Talk Show Treasure Hunt: Success Secret Lies in Willingness to Tell All : Television: The competition for good guests, with juicy stories, can be tough. But sometimes the fish jump in the boat.

The woman had been married four months, and already she was sneaking out to see other men.

One morning while watching “The Joan Rivers Show,” she saw a commercial asking women who were having affairs to call the talk show. She did.

On the phone, a producer reminded her that her husband would learn about the affair if she appeared as a guest. Mariann Sabol, senior producer at “Joan Rivers,” recalled the woman’s answer: “I wanted to tell him somehow.”

Each weekday, there are more than a half-dozen talk shows on the national networks, dozens more on cable stations, each in need of guests.

Celebrities, authors, sex experts--these can be found simply enough. But how does a producer find the Midwestern woman who married her son’s best friend? And why would she want to tell TV-land about it, anyway?

“We don’t have a problem finding people who want to go on,” said Darlene Hayes, executive producer of “Montel Williams.” “We have a problem finding good guests.”

So producers fashion themselves into judges, weighing the merit of each potential guest. Of course, for their efforts, these guests get something out of their hour on television.

“People think if they throw up on TV, it will disgorge their lives,” said Stuart Fischoff, a psychology professor at California State University at Los Angeles, who has written extensively on what he calls “electronic freak shows.”

But, Fischoff said, talk shows usually don’t help people work through their problems because of the format: crowds, lights, cameras, action.

“There’s very little therapeutic about it,” said Harold Cook, a psychology professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. But, for some, it helps their ego.

People also go on talk shows with the hope of selling their story, Fischoff said.

But in some cases, guests don’t know what they’re doing. Some experience a “complete loss of reality,” Fischoff said. In front of 20 million people, they will tell a secret that they want to keep from their family and friends. These guests don’t realize what they’ve done, he said.

For Randi Rothstein, who appeared on Lifetime channel’s “The Jane Pratt Show” as a lunatic rock fan, the show gave her a couple of minutes and millions of ears to argue that not all women who admire musicians are hormone-charged groupies.

The object of Rothstein’s desire: Chris DeGarmo, guitarist for the hard-rock band Queensryche. In her Manhattan apartment, she constructed a DeGarmo shrine that includes the requisite concert photos and one of his half-smoked cigarettes preserved in a plastic bag.

It was this cigarette that brought laughs and jeers from the audience. Although Rothstein said she knew what to expect--her roommate works for the show--she was a bit rattled by the audience’s reaction. Another guest was so upset that she cried in the green room after the show, Rothstein said.

“What I was talking about was definitely subject to ridicule,” she said. But she thinks the reaction would have been different for a man.

“Guys are considered fans. Girls are considered groupies,” she said. “That was the point I wanted to get across.”

In the end, she was disappointed with her performance. “I wanted to say more,” she said.

That day, at the “Jane Pratt” studios in Queens, an associate producer in jeans and wrinkled shirt worked the rows of waiting audience members--mostly teen-agers--looking for future guests. He asked if they knew someone who was sexually harassed by a fellow college student. No luck.

But that’s not the only way to book guests.

“It’s just telephone,” said Sabol of “Joan Rivers,” referring to the way she and her fellow producers spend their hours. Add to that classified ads, newspaper and phone-book searches, and commercials aired during the show. Viewers also write in offering themselves as guests.

One Village Voice ad reads: “Did your spouse leave you for an unlikely lover? The marriage counselor? . . . The gynecologist? . . . Our talk show wants to hear your story.”

But not every hook gets a fish. Some topics are too damning. Or a tight-lipped parent or spouse may be involved.

Hayes of “Montel Williams” wanted to do a show on what she calls “weekend druggies”--people who take drugs while holding a demanding job. They got a couple of responses, but few wanted their mugs on television.

Nonetheless, the bright lights attract enough to keep talk shows going.

Jane Read Martin, another producer at “Joan Rivers,” said that besides the attention, a free trip to New York and a chance to meet the host doesn’t hurt.