows, but was set within the framework of a court show and was more direct in its efforts to intervene in the participants' lives.
Only a handful of the shows from the tabloid talk era remained in production as of 2011, and only one new tabloid talk show premiered between 2000 and that time: The Tyra Banks Show, which ran from 2005 to 2010, was a replacement for Ricki Lake after Lake quit her show. Tyras format was more contemporary in the style of Oprah and Dr. Phil, but employed a few stunts including having audience members appear in their underwear, and most famously, Banks once pretended to suffer the effects of rabies to a shocked reaction.
Tabloid shows made a slight comeback in the late 2000s and early 2010s, although with a greater emphasis on self-help than their predecessors (owing to the popularity of shows such as Dr. Phil). Steve Wilkos eventually left Jerry Springer and received his own syndicated talk show, The Steve Wilkos Show, which debuted in 2007. The once-defunct Tribune Entertainment ordered new pilots for tabloid-style talk shows hosted by radio shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge and conservative talk radio host Bill Cunningham, for a possible fall 2011 debut; while Bubba's show was not picked up, The Bill Cunningham Show debuted in limited syndication in September 2011 before moving to The CW (becoming the only talk show on U.S. network television not to be lifestyle- or celebrity interview-oriented) in September 2012; Cunningham continued to host the show until he decided to leave in 2016, at which point Robert Irvine took Cunningham's place. An American version of the British tabloid talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show also launched in September 2011. Ricki Lake and The Queen Latifah Show were both slated to return in September 2012, but with revamped, more mature formats (Latifah's as a more celebrity and lifestyle-focused program and Lake's focusing more on lifestyle and self-help topics) to reflect the hosts' increased age; also set to debut was a show hosted by Trisha Goddard, who hosted a tabloid show in the United Kingdom for several years. Lake's new show lasted only a year, and Queen Latifah's was delayed until September 2013 and was cancelled after two years. Goddard and Kyle also failed to gain traction with their U.S. talk show efforts, and both were canceled after two seasons.
Face the Truth, a half-hour series which debuted in the fall of 2018, attempted to cross the tabloid format with the panel show with host Vivica A. Fox. The program failed however, and was cancelled after one season.
As stalwart hosts of the format such as Povich and Springer retired from their programs in the late 2010s and early 2020s, syndicators increasingly turned to of the programs to replace them. Such reruns have been relatively successful for syndicators and stations, given the lack of a need to spend time and money on new content and the low cost of residuals.
Gamson credits the tabloid talk show fad with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable in mainstream society. Examples include a recent Time magazine article describing early 21st century gays coming out of the closet younger and younger, and the decline of suicide rates among gays and lesbians. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows caused homosexuals to be embraced in more traditional media. Examples include sitcoms like Will & Grace, primetime shows like Queer Eye and feature films like the Academy Awards-winning Brokeback Mountain.
While having changed with the times from her tabloid talk show roots, Winfrey continued to include gay guests by using her show and to promote openly gay personalities like her hairdresser, makeup artist, and decorator Nate Berkus, who inspired an outpouring of sympathy from middle America after grieving the loss of his partner in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey's "therapeutic" hosting style and the tabloid talk show genre have been both praised and blamed for leading the media counterculture of the 1980s and 1990s, which some believe broke 20th century taboos, led to America's self-help obsession and created confession culture. The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication" to refer to the concept of public confession as a form of therapy and Time magazine named Winfrey one of the "100 Most Influential People" of the 20th century.
Sociologist Vicki Abt criticised tabloid talk shows for redefining social norms. In her book Coming After Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV Talk Show, Abt warned that the media revolution that followed Oprah's success was blurring the lines between normal and deviant behavior. Television critic Jeff Jarvis agreed, saying "Oprah was the one that trashed daytime TV. She took the Donahue format and then brought on the whiny misfits and losers and screamers and shouters, and then everyone, including Donahue, followed her, until it went overboard. Then finally she came back and recanted and said, no, no, now I'm the queen of quality on TV."
Talk shows were often spoofed in mainstream media, with Night Stand with Dick Dietrick being one of the full-length spoofs of the medium (complete with fake guests and audience members asking questions).
In the interview, Donahue explained that "the show became a place where women discussed issues that didn't naturally come up, and certainly not in mixed company. Much of what we talked about on the air is what women had been talking about in ladies' rooms." Donahue recalled that he finally had to do a show about doctors who hated him because, for the first time, women were challenging their physicians. He also discussed how hosting the show helped him overcome his own taboos. "I put a gay guy on in 1968 – a real live homosexual sitting right next to me. I was terrified ... I'm from University of Notre Dame. And believe me that's the one thing you didn't want to be doing at Notre Dame was hangin' with gay people ... If you don't understand those feelings then you don't understand homophobia. There's a reason for the closet. As the years went by after that show, I got involved in gay politics, and through my activism, I began to realize what it must be like to be born, to live, and to die in the closet."
Donahue also commented on the new crop of tabloid talk shows, such as Jenny Jones – "One-Night Stand Reunions". When Winfrey reminded him "You started all this," he replied, "If that's what you think, I'm proud. What I'm most proud of is that we involved the audience more than anybody else in the game. People who owned the airwaves got to use them in this wild thing called democracy." While both Winfrey and Donahue admitted to having done shows that were "naughty", both wondered if newer shows like Jerry Springer had crossed over into a whole different territory. Reflecting on the genre as a whole Donahue added, "If you want to know about America's culture in the last half of the 20th century, watch some of these programs."
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