Word: rolonda
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JAMES BROWN knows how to make a pitch. But the godfather of soul strained to hit the right note when he phoned during a taping of the Rolonda talk show. "Darling," he told host ROLONDA WATTS, "you know I'm crazy about you. So how about tying the knot?" The stunned Watts, not accustomed to airing her own confrontations on camera, told Brown she'd talk to him later. Watts, 37, became buddies with the widowed singer, 68, after he appeared on her show in January, and before long he was sporting a Rolonda jacket. But all that good feeling...
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...
What the talks are about, in large part, is poverty and the distortions it visits on the human spirit. You'll never find investment bankers bickering on Rolonda, or the host of Gabrielle recommending therapy to sobbing professors. With few exceptions the guests are drawn from trailer parks and tenements, from bleak streets and narrow, crowded rooms. Listen long enough, and you hear references to unpaid bills, to welfare, to 12-hour workdays and double shifts. And this is the real shame of the talks: that they take lives bent out of shape by poverty and hold them...
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