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Every so often, there is an article saying the old kind of talk show isn't possible now. In the oldest kind of talk show, you only had the choice of that or two other channels!

My feeling is talk shows have not kept pace with the breakthroughs and changes in format in television generally.

I think that in the end, a talk show is a very different animal.

To me, talk shows are those things during the middle of the afternoon where the underbelly of society is made to look like Middle America.

People failed to realize that when you're living such a hyper, super reality of a life, where you're just doing shows and you're on TV and you're talking to this magazine, that doesn't bode well for trying to talk about everyday stuff that hopefully you'll connect with people on.

A talk show is about having a look at a famous face, a bit of stand-up comedy, knockabout stuff - an interview is what Barbara Walters or Connie Chung does in the States, in-depth, done properly.

And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.

Journalists told me that a talk show wouldn't work. Some told me I was going to get canceled before my first season was up.

I've been so fortunate in my career and my own life just to have all these opportunities, and the talk show has always been one of my favorite formats.

But as a result of that, there was, once the show ended, there was this talk for sort of four, five months about what was going to happen, and if we were going to move to Showtime, and if we were going to be bought by ABC or whatever.