by J. Myrle Fuller
March 13, 2026
Once upon a time, the daytime talk show was one of the hottest formats on television. In the 1990s, pretty much every station carried at least one show from the likes of Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Sally Jessy Raphael, Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue, Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, or countless others. They took advantage of the fact that most kids were at school and aired lurid stories of unfaithful lovers, baby mamas who didn't know who the father of their child was, makeovers, and so on. Most enduringly, the daytime talk show likely did more to normalize gays, lesbians and transsexuals than any other medium of the 20th century.
That era officially came to an end today.
NBCUniversal Syndication Studios, which had been the dominant producer and distributor of daytime talk shows ever since it purchased Multimedia Entertainment from what is now Tegna in the late 1990s, announced on March 13, 2026 that it was ending the production of all of its first-run television series. There were two such shows remaining, The Steve Wilkos Show and Karamo. Wilkos had been on the air nearly 20 years, Karamo had run four years as a replacement for Maury. The shutdown also affects the entertainment news magazine Access Hollywood and the more lighthearted Kelly Clarkson Show, which is ending by mutual agreement with its host.
The end of the format has been a long time coming. It emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s, as the networks abandoned most of their game shows in daytime, opening up holes in TV stations' schedules that might have, in previous years, been held by reruns. Some, like Morton Downey Jr.'s infamous short-lived talker, chose to air in late-night but still followed the same basic format: a controversial dais of guests, a provocative host, questions from the audience. By the early 1990s, the market began to get crowded, but the format was still fairly tame: the most provocative talk show on TV at the time was Rush Limbaugh's effort. Then, around 1993 or 1994, Jerry Springer, the formerly staid and erudite politician, abandoned his original format and went straight to the lowest common denominator: white trash feuds, trans beauty pageants, just about anything that would get a shock out of its audience. Within a few years, almost all of the talk shows on the air followed. A lot of them washed out quickly. By 2002, NBC had trimmed down most of its others, including long-running stalwarts like Jenny Jones and Sally Jessy Raphael. Though other syndicators (such as CBS with Montel Williams and ABC with Oprah, which ran until 2008 and 2011 respectively) still had the occasional offering, NBC's Springer and Maury, which contrasted Springer's white-trash guests with paternity tests sorting out the affairs of the urban poor, were the last stalwarts of the format as it was best known.
Alas, the format eventually died a slow death. Court shows came to dominate daytime TV in the late 2000s and 2010s. The existing daytime talkers got old: Springer retired in his mid-70s, Maury was 83 when he passed the torch to Karamo Brown a few years ago. Oprah's still doddering along on her cable network, floating around somewhere on a multichannel lineup. But it's now 2026. Local television station groups are consolidating, newscasts and hosted segments are expanding and eating more airtime, and the need for new daytime TV content is becoming less and less since there is no longer a core demographic to reach. The retired and chronically unemployed who might watch daytime TV are not appealing to advertisers, shift workers would watch more popular content that they missed, and there no longer exists the consolidated "housewife" market due to women having a larger role in the workforce. Besides, as what was once shocking in 1996 is passe in 2026, it's better to just put all that content that would otherwise be worthless into reruns, since very few would notice the difference. And that's exactly what NBC is going to do; the shows will continue to be offered in reruns for those still needing to fill airtime without resorting to infomercials.
Me? I won't miss them.
