TALK SHOWS ON TELEVISION

The number of daytime television talk shows increased rapidly during the 1990s. In the late 1980s, there were only three national daytime talk show personalities (Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, and Sally Jessy Raphael). By 1995, there were almost twenty daytime syndicated talk shows watched by an estimated ten million viewers each day.

Controversies over Talk Shows

As talk shows proliferated, so did criticism by politicians such as U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who refer to these programs as "trash TV." Part of the concern arises from reports that children and adolescents often watch these programs. In a national survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in 1996, children were more likely than their parents to say they watched shows such as Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, Montel Williams, or Geraldo. According to this survey, 39 percent of the parents, more than 50 percent of the twelve-to seventeen-year-olds, and nearly 30 percent of the ten-and eleven-yearolds reported watching those talk shows.

A number of distinct criticisms have been put forward, mostly focusing on the probability that the viewers' perceptions of reality become distorted as a result of watching talk shows. One such criticism is that talk shows give viewers a warped sense of reality in which dysfunctional relationships and bizarre problems seem typical of life in the United States. As the viewers' perceptions of society change, those people become more tolerant of deviant behaviors and possibly more willing to try such behaviors themselves. A second criticism is that viewers who watch talk shows on a regular basis become desensitized to the graphic discussions and emotional outbursts of the participants and subsequently develop a callous attitude toward misfortune even outside the realm of talk shows. A third criticism is that talk shows, by using personal exemplars and by offering simplistic advice such as "love conquers all" or "race shouldn't matter" as solutions to problems, cause viewers to trivialize complex social issues. Finally, talk shows have been charged by authors such as Elaine Showalter (1997) and Jeanne Heaton and Nona Wilson (1998) with contributing to hysteria and misinformation on issues such as repressed memory, satanic ritual abuse, and alien abduction.

In contrast, a number of advocates such as Patricia Priest (1996) and Joshua Gamson (1998) have argued that talk shows provide a valuable source of celebrity and self-esteem for the marginalized individuals who appear as guests. In addition, Gamson has suggested that talk shows give much needed, high-impact public visibility to out-groups such as sexual nonconformists, moving previously taboo topics into public awareness and changing the norms of what can be presented on television. Patricia Priest and Joseph Dominick (1994) reported that informants who had appeared on Phil Donahue to discuss sensitive topics viewed talk shows as a pragmatic way to reach both the mainstream public and members of their own outgroup.

The Content of Talk Shows

What evidence is there for this set of criticisms in the content of talk shows? Bradley Greenberg, Sandi Smith, and their associates analyzed ten episodes of each of the eleven most highly rated daytime television talk shows of 1994 (see Greenberg and Smith, 2000). They reported that, contrary to public perception, talk shows most frequently focused on parenting and marriage problems, as well as dating. Sexual issues, such as frequency of intercourse, cheating, and sexual orientation, were raised in this context, but they were not the only focus. Other common topics included victims and perpetrators of criminal activities, physical health problems, and physical appearance. Despite the image of talk shows as a hotbed of verbal and physical conflict, yelling and shouting occurred no more often than laughing among the guests, and the positive affect suggested by hugging or holding hands was found twice as often as the negative affect suggested by shouting. Verbal statements of denial, rejection, shame, and anger were common, but so were statements of affection.

Greenberg and Smith (2000) reported that, in the majority of cases, they could identify a clear theme for the program that reflected rather conservative perspectives (e.g., "pornography is not ok," "transsexuality is not acceptable," "people should not have multiple sex partners"). In other cases, the theme of the program reflected basic societal standards (e.g., "adults should not rape minors").

Greenberg and Smith also coded the first two reactions of a talk show host to a guest's disclosure. Typically, these were simple requests for further information or noncommittal sounds that encouraged further communication. However, 11 percent of the first two reactions by hosts were moralizing questions (e.g., "You knew that was wrong, didn't you?"), and 10 percent were questions or statements emphasizing the severity of the event (e.g., "He hit you with a baseball bat?"). The reactions of others on the show (other guests or the studio audience) included character attacks and name-calling. Overall, almost one-quarter of the time, studio audiences and hosts reacted with disapproval to the guests' disclosures. In summary, when talk shows cover behaviors that can be considered dangerous or inappropriate, they are often met with disapproval rather than presented as normal or desirable.

