New Talk Shows Try to Come Clean

Ronda: “Being a quote/unquote hoochie is an attitude. If you are a self-assured woman, and you know what you want, and you know how to get it, if you want to call me a ‘hoochie,’ then you must.”

Audience: “Hoochie, hoochie, hoochie!”

--”The Ricki Lake Show: My Sister Has No Class . . . She’s a Hoochie”

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In the middle of the neon, glitter and strippers of Las Vegas, hundreds of television station managers, syndicators, producers and studio executives will start gambling today on the star power of Maureen, Rosie, Mark, Wendy, Pat and John.

The kickoff of the 33rd annual convention of the National Assn. of Television Programming Executives will be marked by the unveiling of almost a dozen new talk shows that are striving to position themselves as more “high class” than “hoochie.”

Industry insiders say the new crop is indicative of a dramatic change in direction in the daytime talk arena, which has suffered a number of blows this season with the failure of an avalanche of new shows and the attacks by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and William Bennett of the conservative advocacy group Empower America, who contend that many of the current programs are sleazy, offensive and harmful to children.

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Advertiser withdrawals, a shooting death involving guests on the Jenny Jones show and criticism from some of the hosts themselves caused further negative buzz last year about the nature of talk shows, resulting in this new crop of what producers and syndicators are calling more “user-friendly” talkfests.

“The talk-show industry right now is afraid of its own shadow,” said John Symes, president of MGM Worldwide Television, which is marketing “The Bradshaw Difference,” a talk show with motivational speaker and author John Bradshaw.

“There was an incredible backlash with advertisers this year,” Symes said. “Plus the across-the-board failure of last year’s crop of talk shows is going to make this year even tougher. So much money was lost. It’s safe to say that the shows that didn’t make it probably had losses of $5 million each when you consider production and promotion costs.”

Many of the proposed new shows, producers said, will be channeled more toward issues and news than dysfunctional relationships, while others will be throwbacks to the talk-variety format popularized 30 years ago by Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin.

So while their stations back home play out the final episodes of “Carnie,” “Charles Perez,” “Danny!” “Gabrielle” and the just-resigned “Donahue,” general managers this week will be hobnobbing in Las Vegas with new talk personalties--both known and unknown. The convention is a giant supermarket of television programs and services, and those managers will be roaming the aisles at the Mirage Hotel and the Sands Expo Center, looking for shows to buy that will fill those soon-to-be-vacated slots and will also be advertiser- and viewer-friendly.

Among the more prominent personalities being offered are:

* Actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who will be hosting an entertainment-oriented series. While some talk-show experts say they expect O’Donnell’s show to be a big hit, others say the entertainment talk-variety format, which was attempted unsuccessfully last season by Suzanne Somers, may be too dated.

* Maureen O’Boyle, former anchor of “A Current Affair” and current weekend anchor of “Entertainment Tonight,” who will host a single-issue daily hour. The producers said they believe O’Boyle’s news background and personality will add greatly to the appeal of the series.

(Warner Bros. Domestic Television, which is producing the O’Donnell and O’Boyle shows under its Telepictures Productions banner, said O’Donnell’s series has already been sold to stations covering nearly 70% of the country, with O’Boyle’s close behind.)

* Pat Bullard, a writer, producer and comedian who has worked on “Roseanne” and “Grace Under Fire.” Bullard’s show, which is produced by Multimedia Entertainment, the producers of “Sally” and “Jerry Springer,” will focus on issues and relationships.

* Local news personalities Mark Thompson and Wendy Walsh, who will host a “gender-conflict-based” show titled “He Says, She Says,” produced by MCA TV. The list of conflicts will include: “Women Secretly Hate Men,” “Men Are Slobs,” “Women Use Sex as a Weapon,” “Men Have All the Power.”

* The unlikely team of Tammy Faye Bakker and comedian Jim J. Bullock, who will officiate a more lighthearted talkfest.

Also attending the convention will be some of the talk-show survivors and their producers--Ricki Lake, Jerry Springer, Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones, Richard Bey and others--who will also try to convince the station managers that talk is still a viable and attractive format regardless of the controversy surrounding it. Some have admitted to softening their subject matter slightly, while others, such as Rivera and Mark Wahlberg, say they fell victim to the “trash talk” syndrome and are abandoning it entirely.

Former Secretary of Education Bennett will also be at the convention in spirit if not in person. A convention newsletter today will feature an open letter to show buyers that is signed by him, Lieberman and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).

Despite significant advertiser opposition to “trash talk,” the letter says, there are still “many hours of programming on the air that are degrading, exploitative and deeply offensive to the values shared by most Americans, and that are watched daily by millions of young children.”

The letter asks station managers to “join our effort to clean up the daytime television landscape. Specifically, we urge you to consider your station’s responsibility toward the public it serves, and to tell syndicators that you will be taking your dollars elsewhere next season if they refuse to take out the trash.”

Despite the kinder, gentler shows being offered at the convention, Burt Du Brow, vice president of programming for Multimedia, echoed the views of many television executives in belittling the influence Bennett’s criticism has had.

“On one hand, it got us all thinking a lot and sitting back and trying to figure out whether we were being responsible,” he said. “Then we realized who was watching and what they wanted to see. We realized pretty quickly that the audience does not seem to be tiring of what William Bennett says they don’t want to see.

“Yes, we have pulled Jerry Springer back a little bit. But we still have to do shows that have an edge. The young audience gets what he is doing. They boo the bad guy and cheer the good guy.”

“The whole thing about Bennett is not about content, it’s about publicity for someone who has a political interest,” said Jim Paratore, president of Telepictures Productions at Warner Bros. “This is a competitive business, and we’re always managing the content of these shows. Advertisers have been involved with those long before William Bennett, and they will be involved long after he has gone.”

What will ultimately get sold and appear on airwaves next fall has little to do with being trashy or non-trashy, insiders said.

“Ultimately, what drives the business is viewership,” said Bruce Johansen, president of the programming executives association. “And whatever is getting the ratings will be what will be on the air and what will make advertisers happy.”