TJ Walker reflects on John McLaughlin, the talk show host who created the McLaughlin Group in 1982 and ran it for 34 years. McLaughlin pioneered combative political debate on PBS, bringing shouting pundits and conservative voices to mainstream television. Walker modeled his own Florida talk show after McLaughlin's style.
Questions this video answers
89
1982
34 years (he appeared every single week except one Sunday near his death).
Pat Buchanan
General Electric
Chapters
Talk show host John McLaughlin is dead at age 89. Now, for a lot of you who have not followed public affairs until the last decade or so, you may be saying, who is John McLaughlin? I can tell you he's one of the most wildly influential talk show hosts and media communicators of the last quarter century. Certainly incredibly influential to me personally. For those of you who are not familiar with his career, he started the McLaughlin Group in 1982. This was back before all the food fights on TV, before you had Fox News, before you had combative shows on cnn, certainly before MSNBC even existed, and talk shows were fairly sedate. You had Washington Week in Review, a show I grew up on in the 1970s where everyone was polite, demure media people didn't give their opinions. John McLaughlin completely broke the mold, and some could say in a very negative way. But brought in the shouting, brought in highly opinionated pundits, extracted opinions from reporters, and created what some would describe as intellectual food fights. It was not in the first episode or two, but it pretty quickly became a huge hit. It was a favorite of Ronald Reagan, got a lot of attention. There were a lot of imitators out there. Now, True Confession. I was so enamored with John McLaughlin's style, his theatrics, and how he did things, I created a show modeled after his. This was a regionally syndicated TV talk show, and it was on 10 markets throughout Florida starting in the late 1980s. For a couple years now, I was in no way anywhere near as successful as he was, and my show was only on the air for a couple of years. Here's why else I think he is so influential. By the way, he's not influential in the intellectual sense. It's not that he leaves a large body of ideas or a political movement. Whether you love Rush Limbaugh or not. Few serious political observers would deny that he has been influential in politics, especially in certain campaign seasons like 1994. No one really contends that John McLachlan has influence. In fact, his most widely known quote is from when he served as an aide to Richard Nixon and told the White House press corps that Richard Nixon will go down as the most moral leader of the last third of the 20th century in the world. Obviously, that didn't happen. But he had more than just bluster. Although he had a lot of bluster, he did bring a level of erudition. Now, part of it, he just liked to use big words. But he structured his show in a way that was just entertaining, fast, interesting, did go deep occasionally and allowed for people to see the philosophical prism, the lens of how actual politicians and political figures looked at issues. Now, he had a lot of clever things going on. A part of his pitch to PBS was, hey, everybody thinks you're a bunch of liberals and the Republicans in Congress don't like it. Give me a show and I'll stack it mostly full of conservatives and that'll take some of the political heat off. That was part of his selling pitch that allowed him to stay on so long. Now, as a media entrepreneur, I think he's a fascinating case. Before him, the old way of doing things was you work your way up a traditional media organization. You put in 20 years as a reporter, you get to be a columnist at the New York Times, and then you're occasionally asked to be a guest on Meet the Press, and you give your opinions in very understated ways. McLaughlin had nothing to do with that. He had a new model. He created his own company named after his dog, by the way, his own show. And that gave him power, that gave him independence. Different pundits could come and go. Some he famously got in a fight with, like the late Robert Novak, who was always one of my favorites on the show. And no matter what happened, sometimes he would be on NBC. For many, many years, he was on NBC stations. General Electric was his prime sponsor for many, many years. In later years, in addition to pbs, which was his base, he was on CBS stations and he got different sponsors. So to me, he's a fascinating example of someone who created his own little media world, his own shows. He couldn't be fired. One station didn't like him, he'd get another. One sponsor didn't like him, he'd get another. There was no one saying, Mr. McLaughlin, you've hit the age limit of 65 or 75 or 80, 85. The only thing that took him out of that chair was death. And approaching death. The previous Sunday is the last Sunday. It was the only Sunday in his 34 years run on the show where he didn't appear. Pat Buchanan guest hosted, but other than that, he was there every single week for 34 years. That tells you something right there about his commitment to the show, his passion and dedication for the show. Now, a lot of things you can complain about him, and there have been lawsuits from women who've worked for him and many other things which are certainly worthy of discussion. But to me, the main thing is, to me, he's sort of the precursor to so many modern day mini media moguls such as Glenn Beck, such as so many podcasters who love the fact that they own their own thing, they own their own media company. They can't be fired, they can't be bought out, they can't be downsized, they can't be given a retirement package and shuffled off the stage. He left on his own terms. I do have to give him credit for that. Is part of the political dialogue in America, coarsened because of it. You can make that case, although I would say in recent years, his show is one of the few shows where you didn't have everybody 100% on one side debating an issue or agreeing with each other. So a lot of things in the mainstream media went to his level and then kept on going in a more extreme level in recent years. Let's not kid ourselves. His show became almost irrelevant because of all the 24 hour political debate shows, talk shows on the news networks and talk radio for that matter. I had not seen the show in years, but someone who injected himself into pop culture, whether it was guest appearances on TV shows, being made fun of on Saturday Night Live, appearing as himself on Mission Impossible, he seemed to have just a fabulous, fabulous time. Long, long career. A career before that in politics as an unsuccessful Senate candidate and presidential aide, but seemed to really enjoy the second half of his life as a media superstar. I can't say he'll be missed tremendously now by people not seeing the show, but he will remain an inspiration to me and others. I'm T.J. walker.
