In January 1989, King World Productions Inc. launched 'Inside Edition'. At the time, the program was televised on 74 local stations. The half-hour Mondays through Fridays syndicated newsmagazine was produced by John Tomlin and Bob Young of 'A Current Affair'.
'The New York Times' reported in 1999, "Back when Peter Brennan, John Tomlin and Bob Young started 'A Current Affair' for the Fox stations in 1986, only '60 Minutes' and '20/20' did magazine-style news programs in prime time, and only CNN offered 24 hours of news. There was plenty of room for offbeat stories. Prodded by the head of Fox's parent company, the News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch, who owned tabloid newspapers in Australia, Britain and New York, the three producers tried to establish an afternoon-newspaper approach to news, offering different angles and more human-interest stories."
As reported, in the 1988 fall season, there were 156 syndicated programs with an average of 5.4 million households watching each night. Av Westin described 'Inside Edition' as "information magazine with a heavy emphasis on telling inside stories through the people involved in those stories." By December 1992 (some four years later), the Associated Press reported, 'Inside Edition' had "grown 15% in both total viewers and in viewers 18 to 49, the key advertising demographic."
At that time, 'Inside Edition' was the No. 6 daily "first-run strip" show in syndication, behind 'Wheel of Fortune', 'Jeopardy' and 'Oprah' (all King shows), 'Entertainment Tonight' (Paramount) and 'A Current Affair' (Fox). In those days, 'Inside Edition' was broadcast in 165 US cities and some 16 countries around the world. 'The New York Times' added, "Both 'A Current Affair' and 'Inside Edition' got excellent ratings in the prime-time access time period, as the hour before 8pm is known."
Bill O’Reilly had covered El Salvador and the Falklands war, taught English and history for two years after Marist College, before receiving his broadcast journalism master's at Boston University. He told the Associated Press, "This time next year (by Christmas 1993), I think we will pass Tom Brokaw ('NBC Nightly News') in the ratings. He's averaging about an 8.5, 8.6. We're standing at a 7.8 now (December 1992). I want to pass them. And I think once that happens, people will open their eyes and see what this is all about."
In its review, 'The New York Times' observed, "After years of dancing around the edge of sensationalism, television leaped enthusiastically into the pit last year (1988) with the kind of journalism many newspapers have practiced for a hundred years or more. The half-dozen or so new shows and the old ones that remade themselves on a sex-and-mayhem model proved so successful that they have spawned a multibillion-dollar industry: reality-based television … The boom in reality programming has rekindled the long-running debate among journalists, educators and commentators about the propriety of mixing entertainment and news without letting viewers know clearly which is which."
Bill O’Reilly maintained, "We don't feel it's fair to lump us in with 'Hard Copy' and 'A Current Affair'. I'm not going to say we don't do sensational stories - I call them populist - but we do very few (sexually exploitive) or gory stories and we don't do any re-enactments. And the network news steals our stuff all the time and they’ve raided our people!
"What we’re doing here has changed television and will continue to change television more, and people don’t understand it. Ph.D.s don't watch 'Inside Edition'. It's not real to them. But 14 million people watch us every day. We’re much more powerful than any other news magazine beside '60 Minutes'. We know that they’re watching us closely, as well they should. And we know that they respect us."
'The New York Times' continued, "To many in journalism, the new programming represents an assault on the standards of broadcast news laid down by the radio networks during World War II. To others, the conflict between sensationalism and the more subdued ways of conveying information is as old as communication. To them, the standards still exist, but they have become an alternative set of rules rather than a code of ethics. The volume of the debate has risen in recent months (late 1988) because of the flood of programs built on news as entertainment. At least a dozen shows are already on the air, some of them for years, but their audiences have grown geometrically."
Bob Young argued, ''Don't call it tabloid TV. Call it communication. We offer information through storytelling. This is not brain surgery. And you don't have to present stories in the same boring and pompous way that the network evening news programs do. The best communicators of the century were the Beatles, not Dan Rather. They kept it interesting.''
