Turbulent Talk Shows

I began watching a docuseries from Vice called Dark Side Of The 90s where in its opening episode the topic covered is that of outrageous talk shows like Oprah, Geraldo, Sally Jesse Raphael and most notably on all given accounts being that of The Jerry Springer Show; with the explanation that the only one to really predate this style of tabloid trash TV being Phil Donahue. Now, I can buy into that to a certain degree and understand this series is about the 1990s, however it's a travesty and incorrect to say that Phil Donahue was where credit is due here and that would go to the Father of Combat TV and his Hot Seat: Wally George.

Wally George was the archetypal layout for all of those sensational shouting matches between the host and guests, and including the audience in the racket in the inflammatory interactions. The end of the first episode of the Dark Side Of The 90s makes this even more apparent in his legacy in pointing that this style of television evolved into reality TV that eventually lead to both the 2016 and 2024 US presidential election turnouts with Donald J. Trump's victory in both instances— spoken to in a more derogatory manner than the talk shows and as if The Apprentice star's rise to political prominence was that of some exclusive phenomenon; when Ronald Reagan was also a silver screen star with a somewhat similar flare to Trump in the debates leading to their elections. 

Nonetheless in diagnosing this phenomenon Nikolas Schreck seems to nail it on the head and in a 2013 article he gave the explanation that: 

It was like [Wally] was a microcosm of Hollywood taking over politics. In a way, it could seem harmless or like it was just a joke, but when we were actually in the studio, and Wally was presenting me as a scapegoat for all societal ills . . . the audience was whipped into a genuine frenzy. They did not take it as a joke, and it felt very dangerous to be there. It's easy to think that he was a humorous phenomenon, but it was part of the whole. There was a very violent craziness to the '80s that I don't think Americans can remember exactly how it was. I went to a Ronald Reagan rally in 1984, and I sensed that same inherent violence. You know the novel Lord of the Flies? It reminded me of that.

Schreck was on Wally George's Hot Seat a couple of times, as well as appearing on his radio show for his gothic death rock project Radio Werewolf and in a more recent podcast episode of Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michaels from January 2025 noted that while Wally cemented this archetype for the shows that came about in the 1990s, he was also to a certain extent predated even in that with Joe Pyne. The difference being with the two however was Wally was more idealogical and akin to that style of combat content which grew Ben Shapiro or the now late Charlie Kirk into prominency. It wasn't for some level of deep political thinking or analysis that such was or is popular, but like with Reagan or Trump, in their catch phrases and one-liner insults. 

With that emphasis then that these pieces of tabloid television being what evolved into the expressly disliked president, it seems then that the real reason of excluding George was one in the same: the label of conservative. That being said however and as Schreck expresses in the podcast, it's hard to fully characterise either as being so conservative, and more like snake oil salesmen and showbiz figures. They put on a spectacle and make a good buck off the dupes stupid enough to buy into it; as that would seem almost symptomatic to the American population broadly in this vapidity. 

Evolving from this style and in the more intermediary period of decades, and aside reality TV, came about other similar styles of media. On major networks there were shows like Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, also transmutating into the shock jock style that came into abroad with Howard Stern which then laid inspiration for the first podcasts like Three Ring Radio; that then leading into the Joe Rogan Experience and the landscape seen accumulated now 40 years after Wally George began.