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The paper investigates the history and evolution of the TV talk show genre. The author aims to compare and analyze various definitions of TV talk shows, employing Lowney's (1999) division into neutral and critical ones, which has become standard and applied in the works of critics like Shattuc, Lowney, Munson, Abt, and Grindstaff. What is more, the show's typical characteristics are investigated, and the importance of the host, the necessity of an audience, guests and experts are stressed in the analysis. Additionally, the history of TV talk shows is broadly explored, at which point examination focuses on the five major cycles devised by Bernard Timberg (2002) presenting the evolution of the genre and its connections with the broad patterns in American culture and industry. Historical parallels are also drawn and an attempt is made to trace their roots back to the 19th century carnivals and revivals, as well as "yellow journalism."
Keywords: TV talk shows, trash TV, American media, the Other.
Since 1951, when the first TV talk show was aired on American WJZ-TV, this cultural phenomenon has gained an astronomic number of supporters and probably an equally large number of opponents all over the globe. Starting off as discussion panels debating over crucial points of American political, social and economic life, it quickly developed a sub-type, lighter in topic and more accessible in execution as well as reception, which has been gaining momentum since then and has formed into a separate genre. The form of the TV talk shows as we know it today has crystallized in the nineteen seventies, together with the origin of the tabloid talk show. Comprising celebrity interviews, comic routines, popular, often intimate topics, more and more attention devoted to women and their problems, television talk shows have been strengthening their position as increasingly popular forms of fun. The author of the following paper will present the history and the development of trash talk shows in America in the 20th and 21st century.
With over 50-year presence of the TV talk show phenomenon in global culture, this type of program has been a widely defined form of entertainment. Since the very origins of TV talk shows one of its undisputed fundamental features has been its pragmatic function. Being formed...