America (talk show)
talk show
America is an American lifestyle and variety talk show that aired in daily syndication from September 19, 1985 until January 3, 1986. The show, which was purposely designed to be a program to serve as a late afternoon lead-in for its affiliates' news broadcasts, was a joint production of Post-Newsweek Stations and Paramount Domestic Television and emanated from Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California.
Despite Paramount's expectations for America, the program was unable to find an audience and was cancelled after sixteen weeks on the air.
Format
When America premiered, the show featured actors Stuart Damon and McLean Stevenson and former Real People host Sarah Purcell as presenters.
Each show began with announcer Charlie O'Donnell saying "good afternoon and welcome to America," then giving the date and a rundown of the topics covered by the show in the sixty minutes to come. After that, the hosts were introduced and the show began. Feature stories included focuses on people, places, and trends, as well as an interview segment with a celebrity. Some stories were presented by reporters working for the affiliate stations; for example, the December 18, 1985, episode featured a story about a Little Rock, Arkansas, girl in need of a liver transplant that was presented by then-KATV reporter Greg Hurst.
Ratings
In their attempt to sell America to local stations at the 1985 NATPE convention, Paramount presented the format to station owners as a program that would garner significant interest from viewers with its lifestyle-based content and, thus, entice those viewers to stay tuned to their stations for the newscast to follow. Among the stations that bought America were the stations owned by production partner Post-Newsweek Stations (consisting at the time of WDIV-TV in Detroit, WFSB-TV in Hartford, and WJXT-TV in Jacksonville), all five of CBS' owned-and-operated stations (WCBS-TV in New York, WBBM-TV in Chicago, KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, KMOX-TV in St.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “America (talk show)” as talk show. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as talk show. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4742722. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985 and 1986.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “America (talk show)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow America (talk show) primary sources, America (talk show) archive and America research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “America (talk show)”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “America (talk show)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.