Talk Show

Los Angeles -- If you think you're plugged in now that you're finally comfortable with Larry King and the electronic town hall meeting, think again.CNN has on tap what it calls the "next-generation town hall meeting" -- the talk show in cyberspace.It's called "TalkBack Live" and it starts Aug. 22 -- airing weekday afternoons at 1 in place of "Sonya Live." The show features anchorwoman Susan Rook, CompuServe and MCI -- not necessarily in that order."You might be wondering why we at CNN felt the need to create a program like this," executive producer Teya Ryan said yesterday in announcing the show.

At first glance, the Metro Gallery's Saturday night bill seems like an odd pairing: Dope Body - one of Baltimore's noisiest, most abrasive bands in years - and Mykki Blanco, a gender-bending, impressively nimble rapper from New York. But watch some live YouTube clips of each act, and the show makes more sense. Dope Body and Mykki Blanco command attention immediately, and both are capable of consistently winning over new audiences through sheer force and charisma. It doesn't matter that their albums would be categorized at opposite ends of the store.

Daisy Fuentes promises her new talk show for CNBC won't wade into the tabloid waters so favored by traditional talk fare."You will not see transsexuals who have gotten a sex change to become women and are now lesbians," Ms. Fuentes said the other day.Not only doesn't she want to make her viewers uncomfortable, she doesn't intend to make her guests feel that way, either. She just wants to find out "what makes them tick." And controversy isn't likely to be part of the mix."I don't enjoy controversy," she said.

Chris Hayes, an editor at large of The Nation and host of the talk show bearing his name on MSNBC, was raised in a working-class neighborhood but attended some of the most exclusive schools on the planet. "I grew up in the Bronx," says the affable, 33-year-old anchor of "Up With Chris Hayes. " "My mother was the daughter of an Italian deli owner. But I'm also hugely a product of the meritocracy, and for that reason I have my own affection for it. " Both experiences provided fodder for his much-discussed first book, "Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy.

With all the preposterous posturing on the post-Johnny Carson late night talk show landscape, can a satirical series set inside a fictional late-night show be nearly as funny as the real thing?"

If Dan Miller were a circus artist, he'd be walking the high wire without a net. In fact, the man many will remember as co-host and announcer of the short-lived "Pat Sajak Show" is attempting the TV equivalent of that feat. Today (at 1 p.m.) he became the host of "Miller & Company," a new live talk show to air daily on The Nashville Network.Scary stuff?"Actually, it's fun," Mr. Miller said. "Everything is coming together very quickly, and I'm really enjoying myself."The news business is live," he adds, "so you get the feeling for [it]

IN THE Flite Three Studios out on Cold Spring Lane, Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell Reid talked to Cathy Rigby yesterday, taping the interview for a show that's essentially doing the same thing as Rigby's production of "Peter Pan" -- taking it on the road hoping for a shot at the big time.Rigby now knows that after 11 months of playing places like Baltimore's Mechanic Theatre, "Peter Pan" is going to Broadway. But the Reids won't know until sometime next year if "Tim and Daphne" will make television's equivalent -- national syndication.

Longtime Maryland political commentator Frank DeFilippo will launch a weeknight talk show on WBAL-AM (1090) next month, '' after the end of post-season baseball coverage."

They say that the best humor is based in truth.It's a frightening prospect when watching the behind-the-scenes antics of a talk-show host in HBO's hysterical "The Larry Sanders Show." Is the backstage banter of late-night biggies like Dave, Jay and Arsenio really this funny?According to Garry Shandling, it is. And he should know. During his rise to fame as a stand-up comedian, Mr. Shandling has done them all, including serving as a regular guest host of "The Tonight Show." As the writer/producer/star of "The Larry Sanders Show," a sometimes scathing send-up of the talk-show world on- and off-stage, Mr. Shandling insists most of the show comes from real life.

For a guy who supposedly doesn't inspire passion, Johnny Oates sure got things fired up on the radio Monday night.Oates' dismissal as Orioles manager was the equivalent of a 3-1 offering down the heart of the plate, and the talk show squawkers wasted no time jumping into the batter's box."It's got baseball back on the front page," said WCBM's Sta"The Fan" Charles. "Since Aug. 11 [the last night games were played], you start talking about baseball and the phones go dead. [Monday night] I didn't even have to prompt anything.

Teen-age letter-writer Emma Zyriek's take on the "fiscal cliff" negotiations could not have been more to the point ("On eve of fiscal cliff, Congress acts like squabbling children," Dec. 29). It would be a great thing if this letter could be printed in large, bold type and sent to all the politicians in Washington who think they know what is best for the people who put them there. Maybe we should send our high school students to Washington if we want to get anything accomplished.

