The Talk Show Phenomenom - Oprah, Dr. Phil, Maury and Montel
The tabloid talk show genre, pioneered by Phil
Donahue but popularized by Oprah
Winfrey was extremely popular during the last two decades
of the 20th century. Oprah Winfrey has become a cultural icon
and one of the richest women in America, and the richest African-American
in the world. Oprah Winfrey also spawned another talk show
host approaching icon status in America, Dr.
Phil.
Because of the success of Winfrey's show, contemporaries
like Jerry
Springer, Jenny Jones, Maury
Povich, Montel
Williams, Geraldo Rivera, and Ricki Lake revamped their
shows in a quest for higher ratings, each trying to outdo
the other by moving towards increasingly controversial guests
and theatricality, sparking Newsweek's characterization of
the "Trash TV phenomenon"
The search for higher ratings and greater advertising revenue
led Oprah towards provocative topics. Guests included neo-Nazi
skinheads, polygamous men and their partners, and Black and
Jewish activists. By the fourth season, a show was dedicated
to guests who claimed they had seen Elvis Presley alive, with
one man claiming he talked to the singer in a Burger King.
Oprah's longtime friend Gayle King said during an A&E
profile on Winfrey in 2003 that when they looked back at an
episode list of the first six seasons, Oprah could not believe
she used to host such provocative shows. With titles as "I'm
a Cross-Dresser" and "Priestly Sins", King
believed the topics "didn't seem so sleazy when Oprah
did them".
Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits
the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high
impact media visibility for gays, bisexuals, transsexuals,
and transgender people and doing more to make them mainstream
and socially acceptable than any other development of the
20th century. In the book's editorial review Michael Bronski
wrote "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals,
and transgendered people had almost no presence on television.
With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such
as Jerry
Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah,
and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear
in living rooms across America almost every day of the week."
New comers have joined in the Talk Show frenzy
with successfeul shows from Ellen
Degeneres, in The
Ellen Show and Tyra
Banks in The
Tyra Show, which caters to young women.
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