A Clash The Talk Show Titans Essay — страница 2

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a pre-recorded segment with a narrator telling their story. His advice is good and in depth. Guests on both shows are also different in many ways. Jerry Springer?s guests are always people you would expect to see in a ?low rent? area such as the inner city or a trailer park. The guys always seem to be dressed in a sloppy manner, and the girls in a rather sluttish manner.. Compared to the guests on Oprah Winfrey who always seem to be middle class Americans with pretty good jobs. They are dressed nicer too. The men come on in a nice business suit and the women a dress, never sloppy cloths or short skirts. These guests seem to show that, to them, being on television is a special event, for which they dress their best. The topic of the show also helps to show this difference in show

goals. Jerry Springer?s topic for the episode I reviewed was ?Honey, I Have A Lover On The Side.? This seems to me to give an appearance of an almost voyeuristic show, in which people with horrible family problems come on the show, so the world can look at their lives and sometimes even mock them. Oprah Winfrey takes a different approach to show titles. Her topic was ?How To Get Your Power Back.? The title itself goes as far as to tell people that the show is going to give them advise on how to live a better life. Both of these titles say a lot about the show in general. Jerry Springer?s title gives the viewing audience a sense of a voyeuristic show, while Oprah Winfrey?s title gives the impression that the show is going to help out its guests. A more prevalent difference between

the two shows is the target audience. Jerry Springer appeared to be geared more towards an audience of people in their late teens and early twenties, with its harsh language and very graphic descriptions of the people?s problems, whereas Oprah Winfrey appeared to be geared more towards an audience of say at home mothers, with her more emotional problems. In fact even the advice seemed to be more geared to women in its general nature. The set of the show even seems to point to a difference in target audience. Jerry Springer has an inner city looking set, with a brick wall in the background and very ?no frills? chairs, whereas Oprah?s set was fancy, with couches for the guests and a large video screen in the background. This seems to show that Jerry Springer is based towards a

lower budget crowd, one that might be found in the inner city, but Oprah Winfrey seemed to be targeted more towards middle class America. The layout of seating and where the participants of the show are placed in relation to each other also differs in the two shows. On Jerry Springer guests are placed close together, with the conflicting parties sitting together, almost as if they were trying to promote some sort of physical confrontation between warring parties. These guests are also placed right up front in the audience?s center of focus. This gives a feeling that they are the topic of discussion, as apposed to Oprah Winfrey whose guests sit in the front row of the audience in a location where they are not the constant focus of the show. In fact they only receive a few minutes

of airtime through the entire sixty-minute show. The party that receives the majority of attention on Oprah?s show is Oprah herself and her expert on the topic, who is there to help the guests. Audience participation also adds to the feeling of a daytime talk show, as Jane Shattuc says, ?audience participation is crucial to daytime talk TV.? (qtd. in George 8) On Jerry Springer the audience is a constant part of the show, between their loud uproars of hooting, hollering and the question and answer portion of the show. However, Oprah Winfrey has a more laid back audience that is not as much a part of the show. Her audience is more just there as a background to the show, almost a part of the set. Throughout the two talk shows the similarities between Jerry Springer and Oprah

Winfrey are not nearly as prevalent as the many differences, both in goal and in target audience. Through watching these shows and putting them in a head to head comparison, I have seen that both shows are in a sense in separate classes and that the only link between these two shows is their classification as daytime talk television. Works Cited George, Diana, and John Trimbur. Reading Culture: Contexts for Reading and Writing. 3rd Ed., New York: Longman, 1999.