• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 4, 2024

Could this be the beginning of the end for daytime panel talk shows? 

It could be. “The Talk” on CBS is ending its nearly 15-season run the week of December 16 with a final, live show on Friday, December 20.

In February, the show’s afternoon time slot will be taken up by a new afternoon soap, the first new soap on network TV in 25 years. The last was “Passions,” which premiered on NBC in 1999. It lasted until 2007. 

The new one is called “Beyond the Gates.” It will center on a community of ultra-wealthy African Americans in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. It premieres February 24, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern, the time slot soon to be vacated by “The Talk.”

“The Talk” was conceived in 2010 as CBS’s answer to “The View” on ABC, which premiered in 1997. 

In its heyday, “The View” was considered groundbreaking. For the first time, a network had a talk show with an all-female panel discussing current events and social trends among themselves and guests. Of the five original panel members, Joy Behar, 82, is the only one still on the show.

None of the original six panel members on “The Talk” are still with the show. The originals were Julie Chen, Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne, Leah Remini, Holly Robinson Peete and Marissa Jaret Winokur.

The current panel members, now five of them, are Sheryl Underwood, Amanda Kloots, Jerry O’Connell, Akbar Gbaja-Biamila and Natalie Morales. Underwood, 61, has been on the longest. She joined the show in 2011.

The two men were added in 2021, a departure for a show whose concept, like “The View,” was to be an all-female panel with an all-female point of view.

The men were likely added to shake up the concept, which -- at least for “The Talk,” if not “The View” -- was not working anymore.

During the years when the two shows have been on the air (but not competing in the same time period), “The View” has maintained its dominance in the all-female talk-show space.

I have never read any rumors that “The View” is long for this world too, but it can also be said that it is long past the era when it made headlines and seemed to wield at least some influence.

In the 2000s, in particular, “The View” was newsworthy as much for its A-list guests as for its sometimes-tense relationships between its outspoken stars -- some over politics-related issues and some not.

Today, however, “The View” is not a “talker” anymore in the classic sense of the word -- a show that people talk about. 

Will ABC ever replace “The View” with a soap? Who knows? But that is what CBS is doing with “The Talk.”

CBS still has two soaps -- “The Bold and the Beautiful” (premiered in 1987) and “The Young and the Restless” (1973).

ABC still has one soap -- the venerable “General Hospital,” dating back to 1963. 

NBC has no daytime soaps anymore, but in August 2022, NBC moved its last soap, “Days of Our Lives” (1965) to Peacock, where it has aired ever since.

Over the years, the number of daytime soaps on network TV has decreased, not increased. CBS, therefore, is seeking to buck a trend that has been ongoing for many years.

Perhaps “Beyond the Gates” can jumpstart a new trend in the opposite direction.