Bill O’Reilly insisted, "'Inside Edition' brought back ambush journalism and now that's stock-in-trade of every network magazine. We'll take credit for that. Full credit. That's what drives our show: Emotion. All of our stories are emotion-driven. If they don’t have emotion, we don’t do 'em. That emotion has changed the way the viewer looks at the news. And the viewer doesn’t understand it …"
'The New York Times' continued, "Just how many of the programs will appear depends in part on how they are counted … Whatever the particular shape, all are rooted, however loosely, in fact. Thus, the label 'reality-based'. But they make no bones about their intention to entertain first and inform second. The ratings of these shows frequently rival those of the network evening news programs."
Ben H. Bagdikian was a professor at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He told 'The New York Times', "The phenomenon of reality-based TV is nothing more than the completion of an incestuous cycle. In the 1950s, television took the audience away from newspapers, so local editors responded with huge displays of photographs … A reader who spends 30 minutes with a newspaper will devote most of his time to the one or two stories that interest him. There is a bit of the 'National Enquirer' in each of us, but not for subjects that we are sensitive about."
By January 18, 1999, 'The New York Times' noted, "From a heyday when there were half a dozen, only three remain - 'Hard Copy', 'Inside Edition' and 'Extra' - and all have lost a fifth or more of their viewers in the last year alone. 'Hard Copy' has even gone soft, focusing on first-person stories, often about celebrities, and local stories about ordinary people.
"Television's cyclical nature is one reason - a successful show spawns many imitators, fragmenting the audience and eventually diluting interest in that genre. Lurid talk shows, for example, numbered 21 at their peak and are now down to a handful. But tabloid newsmagazines have also withered because certain kinds of tabloid-style stories have migrated to the traditional news organizations, which have so much more time to fill."
Maury Povich believed the genre was disappearing because it was no longer distinctive. ''I'll be vilified by the traditionalists for this, but the network prime-time newsmagazines have co-opted the tabloid genre. The reason for our success in the mid-'80s and early '90s was we did stories that the traditional news divisions passed up ... These are stories that were staples in 'The New York Daily News' or 'New York Post', but they'd never put them on a national broadcast. When our ratings went through the roof, they took notice.''
Victor Neufeld offered, "Prime time newsmagazines have always done these stories when they have significance and they have a point. The difference is that while syndicated tabloid shows were doing stories in two days, we would take two months, with significantly more time and effort invested in telling a story to give it depth, impact and meaning.''
Neal Shapiro told 'The New York Times' network programs occasionally featured similar stories tabloid shows did, ''but they do half an hour, so they do 3-or-4-minute stories, and often don't talk to the principal characters. We have an hour. We do longer stories. You meet the characters, hear their words, and hear the larger story, the context.''
Although the "tabloid TV" genre thrived through the early part of the 1990s decade, Associated Press reported, by 1997, "the television format is past its peak. Only 'Entertainment Tonight', relatively secure in its niche, has held its own. 'A Current Affair' and others stretched the boundaries of what had been considered news, bringing to television the same celebrity obsessions and scandals that fill the supermarket newspaper racks.
"The seemingly unending O.J. Simpson saga provided the shows with a font of stories that viewers never seemed to tire of. But when the Simpson trial went away, so did much of the audience. Subsequent scandals, like the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation, haven't drawn as much interest." Maury Povich reasoned, "I think the O. J. Simpson case never would have been such a huge story if tabloid news magazines hadn't been there before and alerted audiences to the power of these stories.''
Associated Press continued, "Syndicated shows also lost some of what made them unique when network news organizations, particularly through their own newsmagazines, began following many of the same stories." However Frank Kelly of Paramount told the press he did not agree that the genre's better days may be in the past. "I think we ('Hard Copy') have to go back to what made us unique four or five years ago (around 1992, 1993), and that is storytelling." King World's 'Inside Edition', at the time, "seems intent on taking a harder news high road and has been heavily touting its recent prestigious George Polk and Sigma Delta Chi journalism awards."
