Tabloid talk show

[8] 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.

Host Les Crane would bring on controversial guests, interview them in an aggressive but fair style, and take questions from the audience.

One 1988 episode featuring white power skinheads ended in a brawl that left host Geraldo Rivera with a broken nose.

Bey and Springer were different in their subject matter: Bey, which was more popular before 1996, attracted an audience similar to that of VH1,[citation needed] 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.

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[citation needed] 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 tests.

Bey was also the first to use sex hotlines, featured on bumpers for the show during commercial breaks/interstitials, first on WWOR, its original broadcaster, and then in national syndication, from 1995 on.

At the end of the segment, Povich dramatically reveals the results of the paternity test, and the affected parties react with strong emotion.

[22] 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 byword for dysfunctional parental situations.

[24] On March 6, 1995, The Jenny Jones Show taped an episode titled "Revealing Same Sex Secret Crush".

[30] However, that decision was later overturned[31] By the early 2000s, the genre began to decline in popularity with viewers, and certain hosts either saw their shows cancelled due to low ratings (such as Jenny Jones and Sally Jessy Raphaël), died (such as Wally George) or voluntarily ended their shows to pursue other interests (such as Ricki Lake).

)[33] As early as the late 1990s, hosts such as Oprah Winfrey, and to a lesser extent Montel Williams, began to distance their programs from the genre by refocusing them to incorporate more serious subject matter or staying on stage in the manner of more traditional talk shows.

Tyra's 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.

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.

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.

[37] In the scholarly text Freaks Talk Back,[38] Yale University sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high impact media visibility for gay, bisexual, transsexual 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 [sic] people had almost no presence on television.

With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Jane Whitney, and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week.

"[39] Gamson credits the tabloid talk show fad with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable in mainstream society.

Examples include sitcoms like Will & Grace, primetime shows like Queer Eye and feature films like the Academy Award-winning Brokeback Mountain.

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.

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.

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".

[41] First-run tabloid chat shows are also produced in the United Kingdom, which are largely similar to their American counterparts, albeit more tame in style.