THIS WOULD MAKE FOR A GOOD installment of a daytime-TV talk show. Listen as one of the genre's most expert practitioners--a man who never flinched even when airing shows on sleazy topics like "Women Who Marry Their Rapist"--bares his soul and confesses his very own addiction...an addiction to sleazy talk-show topics. "I began in recent years to feel very seedy about what I was doing," he admits to TIME, "and yet I was seduced by the big Hollywood money. Every year you say, 'This is the last year.' Then you say, 'No, I'm going to stick around and buy one more house; let me stick around and establish one more scholarship.' And year in and year out it goes on and on... " And on, judging from the fact that on any given weekday the nation's broadcasters fill the airwaves with 23 hours' worth of daytime talk shows, most of them devoted to flaying the most personal of foibles in front of tens of millions of viewers.
Of course, recognizing an addiction is the first, most important step on the road to recovery. "I just said, 'Basta!' " explains the host, whose mix of tabloid breathiness and self-aggrandizement discerning readers will have already identified as belonging to Geraldo Rivera. Last week Rivera publicly vowed to clean up his eight-year-old daytime show, long criticized--or celebrated--as one of TV's tawdriest. How would this work in practice? "We're not going to go into the cycle where if you do hookers on your show, we'll do hookers and their daughter hookers. You can't win that way. You can't win by constantly trying to lowball."
Rivera's newfound forbearance is the most recent change in daytime television, which is facing increasing pressure, both economic and political, to tone itself down. And indeed, after years of topics like "Get Bigger Breasts or Else" (Rolonda) and "He Slept with the Baby-Sitter" (Sally Jessy Raphael), there is evidence that there may actually be a limit to what audiences will watch. Last week saw the twin cancellations of Gabrielle Carteris' and Charles Perez's shows; already consigned to the scrap heap are the programs of Carnie Wilson and Danny Bonaduce. Of the eight new shows introduced last year with great fanfare--or at least as much fanfare as could be drummed up for programs built around former stars of Beverly Hills, 90210 and The Partridge Family--only four remain; all are struggling. Even the more established shows have seen their ratings fall. Ricki Lake, whose success prompted the current batch of trash-talking clones, has seen her ratings fall 10% since 1994. Rivera's numbers have dropped even more steeply, 20%, which may indicate that his conversion is not 100% altruistic. Other shows in similar straits--including Mark Walberg's and Jerry Springer's--either have announced or are considering kinder, gentler makeovers.
All in all, it's enough to bring a smile to the face of William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education and dependable moral scold who, along with Democratic Senators Joseph Lieberman and Sam Nunn, launched a crusade last October against what Bennett termed the "cultural rot" of TV talk shows. Said Lieberman at the time: "These shows increasingly make the abnormal normal and set up the most perverse role models. It's time for a revolt of the revolted." The trio went so far as to make a TV ad targeting advertisers on the more controversial programs.