What about the argument that talk shows oversimplify complex issues? Greenberg and Smith were able to identify a clear, simplistic theme such as "prostitution should not be done" in the majority of episodes that were coded. The host of the show often stated a theme or title of the show for that day and then repeated it after returning from a commercial break. On some programs, such as Ricki Lake, the theme of the show was often printed on the screen as advice from one guest to another (e.g., "Dump that guy before I dump you."). In addition, the focus of each program is clearly on the individuals rather than the implications of issues for society as a whole.

Research on the Effects of Talk Shows

Do talk shows alter the viewers' perceptions of reality and subsequently affect their behaviors and policy judgments? John Hill and Dolf Zillmann (1999) focused on arguments that Oprah Winfrey increases sympathy for perpetrators rather than victims of crime as a result of the emphasis on the nearly irresistible forces (e.g., childhood trauma) that drive people to commit violent and illegal acts. Undergraduate students who watched segments of Oprah Winfrey with such mitigating information present gave lighter prison sentences to criminals depicted in the segments than did those who saw the segments without the mitigating information. Those who viewed the mitigating information also gave lighter sentences in a seemingly unrelated exercise in which they were asked to give sentences for six violent and nonviolent crimes that were not depicted in the segments.

As a test of some of the other popular criticisms of talk shows, Stacy Davis and Marie-Louise Mares (1998) surveyed 292 high school students in North Carolina. Consistent with the hypothesis that talk shows alter perceptions of what is typical, subjects who were heavy viewers of talk shows gave significantly higher estimates of the frequency of behaviors depicted on talk shows (e.g., bringing guns to school) than did subjects who were light viewers of talk shows. This was still true even after statistically controlling for overall television viewing and background demographic variables such as parental education. However, when subjects who were heavy viewers of talk shows were asked to rate the harm done to victims in a series of scenarios, their responses showed no sign that they were becoming desensitized to the sufferings of others. Finally, there was no evidence that talk shows led viewers to believe that serious issues such as drug abuse or teen pregnancy were trivial. In fact, talk show viewing was positively related, among people between fifteen and eighteen years of age, to perceived importance of social issues.

Conclusion

Talk shows have been a focus of considerable controversy. The little evidence that is available suggests that talk shows may be less sensational and less harmful than is often suggested.

See also:Sex and the Media; Television Industry; Violence in the Media, Attraction to.

Bibliography

Davis, Stacy, and Mares, Marie-Louise. (1998). "Effects of Talk Show Viewing on Adolescents." Journal of Communication 48(3):69-86.

Gamson, Joshua. (1998). Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Greenberg, Bradley S.; Sherry, John L.; Busselle, Rick W.; Hnilo, Lynn; and Smith, Sandi W. (1997). "Day-time Television Talk Shows: Guests, Content and Interactions." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 41(3):412-426.

Greenberg, Bradley S., and Smith, Sandi W. (1995). The Content of Television Talk Shows: Topics, Guests and Interactions. Report prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation

Greenberg, Bradley S., and Smith, Sandi W. (2000). "Talk Shows: Up Close and in Your Face." In Sexual Teens, Sexual Media, eds. Jane D. Brown, Jeanne R. Steele, and Kim Walsh-Childers. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Heaton, Jeanne, A., and Wilson, Nona, L. (1998). "Memory, Media, and the Creation of Mass Confusion." In Truth in Memory, eds. Steven Lynn and Kevin McConkey. New York: Guilford Press.

Hill, John R., and Zillmann, Dolf. (1999). "The Oprahization of America: Sympathetic Crime Talk and Leniency." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 43(1):67-82.

Priest, Patricia. (1996). "Gilt by Association: Talk Show Participants' Televisually Enhanced Status and Self-Esteem." In Constructing the Self in a Mediated World, eds. Debra Grodin and Thomas R. Lindlof. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Priest, Patricia, and Dominick, Joseph R. (1994). "Pulp Pulpits: Self-Disclosure on 'Donahue.'" Journal of Communication 44(4):74-97.

Showalter, Elaine. (1997). Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.

Marie-Louise Mares