The Best of the Worst of Trash TV: Part One

• Trash tv, an American classic.

Talking about the best of the worst of trash tv can only be reality tv, but that’s not all. Here’s how it started, where it went, and where it is now.

Daytime Talk Shows

These shows were called disgusting, depraved and “cultural rot.” It got real people showing their true selves and it was something we’ve never seen on tv before. 

Shows like:

• Geraldo
• Sally Jessy
• Donahue
• Jenny Jones and
• Jerry Springer all did it.

It was a race on television for ratings and everyone wanted to win. That’s when the crazy begun. Daytime talk shows were reality tv before there was reality tv. 

Daytime talk shows put ordinary people on tv, telling their stories. These stories were real, not fake. At the time, fake didn’t work for the American audience. 

This wasn’t always the case, but between things like Andy Griffith, I Dream of Genie and all the soap operas, everything really seemed fake and game show-like. 

There were talk shows at the time, but more often than not, they were interviewing professional experts or celebrities and tv was just different.

Phil Donahue

In 1967, he would have celebrities and authors come in. He had a similar interview style to the rest of them.

Phil Donahue soon became the pioneer of the genre and tv shifted with the donahue show. 

Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the most famous atheist, came on the show.

The show went as usual until by accident or rather with the flow of a tv program, there was a commercial break. During the commercial break, he let one of the audience members ask a question. 

This changed everything. The commercial breaks were tapped and began to aire alongside the show. Donahue would talk to the audience, ask their name and where they were from. He would allow them to ask questions about them.

This was never done before.

Donahue didn’t sit behind a desk anymore, he walked around the audience. He also started to bring up relatable conversations like different kinds of sexuality and marriage. Divorce and remarried and different kinds of families.

The format was working well and all the sudden, execs thought, why aren’t women doing talk shows? And then there was Sally Jessy Rafael.

Sally Jessy Rafael

Donahue was doing more philosophical topics. Rafael started out with more human topics. Things like anorexia and bulemia, OCD, being gay, or being an outsider and a person that doesn’t want a pronoun. (Interesting context considering what a big topic this is right now.)

She talked with the purpose of understanding. She wanted to show that we are all going through things and that someone else has gone through what you’re going through.

Rafael brought topics like drug addiction and alcoholism into the public eye. This drew audiences in and paved the way for other women to get into talk shows.

Then it was Oprah and her therapeutic and mostly female audience. 

Donahue and Sally were stars from what they did best, relatable issues with the public.

Geraldo

Then out of nowhere comes this guy from investigative reporting. He’s got more of a masculine and muck-raking persona. 

He provoked people and that was what made his show what it was. There were gang bangers and hate mongers. Geraldo brought on white supremacist guests and a black activist guest at the same time. With more of both in the audience and some “regular” people in there, too. These people were invited on stage together.

He got these three groups together with the sole purpose being to see what happened. People were pissed. Geraldo put a flame with gas to see how it would explode. And did it. 

A fight erupted on stage, chairs were flying, punches were thrown. Geraldo himself got a broken nose out of it. It was a war on stage. 

The fight lasted only a minute and a half long.

This showed emotion, intensity and the importance of these issues. It defined the genre’s history. And it was only the beginning. 

By that night, the show was broadcast all over network national news. They were saying how bad and awful it was, but kept playing it again and again. (This sounds familiar, too.)

Geraldo’s ratings flew, but by the end of the year, he was on the cover of Newsweek with the headline, Trash TV.” He was the symbol of trash tv with his broken, bloody nose on the front cover. 

For more, follow the link to The Best of the Worst of Trash TV: Part Two. What do you think so far?