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A tabloid talk show is a subgenre of the talk show genre which emphasizes controversial and sensationalistic topical subject matter. The subgenre achieved peak viewership during the late 20th century. Airing mostly during the day and distributed mostly through television syndication, tabloid talk shows originated in the 1960s and early 1970s with series hosted by Joe Pyne, Les Crane and Phil Donahue; the format was popularized by personal confession-filled ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', which debuted nationally in 1986. Tabloid talk shows have sometimes been described as the "freak shows" of the late 20th century, since most of their guests were outside the mainstream. The host invites a group of guests to discuss an emotional or provocative topic – ranging from marital infidelity to more outlandish topics – and the guests are encouraged to make public confessions and resolve their problems with on-camera "group therapy". Similar shows are popular throughout Europe. Tabloid talk shows are sometimes described using the pejorative slang term "Trash TV", particularly when producers appear to purposely design their shows to create controversy or confrontation, as in the case of ''Geraldo'' (such as when a 1988 show featuring Ku Klux Klan members, anti-racist skinheads, and Jewish activists led to an on-camera brawl) and ''The Jerry Springer Show'', which focused on lurid trysts – often between family members. While sociologist Vicki Abt criticized tabloid TV shows, claiming that they have blurred the lines between normal and deviant behavior, Yale University sociology professor Joshua Gamson argues that the genre's focus on sexual orientation provided a great deal of media visibility for LGBT people.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.docstoc.com/docs/36165464/Freaks-Talk-Back )〕 The genre experienced a particular spike during the 1990s, when a large number of such shows were on the air, but which gradually gave way during the 2000s to a more universally appealing form of talk show.〔 ==History== ''The Les Crane Show'', a network talk show that aired on ABC as part of its late-night schedule from August 1964 to February 1965, was the first talk show to follow the format. Host Les Crane would bring on controversial guests, interview them in an aggressive but fair style, and take questions from the audience. Crane was the first to interview an openly gay man on-air and frequently interviewed black celebrities, folk singers and other taboo guests; Crane was rebuffed in his efforts to interview lesbians on one of his shows. The format was designed as competition to NBC's long-running franchise, ''Tonight'', and its hard style contrasted with ''Tonight's'' more comedic format. The show generated significant controversy and was canceled after six months, later being retooled into a lighter talk show in an effort to boost ratings. Joe Pyne, a Los Angeles-based host, also hosted a similar talk show in syndication, although the focus was more on his confrontations with guests and less on audience participation. The first widely successful talk show of the genre was ''The Phil Donahue Show'', which debuted in 1970. Host Phil Donahue began to push the envelope with the discussion of topics deemed to be taboo, such as atheism and homosexuality. Donahue also distinguished himself from traditional talk shows by being the first to get off the stage, and take his microphone directly into the studio audience. For over a decade, ''The Phil Donahue Show'' was the only show of this kind; tabloid talk shows were not described as a genre, lucrative industry, or counterculture movement until 1986, when a relatively unknown 32-year-old woman named Oprah Winfrey became the first broadcaster able to challenge Donahue in the ratings. ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' (which grew out of ''AM Chicago'', a locally produced morning show that aired on ABC owned-and-operated station WLS-TV in Chicago) quickly doubled Donahue's audience, as her personal confessions and focus on therapy were seen by many as redefining the format. ''Time'' magazine wrote about the program's format, "Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye... They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session." By confessing intimate details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life and sexual abuse, and crying alongside her guests, ''Time'' credited Winfrey with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue: Winfrey continued Donahue's pattern of exploring topics that were at the time considered taboo. For an entire hour in the 1980s, members of the studio audience stood up one by one, gave their name and announced that they were gay. Also in the 1980s, Winfrey took her show to West Virginia to confront a town gripped by AIDS paranoia because a gay man living in the town had HIV. Winfrey interviewed the man who had become a social outcast, the town's mayor who drained the swimming pool because the man had gone swimming, and debated the town's hostile residents. "But I hear this is a God fearing town," Winfrey scolded the homophobic studio audience, "Where's all that Christian love and understanding?" During a show on gay marriage in the 1990s, a woman in Winfrey's audience stood up to complain that gays were constantly flaunting their sex lives and she announced that she was tired of it. "You know what I'm tired of," replied Winfrey, "heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That's what I'm tired of." Her rebuttal inspired a screaming standing ovation from the studio audience present for that episode. Guests on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' included Neo-Nazis, polygamous men and their partners, and Black and Jewish activists. By the fourth season, a show was dedicated to guests who claimed they had seen Elvis Presley alive in a variety of different locations throughout the country, with one man revealing to the host that he talked to the singer in his local Burger King. Oprah's best friend, former news anchor and talk show host Gayle King, said during a 2003 episode of A&E's ''Biography'' profiling Winfrey that when they recently looked back at an episode list of the first six seasons, Oprah could not believe she used to host such provocative shows. With titles such as "I'm a Cross-Dresser" and "Priestly Sins", King believed the topics "didn't seem so sleazy" when Oprah did them. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「tabloid talk show」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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