- Here’s the more you know you want.
If you haven’t read, The Best of the Worst of Trash TV: Part One, follow the link to read it. This is part two.
The Morton Downey Jr. Show
This guy was like none other, and not for good reasons. He called his audience ugly and yelled at his guests. He had no tact, no civility or decorum.
“I don’t apologize for anything,” he said. He was confrontational and incorporated the audience into the villain story he spun.
And the audience only egged him on. Trash tv was as much of a term as fake
news is. It’s the things people want to watch that they can relate to or things they’re going through. It can also be the complete opposite, with viewers thanking God that they aren’t going through this.
Execs found out that tv talk shows are easy and cheap to produce. Without any actors and no script, therefore no need for writers, it was a much more economical way to make a tv show.
In the early 1990s, a lot of people wanted in on that. Imitation is king, from Leeza Gibbons to Carnie Wilson and Ortice Berry, Maury Povich, and Joan Rivers.
Others came like Montel Williams and Jenny Jones.
The 90s was the talk show boom. There were 15-20 talks shows on the air. They wanted to distinguish themselves, so they went to the material that did well in the past, to replicate it with a little twist.
Montel Williams was ex-military and gave tough love. There was The Richard Bay show that showed fights with pies, wheel of torture to slime people and other ridiculous and silly things. The was the worst of the worst of trash tv.
Jenny Jones did a lot of makeover shows and she gave off the friend vibe. And then there was Jerry Springer.
Jerry Springer went from a news guy to a talk show guy. His viewers liked that he could tell a good story.
The Ricki Lake show would take topics from Oprah about girls dressing too
sexually at school and turn it around to show moms who dress their children sexually for school on purpose and the girls say they would get made fun of otherwise.
Some talk shows were imitating Oprah, some Geraldo. Jerry Springer was supposed to come out as the next Phil Donahue.
Springer says he’s always been more political, including city council, mayor, NBC affiliate anchor. Eventually, that morphed into the talk show.
The Jerry Springer Show
Donahue was about to retire so they took Springer out to lunch and said they had a new tv show and he was going to host it. People said he looked like a banker with slick hair and huge glasses. Not to mention the bad suit.
Springer said it was boring but it was still a talk show. But the original concept didn’t work because it “wasn’t him.” Early topics were grandparents watching grandkids, and even some modeling shows. The show was set to cancel, so they just needed to get through it until they could replace him.
They were a daytime talk show but none of the networks were airing it during the day because it was so bad. So they changed the show into what eventually became the “worst of trash tv.”
The demographic for daytime tv was housewives, but the show was airing at 2:00a.m. The demographic at that time was thought to be more like college kids.
They decided to “go young” with the show. At first it was nothing crazy, topics were things like body piercings, crazy hair, and then things like cheating.
They didn’t want experts or celebrities. They wanted the show to be interesting without the sound, in such a way that at any moment in the show, someone flipping through the channels would want to stop and watch it.
Ratings only rose and they added nudity. Themes like “College Girls Tell Their Mom They’re Strippers.”
The producer dubbed him Uncle Jerry and said that people liked having him in their living room. It was him being him and that’s when the show really began to take off.
Once producers had a sense of topic, they would plug iton the air. Remember all those questions on talk shows and to call if “it was you.” “Are you having trouble with your parents, and want to share your story? Call such and such. Or, “Are you in a love triangle?” Call such and such.
This made people call in with interest in being on the show. So much so that they were receiving over 1000 calls a day.
People had to have a great story and be a great story teller. The story doesn’t make it if they weren’t good talkers.
There’s more! Follow the link to: The Best of the Worst of Trash TV: Part Three.
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