The television talk show consists of four different subgenres:

Google Directory: Talk Shows

Yahoo.com Directory: Television Shows: Talk Shows

About.com: Television Shows

dmoz.org: Talk Shows

The Late Night TV Page

The morning and prime-time/late shows retain a consistent format established by early hosts in the 1950s through 1970s: for the morning shows: Dave Garroway, Arlene Francis, Arthur Godfey, Garry More, Art Linkletter, Merv Griffin, Hugh Downs, Ernie Kovacs, Mike Douglas; and for late shows: Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Dick Cavett, David Susskind, Barbara Walters, and Johnny Carson. Bernard Timberg (2000) identifies five characteristics of this subgenre:

• the centrality of the host. The program revolves around the host — Larry King, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Charlie Rose — as the central figure of the program. The host often has control over the show’s content and guest selection. The host is often supported by others — Ed McMahon was Johnny Carson’s “straight man,” who laughed at his jokes and provided an immediate conversational audience. The hosts often serve as commodities for their networks — functioning to promote not only their shows, but also the network itself and other products

• the present-tense flow. Even though the shows are pre-taped, they are highly structured in ways that create the illusion that they are occurring “live” in present time for the viewer audience.

• varied modes of address. The host is simultaneously addressing a range of different audiences: the immediate audience on stage (guests, co-hosts, or bandleader), their studio audience, and the viewer audience, all in ways that serve to engage the viewer audience as the intimate “you.”

• the commodity function. The show serves not only as an advertising vehicle, but it also serves to promote the celebrities who appear on the show. Stars of television programs on the same network often appear as guests to promote those network programs.

• structured spontaneity. Despite the seemingly spontaneous nature of the program, a large cast of writers, producers, celebrating agents, and technical people construct a scripted, semi-rehearsed production that adheres to time constraints and certain publicity messages they wish to convey.

Recently talk show hosts have functioned to provide their own versions of daily news events for their relatively younger audiences who may not be acquiring news from other sources.

The day-time “tabloid”/”confessional” show, such The Oprah Winfrey Show, traditionally appealed to more of a female audience, but more recently sensationalized shows such as The Jerry Springer Show has attracted an adolescent male audience. These shows are often organized around particularly themes or topics often related to interpersonal conflicts, health, beauty — and, on the tabloid shows, sex, drugs, and divorce (Shattuc, 2001).

The increased popularity of “courtroom” shows dramatizes personal or family conflicts within a seemingly legal area. These shows attempt to actively promote conflicts between participants, often resulting in arguments, taunts, and physical fights. They also engage audience members as players in these conflicts, asking them to create alliances between the conflicting participants. These shows’ focus on dramatic conflict between participants serve to overlap with the conflicts portrayed in soap opera (see soap opera) and reality television.

The “confessional” shows focus more on having participants articulate personal problems that are then addressed by an “expert” or by the host as a moral guide (Shattuc, 2001). The prevailing discourse of these shows is therapeutic — the assumption that through “talking-out” issues and improving interpersonal relationships, problems can be solved, a discourse that masks the influence of institutional forces. For example, in an analysis of a series on racism on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Janice Peck (1995) found that race was defined primarily in terms of interpersonal conflicts, resulting in the admonition that if people simply treated each others as “humans” and improved their relationships, racial conflict would be mitigated, an analysis that frames racism as a matter of personal prejudice.

Favorite Talk Show Forum

Peter’s Reviews of late night show topics

Mittell, J. (2003). Television talk shows and cultural hierarchies. Journal of Popular Film and Television.

For further reading:

Grindstaff, L. (2002). The money shot: Trash, class, and the making of TV talk shows. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shattuc, J. (1996). The talking cure: TV talk shows and women. New York: Routledge.

Timberg, B. (2002). Television talk: A history of the TV talk show. Austin: University of Texas Press.

The political talk show often features competing political perspectives from what is described as the “liberal” and the “conservative” side, in which participants argue with each other in a highly dramatic, combative manner with little contextualization or development of ideas. Deborah Tannen (1999) characterizes this as the “argument culture” in which one-upping one’s opponents is valued more than enlightening an audience on an issue. Moreover, the “guests” who appear on Sunday morning talk shows generally represent status quo institutional perspectives and are largely white males. One study by The White House Project of programs aired from January 1, 2001 to June 30, 2001 found the male guests outnumbered females by 9 to 1; between September 11 and October 28, the number of females guests dropped by 39%.

Radio talk shows

While this module on genres focuses primarily on film/television genres, there is also a strong link between the television and the radio talk show genre. Radio talk shows (see Yahoo Searchand Google Directory )such as National Public Radio programs Car Talk, The Connection, Sound Money, Let’s Talk Business, Talk of the Nation, Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, Splendid Table, To the Best of Our Knowledge, as well as numerous local radio talk shows, attract large audiences. In contrast to most of television talk shows, these shows, particularly those on National Public Radio, are often more substantive because they are not influenced by a visual format or by commercial forces. At the same time, the majority of commercial talk radio shows with hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, G. Gordan Liddy, Dr. Laura, James Dobson, and others reflect a popular appeal to a loyal conservative, often male, audience due to its reputation as what Henry Giroux (1996) describes as:

The “bad boy” of the communication industry. Given the unrehearsed nature of talk, it is less controlled and more open to the speaking the unspeakable. Moreover, the often spontaneous nature of its content, along with it’s appeal to audiences willing to believe that they have been excluded from mainstream media, gives talk radio an outlaw status and popularity with often marginalized segments of the American public (p. 151).

These hosts assume power over the topics covered by screening calls so that deviant perspectives are excluded, undermining the presumed “balance” required for broadcasters. Programs that reflect a more liberal or populist perspective such as Hightower Radio on ABC radio have difficulty staying on the air. When Disney purchased ABC, they stopped supporting Hightower Radio and it went off the air.

Talk Radio News

Module 7: Word document

Different Perspectives on Genre Study

Audience-based Approaches to Film/Television Genre Study

Critical/Ideological Analysis of Genres

The History and Evolution of Genres

Devising Genre-analysis Activities

Different Genre Types

Action/Adventure

The Western

Gangster/Crime

Detective/Film Noir

Comedy

Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Horror/Monster

Suspense Thriller/Spy/Heist

Soap Opera

The Talk Show

Sports

Game Shows/
Reality TV

Animation

Comics

Graphic Novels

Teaching Activity

References

Teaching activities on genre developed by students in CI5472, Spring, 2004