'Vanity Fair', February 1999: The tabloidification of American life - of the news, of the culture, of human behavior - is such a sweeping phenomenon that it can't be dismissed as merely a jokey footnote to the history of the 1990s. Rather, it's the very hallmark of our times; if the decade must have a name - and it must, since decade-naming has become a required public exercise in the second half of the 20th century - it might as well be the Tabloid Decade.
"Each of the four decades preceding the '90s has found its identity in some crystallizing event or upheaval, some moment that gave the times their meaning. For the conformist '50s, it was the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings; for the revolutionary/countercultural '60s, it was John F. Kennedy's assassination; for the jaded, cynical '70s (also known as the Me Decade), it was Richard Nixon's resignation; for the go-go '80s, it was the economic boom that followed the '83 recession.
"And for the '90s, God help us, it was the O.J. saga, a prolonged Hollywood Babylon spectacle that confirmed the prevailing national interest in sex, death, celebrity, and televised car chases. While tabloid TV's heyday was relatively short-lived - 'A Current Affair' is now off the air, and 'Hard Copy' and 'Inside Edition' are buried in obscure time slots - its influence lives on in every local newscast, every network newscast, every breakfast program, all five 'Datelines', all three '20/20s', and both '60 Minuteses'.
"Likewise, every broadsheet in America is palpably more tabloidlike in content than it used to be. The 'blurring of distinctions' has really been more of an engulfment, since the influence has gone in just one direction: not only have the major news organizations appropriated tabloid techniques, but they've also placed a greater emphasis on tabloid material at the expense of genuine hard news; a new JonBenét development trumps a Hague war-crimes tribunal every time."
'Larry King Live', February 2000, Maury Povich: Back in the days of 'A Current Affair', we were the first kind of tabloid news magazine on the air. And we kind of caught fire, and the whole world was interested in us. So I know what it's like being out there first, because then came 'Inside Edition' and 'Hard Copy' and 'Extra' and all of these other shows.
'The New York Times' reported in 1999, "Back when Peter Brennan, John Tomlin and Bob Young started 'A Current Affair' for the Fox stations in 1986, only '60 Minutes' and '20/20' did magazine-style news programs in prime time, and only CNN offered 24 hours of news. There was plenty of room for offbeat stories. Prodded by the head of Fox's parent company, the News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch, who owned tabloid newspapers in Australia, Britain and New York, the three producers tried to establish an afternoon-newspaper approach to news, offering different angles and more human-interest stories."
As reported, in the 1988 fall season, there were 156 syndicated programs with an average of 5.4 million households watching each night. Av Westin described 'Inside Edition' as "information magazine with a heavy emphasis on telling inside stories through the people involved in those stories." By December 1992 (some four years later), the Associated Press reported, 'Inside Edition' had "grown 15% in both total viewers and in viewers 18 to 49, the key advertising demographic."
At that time, 'Inside Edition' was the No. 6 daily "first-run strip" show in syndication, behind 'Wheel of Fortune', 'Jeopardy' and 'Oprah' (all King shows), 'Entertainment Tonight' (Paramount) and 'A Current Affair' (Fox). In those days, 'Inside Edition' was broadcast in 165 US cities and some 16 countries around the world. 'The New York Times' added, "Both 'A Current Affair' and 'Inside Edition' got excellent ratings in the prime-time access time period, as the hour before 8pm is known."
Bill O’Reilly had covered El Salvador and the Falklands war, taught English and history for two years after Marist College, before receiving his broadcast journalism master's at Boston University. He told the Associated Press, "This time next year (by Christmas 1993), I think we will pass Tom Brokaw ('NBC Nightly News') in the ratings. He's averaging about an 8.5, 8.6. We're standing at a 7.8 now (December 1992). I want to pass them. And I think once that happens, people will open their eyes and see what this is all about."
