Question: The recent brouhaha about the Jerry Springer Show suggests that we ought to be suspicious about everything portrayed on these tabloid TV talk shows. What do you think? You talked to hundreds of guests, producers, and viewers in your research for this book. How much is staged? What's credible, what isn't?
Joshua Gamson: The short answer is: a lot of it is loosely scripted, and there's plenty of room for fake guests to make it on the air, but the vast majority of guests are "real" people who want to be on television. The producers are very competitive with one another, they have to produce multiple shows a week, they field calls from thousands of prospective guests, and they don't have all that much invested in "the truth." So it's easy enough to fake them out. But from the producers' point of view, the point is less to be credible than to be amusing and at least plausibly true...more here
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