Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 29, 1992 TAG: 9201290172
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAULA SPAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
CAN WE TALK HERE? EVERYBODY ELSE IS
Crusading Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton.Bare-knuckled biographer Kitty Kelley.
Strangest-named actress ever to win an Oscar Whoopi Goldberg.
A shaved-headed former naval officer. An ex-correspondent for NBC News in El Salvador. A onetime mayor of Cincinnati.
Is there anyone left in America who isn't trying to launch a talk show?
Apparently not. Jesse Jackson, whose syndicated show was announced with much fanfare and canceled with much less after one season, is giving talk another try; His latest attempt premiered this month on CNN. Blustery right-wing pontificator Rush Limbaugh, not content with a radio show said to have more than 7 million listeners on 400-plus stations, wants to star in a late-night half-hour, with Roger Ailes as executive producer. "The Dennis Miller Show," starring the "Saturday Night Live" comic, made its debut last week.
"It spreads like herpes," says Jack Fentress, vice president and programming director of Petry National Television, which handles national ad sales for 110 local stations. Even for a best-selling author or a successful actor, Fentress says, "there's more money making talk shows, and it's less work. And you could be the one who breaks through."
Dreaming that very dream, many of the aforementioned wannahosts converged last week on New Orleans for the annual syndication bazaar - officially the National Association of Television Programming Executives convention. They played meet the press, shake lots of hands and pose for Polaroids with station managers from Fresno and Schenectady who hold their fates in their hands. Syndicators want to sell new shows to enough stations to reach roughly 80 percent of the U.S. population before they begin production. Even when they get that "coverage," the mortality rate is high. You think it's easy to get viewers to tune in for yet another group confession of compulsive (insert vice of your choice) or the umpteenth sort-of star touting a film clip? Last year's high hopes included Chuck Woolery, who was marginally famous as host of the smarmy "Love Connection" and whose Group W-syndicated talk show lasted less than five months; his final rerun was seen last Friday.
This is all Oprah's fault. Not only did she supplant Phil Donahue as the nation's most-watched talk host in 1986, she negotiated a deal that made would-be talkers salivate: Through her production company, Winfrey owns her show (distributed by King World, syndicator of "Wheel of Fortune"), and her current annual take is estimated by trade publications at $35 million or so. Other big-name hosts, though not in that league, get a piece of the profits and can take home multi-million-dollar annual paychecks. The hourly wage for defending abortion rights or assaulting the British royal family (Kelley's next literary subject, it's been announced) can't compare. And while the gig's not simple, the required credentials - applicants need not be able to write, sing, act, throw a slider or define GNP - are few.
Syndicators drool too. Talk, as they say, is cheap, probably in the $100,000- to $250,000-a-week range for five shows, estimates John von Soosten, vice president and programming director for Katz Communications, adviser to about 200 stations. Magazine and "reality"-based shows - "Hard Copy," for instance - are more expensive, requiring film crews and producers. Game shows are comparatively low-cost but considered a riskier proposition; a bunch were launched two NATPEs ago and all crashed and burned.
Oprah is "what everybody wants to be, what every distributor dreams of," Fentress says. Hence, though Planned Parenthood staffers were staggered two weeks ago by Wattleton's sudden announcement that she was resigning her $184,000-a-year job, a Hollywood agent-entrepreneur was showing syndicators videotapes last spring of her appearances on "Nightline" and other talk shows. She signed with the folks who bring you Geraldo Rivera and Joan Rivers (and now Dennis Miller), Tribune Entertainment in Chicago, which owns six television stations and thus could provide the local seasoning a novice needs. "It will not be a national show in the beginning," says Greg Miller, Tribune's vice president for program development.
Telegenic, articulate and famously poised, Wattleton will have to soft-pedal some of the political sensibilities honed during her long leadership of the campaign to keep abortion legal. Successful talk-show hosts "tend not to take a strong point of view because that can alienate the viewer at home," says Jim Curtin of HRP Inc., another firm that monitors developments in syndication. "If you take talk shows as an intellectual experience, you miss the point; it's an emotional experience."
Another potential problem is that despite her high profile in politico-media circles, "very few people in Dallas know who Faye Wattleton is," says John Goldhammer. Of course, Goldhammer would say that; he's senior vice president of program development for MCA TV, which made a lunge for Kitty Kelley in the midst of last spring's Nancy Reagan mania. After some coaching on how to look into the lens and e-nun-ci-ate, she's slated to take to the air in September.
Goldhammer readily concedes that viewers may not particularly cotton to Kelley, that she's "famous, notorious, infamous, all of that," but he claims it doesn't matter.
Kelley's one-hour pilot, which was shown to potential buyers at NATPE, explores the ever-riveting issue of which member or members of the Jackson clan is or are liars about sexual abuse etc.; the buzz, as they say in the biz, is good. It features Kelley, on a book-lined set said to be inspired by her Georgetown study, interviewing LaToya Jackson, parents Joe and Katherine, brother Jackie Jackson's ex-wife, a mystery guest behind a curtain and Bob Guccione Jr. of Spin magazine. As of late last week MCA had announced no "clearances" (i.e., sales to local stations), but it may be keeping its deals quiet until NATPE, where syndicators like to post their market-by-market conquests, the better to create an impression of irresistible momentum.
Other entrants in the daytime talk sweepstakes include:
Vicki Lawrence, star of the syndicated "Mama's Family" and longtime Carol Burnett sidekick. "Vicki!"-chat format, living room set-has been sold to 40 stations to date
Montel Williams, hairless former Navy lieutenant commander (helped invade Grenada) who spent two years as a "motivational speaker," admonishing kids to finish school and resist drugs, before being discovered.
Jerry Springer, Cincinnati council member who survived mid-'70s revelations about an interlude with a prostitute (he paid by check) to be elected mayor, then became an Emmy-winning local news anchor and commentator.
Then there are the "late fringe" hopefuls eager to take on Arsenio in the post-Carson era, among them:
Goldberg, said by industry sources to be guaranteed several million dollars her first year.
Jane Whitney, veteran of Philadelphia chat shows, and "Entertainment Tonight" reporter-producer before joining NBC News.