Word: montell
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Take the case of Susan, recently featured on Montel Williams as an example of a woman being stalked by her ex-boyfriend. Turns out Susan is also stalking the boyfriend and--here's the sexual frisson--has slept with him only days ago. In fact Susan is neck deep in trouble without any help from the boyfriend: she's serving a yearlong stretch of home incarceration for assaulting another woman, and home is the tiny trailer she shares with her nine-year-old daughter...
...applauding this life spun out of control. Montel scolds Susan roundly for neglecting her daughter and failing to confront her role in the mutual stalking. A therapist lectures her about this unhealthy "obsessive kind of love." The studio audience jeers at her every evasion. By the end Susan has lost her cocky charm and dissolved into tears of shame...
Well, you won't find that on Montel Williams or the Ricki Lake show. Over the top even by the standards of daytime TV, Days of Our Lives' satanic plot line is just one example of the frenzied effort soap operas are making to maintain viewers and desperately lure new ones in the face of dwindling ratings. Currently 10 daytime soap operas are on network TV, just more than half the number that were airing in 1970. One reason for the falloff is the profusion of Oprah-style talk shows, which are able to serve up story lines about real...
...growing number of disgruntled guests have been humiliated enough to bring lawsuits. Yvonne Porter of Santa Clara, California, recently won a $614,000 settlement from the producers of the Montel Williams show who she claims lured her on the program under false pretenses. Porter was invited believing she would be reunited with past loves. Instead Williams discussed on the air the abuse that Porter was allegedly suffering at the hands of her boyfriend. Then her sister appeared on the show to reveal that she was having an affair with Porter's boyfriend...
...juries therefore influenced by the talk shows, or do talk shows merely cater to popular inquisitiveness? Talk-show host Montel Williams argues that "we reflect society -- we don't create society." Rose Mary Henri, executive producer of the Sally Jessy Raphael show, says: "I think we've helped the public awareness of domestic abuse and many of the abuse problems that exist, but I have no idea what kind of impact that has on someone who is serving on a jury...