Talk Show
Raphael's husband Karl Soderlund assumed the role of her manager, and was a partner in her two biggest successes. She hosted a radio call-in advice show distributed by NBC Talknet which ran from Monday November 2, 1981 to 1987, but is most famous for hosting the television talk show, The Sally Jessy Raphael Show (later shortened to simply Sally), which ran in first-run syndication from October 17, 1983 to 2002. "Talknet" was brand new when she came to the attention of producer Maurice Tunick. According to David Richards of The Washington Post, Tunick had auditioned a number of potential hosts, but hadn't yet found the right one. Tunick gave Raphael a one-hour trial run on NBC's Washington, D.C. affiliate, WRC, in August 1981. Before going on the air, she decided that rather than doing a political show, she would give advice and discuss subjects she knew a lot about, such as relationship problems. Soon, her advice show was being heard on over 200 radio stations, and she developed a loyal group of fans.
One of those fans turned out to be talk show legend Phil Donahue who happened to hear her show one night and liked how she related to the audience. His encouragement led to a tryout on television, where producer Burt Dubrow gave her a chance to be a guest host on a talk show of his. She was not very polished, but people who had loved her radio show were very positive about her being on TV. Her non-threatening and common-sense manner appealed to Dubrow, who believed she would gain more confidence as she got some TV experience. By mid-October 1983, she was given her own show on KSDK-TV in St. Louis. The Sally Jessy Raphaël Show was only a half-hour, but it was the beginning of her successful career as a talk show host.
Raphael became known to television viewers for her oversized red-framed glasses, a trademark that began entirely by accident. In 1983, she began having trouble seeing the Teleprompter clearly, and she went to buy some reading glasses at a nearby store. All they had was a pair with red frames, and being in a hurry, she bought them. While her bosses disliked them, the audience seemed to think they looked good, so she kept wearing that style from then on. In 1989, Raphael won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show. During the 1990s, as competition in the talk show arena intensified, her show moved toward more sensationalistic topics, as did many of the other talk show hosts who were her competition, including Jerry Springer (who, at the time, was also distributed by Multimedia Entertainment) and Maury Povich.
By 2000, both Raphael and Springer were in decline. As one media critic observed, Springer's ratings were the lowest they had been in 3 years, but Raphael's ratings were now the lowest they had been in 12 years. Raphael was already having problems with her syndicator: she believed that USA Networks Inc. was more interested in doing promotion for Springer, whose show was at the peak of its popularity and Povich, who had recently left Paramount Television to join USA's syndication arm, than they ever were for her show. She celebrated the anniversary of her 3,500th episode in early 1998, but after that, as her ratings began to decrease and her dissatisfaction with her syndicator persisted, it seemed only a matter of time before her relationship with USA Networks would come to an end. By March 2002, it was announced that after an 18-year run, her show was being canceled. In 2002 Raphael was named by Talkers Magazine to both their 25 Greatest Radio Talk Show Hosts of all time (she was #5), and the 25 Greatest Television Talk Show Hosts of all time (she was #11). She was one of only three personalities to make both the radio and the TV lists.
As of 2005, she still hosted a daily radio show, Sally Jessy Raphael on Talknet (previously called Sally JR's Open House), on the Internet, and recently she began to transfer the format to local radio stations. At one time the show was heard on nearly 300 stations across the nation, including the top markets.
The show was eventually picked up by WVIE, Baltimore, Maryland, as the parent station, and is being syndicated among other AM stations in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, in addition to at least one station in Arizona. The show is still accessible on the internet (although WVIE has since dropped the program), and began coverage on XM Satellite Radio's America's Talk channel on November 19, 2007. The name "Talknet" is a revival of the name of NBC Talknet, the now defunct radio network that carried her previous radio show from 1981 to 1987. July 4, 2008 was the last broadcast before a sudden vacation was announced. The show has not returned to the air since, but the website is still available.
On November 10, 2010, Raphael, along with former talk show hosts Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Ricki Lake and Montel Williams, were invited as guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show. This was the first time that Winfrey had fellow talkers appear together since their programs left the air.
Read more about this topic: Sally Jessy Raphael, Career
Famous quotes containing the words talk and/or show:
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How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.”
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