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T The talk show The genre of the television talk show with a studio audience
introduces another source of ‘liveness’ which adds a layer of ritual that
reinforces a depth of feeling in audience communities. Talk shows like
those of Jerry Springer which involve the audience, or Trisha, stand at the
intersection of two forms of association: namely a physical assembly
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which acts as the content of an electronic assembly. Both forms of assem-
bly are asymmetrical, with most participants having little opportunity to
speak compared to hosts and select guests. The two audiences become
overlaid in interesting ways. The embodied audience is live at the point
of production and consumption, whereas the electronic audience is usu-
ally only live at the point of consumption. However, by way of identifica-
tion with the embodied audience, the electronic audience is able to feel as
though they are there, involved with the proceedings as much as the
studio audience they are identifying with. As McLaughlin (1993) suggests
in her review of the work of Carpignano:
The presence of the public on television ‘produces a short circuit in the
dichotomy’ between textual production and reception. The studio audience
participates in both the viewing of the text and its scripting, while the home
viewer ‘monitors a space where a negotiation of textual meanings is in
progress much in the same way as his [sic] personal negotiation with
the screen’. ‘The act of viewing a text becomes an act of viewing an act of
viewing’. (45)
Whilst the television audience clearly identifies with the studio audi-
ence and both audiences identify with the talk show host, the host typi-
cally lacks the spatial authority that is bestowed on film stars, news
presenters, pop stars or any figure who occupies a form of stage. As
McLaughin observes, the talk show host mingles with the audience, and
has the role of an intermediary rather than an expert (45). The genre is one
of reversing the power relations between stage and audience via a
metaphoric displacement of the studio audience by the TV audience. The
studio audience is ‘literally’ on centre stage. The show is constructed
around the audience and defined by their involvement. The studio audi-
ence is supposed to exhibit forms of folk knowledge and home truths
which are privileged over any expertise on the part of the host or guest
commentators.
Thus, the talk show is a prominent example of the way in which
broadcast enables forms of reciprocity without interaction between a large
number of persons who are nevertheless profoundly involved with the
affective identifications between the audiences, guests, hosts and com-
panions in the viewing or studio experience. These identifications are,
I argue, largely metonymic.
At the individual level, the field of recognition of the talk show pro-
vides for the possibility of intimacy with very large audiences as well as
a sense that an ordinary person may become a ‘representative’ performer