A talk show (American and Australian English) or chat show (British) is a television or radio program where one person (or group of people) discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host.
Sometimes, talk shows feature a panel of guests, usually consisting of a group of people who are learned or who have great experience in relation to whatever issue is being discussed on the show for that episode. Other times, a single guest discusses their work or area of expertise with a host or co-hosts. A call-in show takes live phonecalls from callers listening at home, in their cars, etc. Sometimes, guests are already seated but are often introduced and enter from backstage. Gay Byrne, Steve Allen, Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, Ed Sullivan, Oprah Winfrey, Mosunmola Abudu have hosted talk shows.
Television talk shows often feature celebrity guests who talk about their work and personal lives as well as the their latest films, TV shows, music recordings or other projects they'd like to promote to the public. The hosts are often comedians who open the shows with comedy monologues.
Talk-radio host Howard Stern also hosted a talk show that was syndicated nationally in the USA, then moved to satellite radio's Sirius. The tabloid talk show genre, pioneered by Phil Donahue but popularized by Oprah Winfrey was extremely popular during the last two decades of the 20th century.
Politics are hardly the only subject of American talk shows, however. Other radio talk show subjects include Car Talk hosted by NPR and Coast to Coast AM hosted by Art Bell and George Noory which discusses topics of the paranormal, conspiracy theories, fringe science and the just plain weird. Sports talk shows are also very popular ranging from high-budget shows like The Best Damn Sports Show Period to Max Kellerman's original public-access television cable TV show Max on Boxing.
Talk shows have been broadcast on television since the earliest days of the medium. Joe Franklin, an American radio and television personality, hosted the first television talk show. The show began in 1951 on WJZ-TV (later WABC-TV) and moved to WOR-TV (later WWOR-TV) from 1962 to 1993.
Ireland's The Late Late Show is the world's longest running talk show; although The Tonight Show is equally as old, it has changed formats and titles since its beginnings in 1950.
Steve Allen was the first host of The Tonight Show, which began as a local New York show, being picked up by the NBC network in 1954. It in turn had evolved from his late-night radio talk show in Los Angeles. Allen pioneered the format of late night network TV talk shows, originating such talk show staples as an opening monologue, celebrity interviews, audience participation, and comedy bits in which cameras were taken outside the studio, as well as music.
TV news pioneer Edward R. Murrow hosted a talk show entitled Small World in the late 1950s and since then, political TV talk shows have predominantly aired on Sunday mornings.
Syndicated daily talk shows began to gain more popularity during the mid-1970s and reached their height of with the rise of the tabloid talk show. Morning talk shows gradually replaced earlier forms of programming - there were a plethora of morning game shows during the 1960s and early to mid-1970s, and some stations formerly showed a morning movie in the time slot that many talk shows now occupy.
Current late night talk shows such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman have aired for years, featuring celebrity guests and comedy sketches. Syndicated daily talk shows range from tabloid talk shows, such as The Jerry Springer Show to celebrity interview shows like Live with Regis and Kelly, The Bonnie Hunt Show, and Ellen to industry leader The Oprah Winfrey Show which popularized the former genre and has been evolving towards the rise of a new brand of successful host such as top rated radio and late night television talk show host S. Scott Conner. On November 10, 2010, Oprah Winfrey invited several of the most prominent American talk show hosts - Phil Donahue, Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Ricki Lake and Montel Williams - to join her as guests on her show.
Talk shows have more recently started to appear on Internet Radio. Also, several internet blogs are in talk show format including the Baugh Experience.
The Guinness World Record of 40 hours for the longest talk show was broken on the October 27/28, 2007 by Paweł Kotuliński in Poland.
In American and Canadian television, the late-night talk show is a specific kind of comedy-oriented talk and variety show that airs late at night. Characteristics of the genre include topical monologues in which the host makes fun of the day's news, comedy sketches, celebrity interviews, and musical performances. The late-night talk-show format was popularized, though not invented, by Johnny Carson with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on NBC. Unlike other kinds of talk and variety shows, late-night talk shows always feature a desk behind which the host sits to interview guests and present comedy bits. Most programs also have an old-fashioned prop microphone on the desk, which some hosts often use as a comedic device.
The popularity of late night shows in America has been cited as a key factor why Americans do not get the requisite seven to eight hours of sleep per night.
Late-night talk shows compete for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series.
Late night talk shows, for the most part, do not exist in other parts of the world. Shows that loosely resemble the format air in other countries, but generally air weekly as opposed to the nightly airings of Americans. They also generally air in time slots considered to be prime time in the United States.
Most late night talk shows are normally recorded during the day and afternoon for late night airing. Thus, during taping, references such as this evening and earlier today are made.
Televize
- South Park
- Talk show
- The Big Bang Theory
