In this lighthearted article from 1987, Michael Johnson discusses some of the latest American media exports that have got the “uptight British viewer” equally disturbed and intrigued. Thanks to the expansion of satellite and cable networks at the start of the decade and the profitability of international syndication, the British public now had “an even sweeter diet of brain candy” available. Johnson pokes fun at three American talk shows, “The Dr Ruth Good Sex Show”, “Divorce Court” and “The Phil Donahue Show”, while attempting to dissect the differences between their British and American audiences. “The Dr Ruth Good Sex Show” was a sex advice programme, hosted by Dr Ruth Westheimer, “an expert in erections and orgasms”, who encouraged discussions on different aspects of relationships and human sexuality. While “The Phil Donahue Show” took a more similar approach to other daytime talk shows, “Divorce Court”, as a “stage-set mock courtroom”, was a precursor to the myriad of “reality-based” shock-TV shows we still enjoy today.
While some of the high-brow cable offerings nicely supplement the existing fare, the worst of the programmes are far more repugnant than Starsky and Hutch, The A-Team and other such silliness already corrupting respectable British homes via BBC and Independent Television. Thanks to cable, we now have available an even sweeter diet of brain candy – sentimental movies that never made it in the paying movie market, endless hours of rock music videos, old cowboy films with right and wrong clearly laid out, and, as filler, the cutesy situation comedies dating back to the 1950s and 1960s.
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