Bryan Nehman, co-host of the "Brian and Bryan Show" on Washington's WMAL radio, has been hired by Baltimore's WBAL to replace Dave Durian during morning drive time. Nehman previously anchored morning news on the politically conservative talk and news station in the nation's capital from 2001 to 2011. He's been at the station 12 years. He started as a street reporter, and "was put in the news anchor chair right after 9/11," Nehman said Thursday. "Bryan is one of the brightest young men that I've met, and he is the guy who's going to lead WBAL into the next 20 years of broadcasting," Dave Hill, program director at the station said.

In 1994, at the age of 26, “Hairspray” sweetheart Ricki Lake had one of the hottest daytime talk shows in the history of television. With a daily audience of 5.8 million viewers after only one year on-air, “Ricki Lake” was second only to “Oprah” among all syndicated talk shows, and she was beating “Oprah” among younger viewers. But today, the 43-year-old performer, who returns to talk TV this month with “The Ricki Lake Show,” looks back and says: If only she had been able to understand what she had and what she might have done with all her clout at the time.

It might have been back in February when he got under the skin of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on CBS' "Face the Nation. " Or maybe it was in May when he went toe to toe with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on NBC's "Meet the Press. " None of the analysts is sure exactly when it happened. But they all agree that sometime in 2012, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley become a staple, if not a star, of Sunday morning public-affairs television. And for all the new media speaking to voters, that forum not only shapes the national debate, it also plays a major role in anointing politicians as national leaders worthy of White House consideration.

Ron Smith, who came to Baltimore 38 years ago as a weekend TV anchorman but found his greatest success on radio as WBAL's "Voice of Reason," died Monday night of pancreatic cancer at his home in Shrewsbury, Pa.. He was 70. Mr. Smith spent more than 26 years on WBAL's airwaves, most of it in the afternoon drive-time period until a move to mornings last year, passionately talking politics from a conservative point of view. But it is not his politics for which he will likely be remembered as much as the informed conversation he helped create on Baltimore radio — and the way he publicly shared his final days with listeners of WBAL and readers of The Baltimore Sun. On Nov. 28, after continuing on-air for more than two months despite having been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer that had metastasized throughout his body, Mr. Smith signed off at the 50,000-watt news-talk station for the last time in his signature straightforward, no-nonsense, radio style.

H.L. Mencken once observed that newspapers, by nature, are bellicose and do not speak in support of anyone or anything unless they absolutely can't help it. There are any number of public figures in Maryland and beyond who would attest to this. But on rare occasion, we have the good fortune to encounter someone who merits words of praise, and so exceptions have to be made. To leave such thoughts to obituary writers alone would, at the very least, deny the living the potentially defibrillating shock of reading them in this forum.

Fox News, the nation's edgiest television news shop, announced yesterday it will entrust its Sunday morning talk show to ABC News' Chris Wallace, an old-fashioned correspondent known for a painstaking approach to journalism. Wallace will begin his new duties in mid-November. "It adds another big horse to our stable," said Brit Hume, anchor and Washington managing editor for Fox News. Wallace, 56, takes over from Tony Snow, who served as host of Fox News Sunday since its creation in 1996.

Sylvia Scott, host for 17 years of an afternoon television talk show in Baltimore, died in her sleep Thursday at her home in Oxford on the Eastern Shore. She was 83. The show, The Woman's Angle, was already a staple of WMAR-TV's afternoon lineup when she took over in 1959. Opening with a logo of a lighted cigarette and cup of coffee, it soon featured a perfectly coiffed and immaculately attired Miss Scott interviewing performers from the old Ford's Theatre, guests from garden clubs, local chefs, physicians and the like.

Ron Smith went on WBAL radio Thursday, just as he has for the past 27 years. But the conservative talk-show host, who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, opened his show telling listeners — with characteristic bluntness — that he was abandoning his chemotherapy treatments. Instead, Smith will remain on the air while undergoing palliative care designed to make what time he has left as comfortable as possible. And then he simply went on with the show. "That's the way I've conducted my career," Smith, 69, said Thursday from his home in southern York County, Pa., where he's been doing most of his broadcasting work since announcing his inoperable Stage 4 cancer diagnosis on Oct. 17. "I have never been one to hide anything.

Almost midnight in America ... As citizens camp out on the streets of American cities to try and express their anger and frustration at the way the country and his administration have failed them, President Obama goes on TV to trade scripted quips with the always-safe Jay Leno. But first, he hops into San Francisco on Air Force One to pick up a cool million at a campaign fund raiser. A few months into Obama's presidency, I wrote two things about his media behavior that have only become more pronounced in recent months.