Sunday morning talk shows

The Sunday morning talk shows are 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 other countries.

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 Candy Crowley, replaced Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, which aired from 1993 to 2009 before cancellation. Late Edition's last show aired January 11, 2009; State of the Union debuted the following Sunday.

While these are the "Big Five" that are universally included in the definition, not all of them are aired in all markets,^[2] and there are some other shows that are occasionally included in this category. Examples include NBC's syndicated The Chris Matthews Show,^[3] Bloomberg Television's Political Capital with Al Hunt,^[4] the PBS roundtables The McLaughlin Group^{[5] [6]} and Inside Washington as well as Washington Week,^[7] C-SPAN's Newsmakers,^[4] TV One's Washington Watch, Fox News Channel's Journal Editorial Report,^[8] and (until Tim Russert's 2008 death) MSNBC's Tim Russert Show,^[8] 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 prominent 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), Insiders, a political interview program on the ABC. and since 2011 The Bolt Report hosted by conservative commentator, Andrew Bolt.

Canada

• CTV's Question Period follows a format similar to the American Sunday morning talk show model, as did a defunct series, Sunday Edition, which briefly replaced it in the late 1990s.
• Global formerly aired the newsmagazine series Global Sunday from 2001 to 2005; however, the series aired in variable time slots over the course of its run. In 2011, Global launched the new series The West Block.^[9]
• CBC's CBC News: Sunday, while airing in a comparable timeslot to a Sunday morning talk show, followed a newsmagazine format oriented toward features reporting. The network does not currently air a Sunday morning talk show, instead airing the daily Power & Politics on CBC News Network.

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.

Japan

There are several political Sunday morning talk shows in Japan, most are often broadcast live from studios in Tokyo (Nichiyō Tōron: Kioichō, Shin Hōdō 2001: Daiba, Sunday Frontline: Roppongi), Jiji Hōdan is usually prerecorded on Friday evening.

Nichiyō Tōron by public broadcaster NHK often features one politician from every party represented in the National Diet, in many cases the parties' Diet Affairs Council Chairmen. The latter was generally the case with Kokkai Tōronkai ("Diet forum"), one of several alternating NHK talk shows on political and economic issues sharing the same Sunday morning programming slot before they were replaced by Nichiyō Tōron in 1994. It had initially been a NHK radio talk show and was simultaneously broadcast on television starting in the 1950s.

References