Sunday morning talk shows

The Sunday morning talk shows are influential television talk/public affairs programs broadcast on Sunday mornings. Often featuring national leaders in politics and public life as guests, this type of program originated in the United States, and has since been used in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

United States

In the United States the five major programs, in order of their debuts, are:

The fifth major show in the category, CNN's State of the Union with John King, replaced Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, which aired from 1993 to 2009 before cancellation. Late Edition's last show aired January 11, 2009, and was replaced the following Sunday by State of the Union.

While these are the "Big Five" that are universally included in the definition, there are some other shows that are occasionally included in this category. Examples include NBC's syndicated The Chris Matthews Show^[2], Bloomberg Television's Political Capital with Al Hunt,^[3], the PBS roundtables The McLaughlin Group^[4] and Inside Washington as well as Washington Week,^[5] C-SPAN's Newsmakers,^[3] Fox News Channel's Journal Editorial Report,^[6] and (until Tim Russert's 2008 death) MSNBC's Tim Russert Show,^[6] among several others. Univision's Al Punto is a talk show of this variety that is broadcast in the Spanish language.

The talk shows often feature national leaders in politics and public life, including U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, state governors, candidates for President and Vice President, Cabinet secretaries, White House officials, and directors of federal agencies. U.S. military leaders, ambassadors, and religious leaders also appear, as well as promient journalists and commentators. Members of prominent think tanks such as Brookings, AEI, Cato, Hoover, and Heritage also are often invited to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows.

The shows are generally aired live or recorded in Washington, D.C., providing easy access to many political leaders. Many individuals appear via satellite or in studio for two or more of the programs on a given Sunday. Between Fox News Sunday's debut in 1996 and Late Edition's cancellation in 2009, several individuals appeared on all five programs on one day. William H. Ginsburg, attorney for Monica Lewinsky's family during the Lewinsky scandal, was the first to perform what would be named in his honor as the "Full Ginsburg." More common is an interviewee appearing on different shows in consecutive weeks; for instance, a Presidential candidate may appear on Meet the Press one week, This Week the next, and Fox News Sunday the week after that.

C-SPAN Radio provides a commercial-free rebroadcast of all five shows in rapid succession, beginning at noon Eastern. Other radio stations rebroadcast some of the shows with commercials on Sunday afternoon.

Many local television stations also produce their own programs that air in this time frame, generally focusing on local or state politics rather than national issues.

Australia

Similar Sunday-morning current-events shows exist in Australia. These include Network Ten's Meet the Press since 1992, Nine Network's Sunday (1981-2008), and Insiders, a political interview program on the ABC.^{[citation needed]}

Canada

CTV's Question Period follows a format similar to the American Sunday morning talk show model, as did two defunct series, CTV's former Sunday Edition and Global's Global Sunday. Both of the defunct programs, however, aired in variable time slots in different markets, anywhere from late Sunday mornings to early Sunday evenings.

CBC's CBC News: Sunday, while airing in a comparable timeslot to a Sunday morning talk show, follows a newsmagazine format oriented toward features reporting.

United Kingdom

Similar practice occurs in the UK, in the form of shows such as The Andrew Marr Show (previously known as Sunday AM) on the BBC and Sunday Live with Adam Boulton on Sky News; however, these shows have a somewhat-broader range, often intervewing figures from the arts, popular entertainment, and sports in addition to political leaders (similar to CBS News Sunday Morning in the United States). The first such Sunday show in Britain was Weekend World, made by London Weekend Television for the ITV network from 1972 to 1988.

External links

• http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/
• http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek

References