Do I need to sit here and tell you why?
Harry Jessell
Springer and Maury have been on the air for 27 years and Wilkos for 11. You have seen them and watched them devolve. You know what they are. I don’t know how much of these shows is staged and how much is real. It doesn’t matter. They’re tasteless and exploitative.
People in the biz euphemistically call them conflict shows. Back in the 1980s and 1990s when such shows first appeared, critics more accurately and honestly called them “tabloid TV” or “trash TV.”
(As I think about it, “conflict” isn’t much of a euphemism. It concedes that the whole point is not to help people who are often in need of help, but rather to provoke them to fight it out for the entertainment of others. They demean the guests and the viewers.)
They arose from the same mire that Morton Downey Jr., Sally Jessy Raphael and Jenny Jones did. You remember Jenny. Warner Bros. was famously sued in the 1990s by the family of one of her guests who was murdered by another guest after they taped a show together and things didn’t go so well. Warner Bros. prevailed in court, but that stain remains.
In those early days, such shows were so provocative and beyond the norm that they drove TV critics to great heights of indignation. TV critics would still be carping about them if the few that are left still cared about broadcasting and what stations did during daytime.
NBCU’s principal partner in the dissemination of the shows is Tribune, which supplies the necessary major market outlets. For Tribune’s WPIX New York, the shows are a big part of its on-air identify. It carries two hours of Maury, two of Springer and one of Wilkos every day.
It’s a good metaphor. The execs know the shows are bad for the image of their stations and the industry, but the costs of production are low enough and the ratings good enough that they can’t resist them. They are hooked.
The three shows are the worst of the lot, but there are others that are nearly as bad or problematic for other reasons. What has happened to Sony’s Dr. Oz? Charges of peddling snake oil aside, the entire second half of last Friday’s telecast appeared to be an infomercial for L’Oreal.
That broadcasters stick with these shows suggests that there is nothing quite as lucrative to replace them with, that they are stuck with them.
