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Show i Our Man Hoppe OrTThe Air Insulters By ARTHUR HOPPE Herewith is another unwritten chapter in that unpublished history, "The Decline and Fall of the 20th Century." The title of this unwritten unwrit-ten chapter is, "The Rise of the Talk Show." Dcn't Pyne Away Most of the credit for the trend toward more exciting talks shows less do-nothings." When he had aroused the crowd to a fever pitch of hatred and venom, the first guest was brought ina retired Episcopalian prelate who wished to make a public appeal ap-peal for erecting flower boxes on elevated freeways. Before he could make it, Torky interrupted to question him leer-ingly leer-ingly on his ancestry, his sexual potency and how much he had stolen from the collection plates in his lifetime. "But," protested the prelate feebly, "I want to talk about . . ." "The people out there don't want talk," cried Torky with a sneer, "they want action!" And he sloshed slosh-ed the prelate with a bucketful of pig slops. The climax came when the prelate, pre-late, his bleeding flesh quivering, crawled across the floor to lick Torky's boots. And, oh, how the audience leaning iom chairs, licking their lip; In Bad Taste i Soon, prime time on all net, was devoted exclusively t0 shows," as they came to ho 5 As for Torky, himself, ne ; went too far. While flag; Scout Mistress who had co the program to publicize a sale, his bullwhip unfortunate through the' cloth of herb011$' cidentally exposing a portion! left breast to the camera. ' ' The Nation was quick to outr, Editorial writers, letter writers-sponsors writers-sponsors alike agreed that t children in their American k should not be subjected to civious sights. And Torky; fired. ' ' "The one thing we cannot t0. ate on the public air waves"' Plained a network executive' bad taste." f- -v - - ' , I ff jix. in the late 1960s must be given to ' Joe Pyne, a courageous cour-ageous innovator whose ability to insult and degrade de-grade his guests catapulted him to the top of the ratings. rat-ings. Initially, Pyne's Arthur Hoppe impact was felt most heavily in radio. The majority ma-jority of local stations were already devoting 24 hours a day to talk shows, wherein ignorant callers discussed dis-cussed the issues of the day with ignorant radio announcers. Politely Polite-ly and boringly. A new format was badly needed. And, with Pyne as an example, radio found it. Soon, announcers everywhere were vying with each other to insult, in-sult, confound and degrade their callers. Generally, the announcer would misstate the caller's position on an issue in a voice dripping with sarcasm, reveal the Divine Truth in a few hundred pedantic words, interrupt the caller's feeble response by shouting, "You don't know what you're talking about!" and hang up. The popularity of such programs soared. And yet, something still seemed lacking. It was Torque-mada Torque-mada (Torky) De Sade who apcur-ately apcur-ately diagnosed the Nation's unmet need and met it. A New Image The Tork's television show, "Leave Them Speechless," was watched each Sunday night by more than 100 million American men, women and children. His very first program established the pattern. Torky, wearing a black hood, brass-studded belt and high leather boots, strode to the center of the stage. With fists on hips, he devoted de-voted the first five minutes to castigating cas-tigating the studio audience as "dim-witted voyeurs" and "spine- |
