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It was a very chaotic show because, well, Mort was pretty chaotic himself. The fights at times were downright scary to watch. Of course Geraldo had his nose famously broken when a huge brawl once broke out on his own show.
90’s Daytime Talk Shows
- Thread starter Carrie Fairchild
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Okay, but who amongst us would not be tempted to break Geraldo's nose if given the opportunity?
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...and he milked that whole situation for all it was worth. Geraldo made himself out to be this puffed-up tough guy for decades, even into his seventies, unaware for the most part that people were laughing at him and not with him.
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Like I said earlier in the thread, he was partially responsible for all that Satanic panic in the 80s. The man was and is vile. I have to say that I didn't so much as laugh at him as I snarled at him every time I saw him on TV.
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When I think of Geraldo I think of those specials dealing with opening the vaults of Al Capone and the Titanic back in the 80s. All that hype and four hours of waiting for the reveal of a bottle of booze in one vault and some coins in the other.
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He was a classic fraudster. A circus act. Never understand why anyone ever considered him to be legitimate news.
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Geraldo is more pathetic than vile -- but vile will do.
It's funny I don't hate him any more than I do.
Among many sins he's committed over the years, I remember -- 11 years ago this very week -- when crusading reporter Michael Hastings got blown up on the streets of L.A., a victim of an obvious hit (even Richard Clarke, security guru for 4 presidents, cited it as a probable "car-hacking" and said "whoever did it will probably get away with it"), Hastings was promptly trashed by Geraldo Rivera within hours of Hastings' death, dismissing the murder victim for his journalism leading to General Mc Chrystal's firing from the Afghanistan war, and Rivera further sneering that the dead reporter's fans "had never heard of him" before that morning's tragedy occurred.
And the body was, quite literally, not even cold.
And no one has ever mentioned him again. The Washington press stooges, resentful and jealously contemptuous that they'd not been doing the same level of reporting, never acknowledged his existence again. (When the forensics report came out two months later, asserting that the prescription pot and meth metabolites -- from Adderall -- in his system had been taken maybe 15 hours earlier and had no role in his crash death, not one but all the media outlets, except for The Toung Turks, reported exactly the opposite: that Hastings had supposedly died of a drug-addled mania-induced accident).
Even I learned quickly to stop posting on the Internet about it.
But certain things you just never forget. And Geraldo's despicable reaction was one of them. (Hastings' wife snarled on Twitter about Geraldo's insensitivity, but, CIA-connected in her own right, she later embraced the official "accident" explanation for her husband's death, and then went on Geraldo's show and made light of her falling-out with the mustachioed host).
Like George Michael says, there's so much to hate.
Although I think he thinks he's legitimate.
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But they're not any better. Not by an inch.
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They are horrific. Still a notch above Geraldo IMO. He is truly the bottom of the barrel for me.
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Interesting. I don't usually like his work, and he's been a bit of a joke ever since his first days at ABC in the '70s, but I see others who strike me as even worse.
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There’s very little trace of it online but even former Royal, Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson, The Duchess of York, waded into the daytime talk show mire with Sarah…Surviving Life, which had a 10 episode run on Sky One in 1998.
From what I can gather, it aired twice every Monday, going out in the morning and was then repeated in an afternoon slot and focused on a different topic each week. I remember this being announced back in the day but because I’ve seen no trace of it since, I figured it never got off the ground.
From what I can gather, it aired twice every Monday, going out in the morning and was then repeated in an afternoon slot and focused on a different topic each week. I remember this being announced back in the day but because I’ve seen no trace of it since, I figured it never got off the ground.
Ratings I recall were poor. Only 12,000 viewers watched Sarah...... Surviving Life (a zero rating as it was under 100,000 viewers) and at one point it was outrated by a Bergerac repeat on UK Gold.
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From the bits that I’ve read, it started out OK, rating better in the afternoon slot than in the mornings. I think the first afternoon episode pulled in more viewers than Oprah, who’d previously held that timeslot. But it went downhill quickly after that. I’d imagine there was that initial curiosity factor that had viewers watching the first show but then not returning when they realised it wasn’t great.
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I vaguely remember hearing about this at the time and I think I might’ve caught a show or two. I don’t recall it being much different than most of the other shows back then. I thought Fergie was fine as a host but the show didn’t seem to catch much of an audience long term. It just didn’t seem to have anything that could grab viewers and keep them coming back.
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Yes, I quite like Fergie, despite her continued association with Randy Andy, and would’ve watched it at the time, if I’d had Sky TV. The once a week in daytime scheduling would’ve made it hard to build momentum. They really should’ve just scheduled the 10 episodes across two weeks, like ITV did with Jerry Springer’s short run of UK based shows.
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So it was a once a week show? Interesting, I didn’t remember that part of it. I wonder why they did it this way? It seems like such an uphill battle to attract viewers long term. I just assumed like with most of these shows back then it aired five times a week. It certainly had to be frustrating for those that did enjoy it to have to keep waiting a full week to watch it again when just about every other talk show was on every day.
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Yes, from the few articles that I’ve seen, they all call it a “weekly” series rather than “daily” and make reference to its 10 episode run. Maybe Sky thought it’d be a hit and wanted to milk the ratings across ten weeks rather than two but who knows.
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Saw this on Instagram and thought I’d share. From back in the days when Oprah was a little more “out there”.
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Donahue was about the only one of the bunch worth a damn. He couldn't draw ratings with intelligent conversation in the midst of all that dreck so off he went.
Vicki! wasn't bad, either.
Vicki! wasn't bad, either.