Is The Era Of Daytime Talk Coming To An End?

With the announced cancellation of The Kelly Clarkson Show and Sherri, itself a replacement of The Wendy Williams Show, TV fans are starting to wonder if the era of daytime talk shows is coming to a close.

Back in the 1990s, there were a dozen talk shows featured on daytime TV such as Jenny Jones, Ricki Lake, Montel Williams, and Jerry Springer, among others. Fans would try not to miss an episode each day in order to indulge in the relationship woes of other folks or see someone’s wig get snatched off. But YouTube has changed everything, offering plenty of options from wig snatchings to celebrity interviews, to romantic discussions and lots more–on demand, and with a sea of choices.

Indeed, TV viewers have options viewers in the past, before streaming took hold, did not have when TV talk shows exclusively dominated viewers’ attention. As YouTube has grown in viewership and versatility, many personalities have migrated to the platform and created their own loyal and often significant base of viewers who can check them out anytime they want.

And while all of daytime’s top talk shows also feature their own YouTube channels, for some viewers, the emotional and entertainment connection isn’t the same, and those shows no longer are their only or even primary viewing choice.

YouTube has become a massive entertainment flea market, with limitless choices, topics, and personalities, and features a range of entertainment options from entire movies and series to shorts and livestreams, right alongside sports shows and events, sitcoms and talk shows from today and the past, making terrestrial TV less important to a viewer’s daily entertainment consumption.

Add to that mix Netflix and Hulu, then daytime talk looks less relevant.

Video podcasts aren’t helping daytime talk survive either. They are becoming more popular and are booking the guests viewers want to see interviewed. They are also cheaper to produce, while daytime talk shows are not. Studios have to contend with massive overhead while some of the most popular video podcasts are produced right in someone’s living room.

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 The decline in cable viewership is also impacting daytime talk. 

According to reports, cable viewership dropped 39 percent between the spring of 2021 and 2025 and now accounts for just a little over 24 percent of viewership, according to a Nielsen report last year. Meanwhile, over the last decade, the total time spent with podcasts has grown 355 percent to 773 million hours a week, according to Edison Research. 

Sherri Shepherd’s show clocked more than 700,000 viewers but still ended up being canceled. With a rapidly changing entertainment landscape, time will tell if the talk show can survive or if the platform is heading in the direction of the phone booth.