Cable Talk Shows
The nightly personality talk programs on each of the cable channels are distinctly different from each other. On CNN, Larry King’s long-interview format puts most of the focus on his guests rather than his own personality or viewpoints; Fox’s O’Reilly show is mostly about O’Reilly; and MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” is somewhere in between — the guests are more than furniture, but Matthews often is talking more than listening.
On the night of May 11, the topics varied as much as the styles. Larry King devoted the entire hour to his exclusive interview with Secretary of State Rice. While conversational, the discussion was the most serious of those on the talk programs.
O’Reilly offered his views on a gamut of items and with the hardest of edge of any of the talk-show hosts. On the immigration bill: “Well, that’s true and dumb. Nobody thinks all illegals are here to commit crimes, but all illegals have something in common: they are illegal. Unfortunately, many in the press, and politics, and on the bench refuse to confront that.” On the Jackson trial: “OK, why should I care?” On the murder case in Zion , he offered his own theory of the crime in an interview with Tom Rybarczyk of the Chicago Tribune, who “has been studying the life of Jerry Hobbs.”
O’REILLY: Now my theory — and this is just a theory, but I'm going to throw it out there — it's based on, you know, information that we've been able to come up with — is that it wasn't going well with Hollabaugh. [ Laura Hobbs, one of the murdered children, was the daughter of Hobbs and Sheila Hollabaugh.] Hobbs and Hollabaugh, you know, he wanted more than she was able to deliver. And he got angry. And when he gets angry — and this is shown by your reporting — when he gets angry, he turns violent.
Now, what would you do to a mother you wanted to punish? What's the worst thing you could do to her?
RYBARCZYK: It sounds like a sound theory, but I don't know.
O'REILLY: I am not asking to you comment on. I'm just saying this is what — I'm an analyst. I'm able to put this stuff together. This is what we're learning. . . .
And O’Reilly’s “most ridiculous item of the day”? The plane scare: “So anyway, there was a little plane, a little plane went into the air space. All the people were evacuated. It was just a little plane. And that was it.”
MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” gave audiences even more of the self-promotion within NBC established earlier in the day. Just as viewers of Imus began the day with a promotional interview on Tim Russert’s book about his father, they could get more of it in the evening on Hardball. Matthews was even more gushing than Imus had been. “Most of the time when I have to read a book for the show, you know, I do a couple of chapters . . . [but here] I’m crying.” And later, “Perfect book. You can get it now.”
The rest of ”Hardball” was devoted to coverage of a dinner that night honoring Nancy Reagan. The discussion, this one with another NBC correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, had the self-conscious feel of talk one might imagine hearing at a celebrity Washington cocktail party. Matthews asserted that Nancy Reagan “is going to be back in circulation after tonight. . .She is going to be around town . . coming to events. The grieving, I guess, is getting close to over. She’ll be up in New York , I’m sure.”