In its review, 'The New York Times' observed, "After years of dancing around the edge of sensationalism, television leaped enthusiastically into the pit last year (1988) with the kind of journalism many newspapers have practiced for a hundred years or more. The half-dozen or so new shows and the old ones that remade themselves on a sex-and-mayhem model proved so successful that they have spawned a multibillion-dollar industry: reality-based television … The boom in reality programming has rekindled the long-running debate among journalists, educators and commentators about the propriety of mixing entertainment and news without letting viewers know clearly which is which."
Bill O’Reilly maintained, "We don't feel it's fair to lump us in with 'Hard Copy' and 'A Current Affair'. I'm not going to say we don't do sensational stories - I call them populist - but we do very few (sexually exploitive) or gory stories and we don't do any re-enactments. And the network news steals our stuff all the time and they’ve raided our people!
"What we’re doing here has changed television and will continue to change television more, and people don’t understand it. Ph.D.s don't watch 'Inside Edition'. It's not real to them. But 14 million people watch us every day. We’re much more powerful than any other news magazine beside '60 Minutes'. We know that they’re watching us closely, as well they should. And we know that they respect us."
'The New York Times' continued, "To many in journalism, the new programming represents an assault on the standards of broadcast news laid down by the radio networks during World War II. To others, the conflict between sensationalism and the more subdued ways of conveying information is as old as communication. To them, the standards still exist, but they have become an alternative set of rules rather than a code of ethics. The volume of the debate has risen in recent months (late 1988) because of the flood of programs built on news as entertainment. At least a dozen shows are already on the air, some of them for years, but their audiences have grown geometrically."
Bob Young argued, ''Don't call it tabloid TV. Call it communication. We offer information through storytelling. This is not brain surgery. And you don't have to present stories in the same boring and pompous way that the network evening news programs do. The best communicators of the century were the Beatles, not Dan Rather. They kept it interesting.''
Bill O’Reilly insisted, "'Inside Edition' brought back ambush journalism and now that's stock-in-trade of every network magazine. We'll take credit for that. Full credit. That's what drives our show: Emotion. All of our stories are emotion-driven. If they don’t have emotion, we don’t do 'em. That emotion has changed the way the viewer looks at the news. And the viewer doesn’t understand it …"
'The New York Times' continued, "Just how many of the programs will appear depends in part on how they are counted … Whatever the particular shape, all are rooted, however loosely, in fact. Thus, the label 'reality-based'. But they make no bones about their intention to entertain first and inform second. The ratings of these shows frequently rival those of the network evening news programs."
Ben H. Bagdikian was a professor at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He told 'The New York Times', "The phenomenon of reality-based TV is nothing more than the completion of an incestuous cycle. In the 1950s, television took the audience away from newspapers, so local editors responded with huge displays of photographs … A reader who spends 30 minutes with a newspaper will devote most of his time to the one or two stories that interest him. There is a bit of the 'National Enquirer' in each of us, but not for subjects that we are sensitive about."
By January 18, 1999, 'The New York Times' noted, "From a heyday when there were half a dozen, only three remain - 'Hard Copy', 'Inside Edition' and 'Extra' - and all have lost a fifth or more of their viewers in the last year alone. 'Hard Copy' has even gone soft, focusing on first-person stories, often about celebrities, and local stories about ordinary people.
"Television's cyclical nature is one reason - a successful show spawns many imitators, fragmenting the audience and eventually diluting interest in that genre. Lurid talk shows, for example, numbered 21 at their peak and are now down to a handful. But tabloid newsmagazines have also withered because certain kinds of tabloid-style stories have migrated to the traditional news organizations, which have so much more time to fill."
Maury Povich believed the genre was disappearing because it was no longer distinctive. ''I'll be vilified by the traditionalists for this, but the network prime-time newsmagazines have co-opted the tabloid genre. The reason for our success in the mid-'80s and early '90s was we did stories that the traditional news divisions passed up ... These are stories that were staples in 'The New York Daily News' or 'New York Post', but they'd never put them on a national broadcast. When our ratings went through the roof, they took notice.''
