TV Talk Show Viewers Are In for More Shock

While shock or tabloid TV is not new, it appears to be growing.

Long before the syndicated “Morton Downey Jr. Show,” there was Wally George, host of “Hot Seat” and “Hot Seat Hotline” out of Anaheim, and before George, there was Joe Pyne on Los Angeles radio and TV.

Come next season, G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate figure who served 52 months in federal prison for burglary and wiretapping, also will have a nationally syndicated show that will be seen here on KHJ-TV Channel 9.

“We’re going to take television back to Nero’s Christians and Lions--and I’m the Lion,” Liddy proclaims on the cover of his publicity brochures.

Shock is also an active ingredient on the Fox network’s “A Current Affair” and “America’s Most Wanted”; on Geraldo Rivera’s talk show, when he takes up such topics as “families that survive incest,” and on Oprah Winfrey’s show when she deals with “families that overbreed.”

It’s the television equivalent of “yellow journalism,” said Mark Fowler, former Federal Communications Commission chairman.

“The larger the audience you want to attract,” suggested Ted Koppel on ABC-TV’s “Nightline,” “the lower you reach.”

Downey said his audience consists of people who are “frustrated, just like I am, with the way the middle class has never been listened to by”--he sneers--”the intellectual elitists.”

George, who has been on television for two decades and was a radio commentator before that, decided five years ago that his programs were too tame. So he began “Hot Seat” on KDOC-TV Channel 56 Saturday nights at 11, and “Hot Seat Hotline” weekdays at 4:30 p.m. On July 16, “Hot Seat,” which is in 150 cable markets, began showing in Boston; it went to Washington July 30.

“Let’s talk about the issues of the day,” George opened on a recent afternoon. “Don’t be a nitwit, or a twerp or even a twirpette, or I’m going to kick your little buns outta here! “

George voices strong opinions on Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, Los Angeles gangs and homosexuality. “I have the cure for AIDS,” he asserts. The answer is “to put an end to homosexuality in America, to make it illegal to be a homosexual. . . . “

“Liddy”--presumably the name is enough--will focus on debates between Liddy and his guests, then among the audience, Liddy and guests. His set is a coliseum-like arena with ramps leading down to the stage. The first shows he taped were about the death penalty and the women’s rights issue of equal pay for equal work.

“I am not a moderator,” Liddy said in an interview from his home. “I am flat out an advocate of one side--naturally the side of the conservative and the right.”

“The shock comes from the second half (of the show),” Liddy said. “We screen the audience--half (are) as liberal as we can get, half as conservative. The audience comes down and challenges the guests. People do get worked up, and they do shout, but I do not abuse my guests.

“In the death penalty program, a man came down and challenged me,” Liddy said. “He had been on death row 28 years. He said he didn’t owe me or anyone anything. He was real fierce about that. Then another fellow came down on the other side of the ramp, a nice-looking young man, suit and tie, and he said, ‘I don’t think we should execute murderers either. My daughter was raped and killed, my little girl. I think they (murderers) ought to be used for medical experiments.’

“Now that, “ Liddy reflected with pride, “is real shock. “

Downey, George and Liddy are all basically conservative, although Downey, who considers himself a conservative Democrat, actually prefers to be known as a “radical centrist.”

Asked why he thought the trio are conservative, Liddy had a ready answer: “Probably because the liberals out there, (Phil) Donahue and the rest of them, take a controversial subject and bring in people of opposing points of view, and then we all have a lovely, well-mannered discussion about, ‘How do you feel about that? Does that make you feel warm in your tummy?’ ”