If you’re used to seeing headlines like “The Babysitter Slept With My Husband,” “I Have Too Many Lovers,” and “The DNA Will Prove It… I Was Too Drunk to Make a Baby” across the bottom of your TV screens, you must have watched daytime TV talk shows during the 1990s.
It was a trashy time for talk shows, as you’ll see in the new ABC docuseries Dirty Talk: When Daytime Talk Shows Ruled TV, debuting on Wednesday, January 14, at 9/8c. While some hosts maintained decorum, others scraped the bottom of the barrel for ratings. And Dirty Talk promises to explore the rise, fall, and legacy of that ’90s sensationalism.
“By exploring the psychological forces that shaped the talk TV genre, the series reveals how these shows transformed from trusted confessional spaces into lightning rods of controversy, leaving a lasting impact on culture, media, and the people caught in the chaos,” ABC says in a press release.
So who held respectable discussions on daytime, and whose shows were reprehensible? Below, in alphabetical order, are 10 emcees of the era.
Phil Donahue
Donahue, who died in 2024 at age 88, hosted The Phil Donahue Show for nearly three decades. The program debuted on WDTN in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967, entered nationwide syndication in 1970, and stayed on the airwaves until 1996. Donahue, a former news reporter, wasn’t afraid to tackle controversial and politically-charged topics, and his was the first talk show to feature audience participation, according to People.
Leeza Gibbons
Between 1993 and 2000 — even as she worked as an Entertainment Tonight correspondent and cohost — Gibbons hosted the syndicated talk show Leeza, which earned five Outstanding Talk Show Daytime Emmy nominations in a row. Gibbons told Today in 2017 that “being present” was her key to success. “The greatest shows happen when somebody drops that unexpected bomb live on your stage, and you’ve got that jaw-dropping moment,” she said.
Jenny Jones
The Jenny Jones Show aired in syndication from 1991 to 2003, with the titular comedian moderating sensational discussions between everyday people. The show landed in controversy in 1995, when one guest murdered another following the on-air reveal of the latter’s romantic feelings toward the former. The victim’s family sued Warner Bros. over the killing, arguing that the studio knew the show would incite violence, but an appeals court deemed the murder unforeseeable, per Variety.
Ricki Lake
Hairspray actress Lake got another claim to fame with her self-named talk show, syndicated between 1993 and 2004. And Ricki Lake had “enormous” impact in popularizing tabloid talk shows, Time said in 1995: “Such competitors as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, and Montel Williams have gravitated toward [Lake’s] subject matter and her high-pitched style — and have seen their ratings jump.”
Maury Povich
After Povich’s job hosting the newsmagazine A Current Affair, the former news anchor got his own talk show in 1991. The Maury Povich Show lasted three decades — and revealed the results of countless paternity tests — before ending its syndicated run in 2022. “Don’t be fooled by the pressed shirt and pleated khakis,” USA Today critic Whitney Matheson wrote in 2002. “Maury is miles farther down the commode than Jerry Springer or Jenny Jones.”
Sally Jessy Raphael
Another journalist-turned-talk-show-host is Raphael, who turned 90 last year. Between 1983 and 2002, Raphael hosted Sally, which quickly outgrew its berth at KSDK in St. Louis, Missouri, and went nationwide, making Raphael the first woman to host a syndicated talk show. Initially, station managers didn’t like her trademark red glasses, but a producer changed their minds by having Raphael model uglier pairs of spectacles, as she told Today in 2017.
Geraldo Rivera
From 1987 to 1998, the tabloid talk show genre included the syndicated Geraldo, hosted by this former TV news reporter. Rivera got a broken nose on the show in 1988, when a white-supremacist guest punched him during a brawl that even included audience members. The host later said he approved of Roy Innis, a Black guest, starting the fight. “If there ever was a case of deserved violence, this was it,” he told The New York Times.
Jerry Springer
Springer, who died at age 79 in 2023, had a unique career trajectory: He went from law student to campaign worker to mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, to news anchor to host of the tabloid talk show The Jerry Springer Show from 1991 to 2018. Political discussions on the syndicated show didn’t work out, so the subject matter turned more salacious, with audience members cheering on violence between guests. TV Guide Magazine once ranked Jerry Springer the worst show in the history of television.
Montel Williams
Debuting and ending the same year as Jerry Springer was The Montel Williams Show, another syndicated tabloid talk show, this one hosted by a U.S. Marine Corps and Navy veteran. Williams’ show controversially featured frequent appearances by self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Browne. In a 2003 episode, Browne told a couple their missing child was dead, but the child was found alive a few years later, per the Press Association.
Oprah Winfrey
The most successful talk show of the era, without question, is The Oprah Winfrey Show, which its eponymous star hosted from 1986 to 2011 after getting her start as a Chicago-area TV host. Winfrey hosted Donahue, Lake, Raphael, Rivera, and Williams on her show in 2010… and used the opportunity to trumpet her ratings. “One of the things that we are all proud of, our team, is that we’ve been on for 25 years, [and] we’ve been the number-one talk show for 25 years,” she said in that reunion, per Observer.
Dirty Talk: When Daytime Talk Shows Ruled TV, Series Premiere, Wednesday, January 14, 9/8c, ABC
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