Victor Neufeld offered, "Prime time newsmagazines have always done these stories when they have significance and they have a point. The difference is that while syndicated tabloid shows were doing stories in two days, we would take two months, with significantly more time and effort invested in telling a story to give it depth, impact and meaning.''
Neal Shapiro told 'The New York Times' network programs occasionally featured similar stories tabloid shows did, ''but they do half an hour, so they do 3-or-4-minute stories, and often don't talk to the principal characters. We have an hour. We do longer stories. You meet the characters, hear their words, and hear the larger story, the context.''
Although the "tabloid TV" genre thrived through the early part of the 1990s decade, Associated Press reported, by 1997, "the television format is past its peak. Only 'Entertainment Tonight', relatively secure in its niche, has held its own. 'A Current Affair' and others stretched the boundaries of what had been considered news, bringing to television the same celebrity obsessions and scandals that fill the supermarket newspaper racks.
"The seemingly unending O.J. Simpson saga provided the shows with a font of stories that viewers never seemed to tire of. But when the Simpson trial went away, so did much of the audience. Subsequent scandals, like the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation, haven't drawn as much interest." Maury Povich reasoned, "I think the O. J. Simpson case never would have been such a huge story if tabloid news magazines hadn't been there before and alerted audiences to the power of these stories.''
Associated Press continued, "Syndicated shows also lost some of what made them unique when network news organizations, particularly through their own newsmagazines, began following many of the same stories." However Frank Kelly of Paramount told the press he did not agree that the genre's better days may be in the past. "I think we ('Hard Copy') have to go back to what made us unique four or five years ago (around 1992, 1993), and that is storytelling." King World's 'Inside Edition', at the time, "seems intent on taking a harder news high road and has been heavily touting its recent prestigious George Polk and Sigma Delta Chi journalism awards."
'Vanity Fair', February 1999: The tabloidification of American life - of the news, of the culture, of human behavior - is such a sweeping phenomenon that it can't be dismissed as merely a jokey footnote to the history of the 1990s. Rather, it's the very hallmark of our times; if the decade must have a name - and it must, since decade-naming has become a required public exercise in the second half of the 20th century - it might as well be the Tabloid Decade.
"Each of the four decades preceding the '90s has found its identity in some crystallizing event or upheaval, some moment that gave the times their meaning. For the conformist '50s, it was the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings; for the revolutionary/countercultural '60s, it was John F. Kennedy's assassination; for the jaded, cynical '70s (also known as the Me Decade), it was Richard Nixon's resignation; for the go-go '80s, it was the economic boom that followed the '83 recession.
"And for the '90s, God help us, it was the O.J. saga, a prolonged Hollywood Babylon spectacle that confirmed the prevailing national interest in sex, death, celebrity, and televised car chases. While tabloid TV's heyday was relatively short-lived - 'A Current Affair' is now off the air, and 'Hard Copy' and 'Inside Edition' are buried in obscure time slots - its influence lives on in every local newscast, every network newscast, every breakfast program, all five 'Datelines', all three '20/20s', and both '60 Minuteses'.
"Likewise, every broadsheet in America is palpably more tabloidlike in content than it used to be. The 'blurring of distinctions' has really been more of an engulfment, since the influence has gone in just one direction: not only have the major news organizations appropriated tabloid techniques, but they've also placed a greater emphasis on tabloid material at the expense of genuine hard news; a new JonBenét development trumps a Hague war-crimes tribunal every time."
'Larry King Live', February 2000, Maury Povich: Back in the days of 'A Current Affair', we were the first kind of tabloid news magazine on the air. And we kind of caught fire, and the whole world was interested in us. So I know what it's like being out there first, because then came 'Inside Edition' and 'Hard Copy' and 'Extra' and all of these other shows.
