Geraldo Turns Up His Nose at Sensationalism : Television: Talk show host tells syndication convention he’s had it with portraying ‘deviant behavior and kinky sex.’

Geraldo Rivera confesses: “I have strayed.”

Rivera is here until Friday at the convention of the National Assn. of Television Program Executives, the annual marketplace for syndicated television, to tell potential buyers of his talk show what he says his viewers already know: that Rivera has changed his stripes.

Rivera--the controversial talk show host who won the unofficial Purple Heart of tabloid TV last season by having his nose broken in an onstage fracas between a white supremacist and a black guest, who rose to unprecedented levels of infamy with an NBC prime-time special on satanic cults featuring detailed accounts of skinning human babies--said in an interview Tuesday that he will forgo celebrating “deviant behavior and kinky sex” in favor of returning to his roots as an investigative reporter.

“The changes have really been in place since Thanksgiving,” said Geraldo, sipping a drink in the lobby bar of his hotel here. “I really came to a personal re-evaluation that I had strayed from my beaten path, strayed from the type of programs that made us a success for the past three years.”

Rivera, 47, said his viewers have already picked up on the new tone; at the NATPE convention, he hopes to persuade the program buyers that his change of heart is “long-term and sincere.”

Although the show already has been renewed for next season, a Rivera spokesman said that 25% of the 194 stations that carry it had lodged complaints about some of the content. And Rivera said that he and his executive producer, Marty Berman, had spent time at the convention luring back advertisers who had dropped out of “Geraldo” to avoid being associated with some of the subject matter.

“K mart came back two days ago; that deal is done,” Rivera said. “We also got a major food company and a major, family-oriented fast-food chain.”

The decision to return to his roots, he related, came after an embarrassing Thanksgiving conversation with his son Gabriel, who said his friends were all repeating Geraldo jokes they’d heard from Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. “I’ve been the basic fodder for all the stand-up comedians for the past year or so,” he said.

“Ever since I crossed the line into popular culture, there have been jokes--but they used to be fairly benign. Now they’re fairly nasty--and not untrue, about some of the more deviant life styles we’ve portrayed.”

Rivera said that the jokes got worse right after the 1989 November “sweeps” ratings period, when his topics included “Debbie Duz Donuts,” an installment on a topless doughnut shop in Colorado, and “Battered Lesbians.”

The competition made him do it, Rivera said. “I went too far. I think in November, I used up my quota on deviant behavior.

“I was up against Oprah (Winfrey) in 125 markets for the first time; it was the strongest competition in syndication history, and I overreacted. I made a mistake.”

Another watershed point came last fall, when Rivera discovered that there weren’t enough deviants to go around. He and Phil Donahue unwittingly booked the same deviant: a former Los Angeles police officer who had become a prostitute. Geraldo’s topic: “Men Who Marry Prostitutes.” Donahue’s topic: “Prostitutes and Gigolos.”

Embarrassingly enough, both shows aired on the same day in New York.

“There were no normal people on any of the three shows (‘Geraldo,’ ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ ‘Donahue’),” Rivera observed.

A spokesman for Rivera said that the show’s Nielsen ratings have remained the same since the show changed its tone, and are about the same this season as last. Rivera maintained that the changes grew less out of ratings anxiety than audience research, which, he said, indicated that viewers missed the old Geraldo.

“I’m not going to become a male Oprah,” he said, adding: “I’m out of the freak show business.”

But the competition still affects Rivera; he acknowledged that he wants to hold onto his viewers by being different from the pack. “Donahue is the inventor of the form, and Oprah has her ‘Hey girlfriend, hey neighbor,’ huggy-huggy stuff,” he said. “People now have three nice alternatives.”

During February sweeps, he said, his topics will include “Busting Bad Doctors,” “Mailroom Mayhem,” “Black Soldiers” and “Dirty Divorces of the Rich and Famous.” Other subjects in the works include college sports scandals and an investigation of child labor laws in Florida.

Do not expect to see “Girl Scouts Who Sell Cookies” on the next Geraldo, however. Despite NBC’s frequent apologies for the Satanism show in October, 1988, Rivera said his syndicated program will not shy away from similarly controversial topics in the future.