A Talk Show That Works : Ron Reagan Elevates the Routine Chatter

He’d benefited and suffered from his famous name. He’d been praised and reviled, saluted and cursed. He’d been written about and gossiped about. He’d taped shows about religion, comedy, steroids and rap music, always turning the spotlight on someone else. And now he was on national television again, and someone was asking him :

“There were all these rumors that you were gay. I wanted to ask you about that.”

The man being addressed so bluntly was the youngest son of former President Ronald Reagan, whose Administration many times appeared hostile to gays and uninterested in the AIDS epidemic.

Yes, it was none other than Ron Reagan, former ballet dancer and “Good Morning America” reporter, and now in the first week of hosting his own quite-terrific syndicated talk show (11:30 p.m. on KTTV Channel 11, 11 a.m. on XETV Channel 6, midnight on KADY Channel 63).

And what Michelangelo Signorile of the now defunct lesbian and gay magazine OutWeek was telling Reagan and his TV audience was true. There had been rumors about Reagan’s sexuality.

The topic of that night’s “Ron Reagan Show” was homosexuality--routine talk-show fodder that’s usually intended to titillate the straight audience. But its treatment here, centering on discussions of AIDS and the sometimes mean-spirited practice of “outing” closeted gays, was anything but routine.

A talk show host “outed” on his own program?

Reagan must have known that by scheduling the topic--and including Signorile on his panel--his own sexuality was bound to come up. In fact, he seemed to be inviting Signorile to mention the rumors in order to bat them down. He called them an insult to his wife of 11 years.

“I do have a personal stake in this,” Reagan said. “You hear a lot of things. But my concern is, what’s the truth? I know the truth. I’m not going to sit here and argue with you about whether or not I’m gay, because frankly I don’t care what you think.”

The debate over his sexuality hardly ended there, for a gay man in the studio audience drew Reagan into an emotional argument by shouting that he was a “liar” and holding him accountable for his father’s views and policies on gays.

Reagan pleaded innocent to that charge and never defended his father, focusing entirely on the controversial practice of “outing” public figures. “Just be sure it’s the truth,” he said.

It was a mesmerizing hour that not only addressed hypocrisy in both the straight and gay communities but also demonstrated just how good “The Ron Reagan Show” could be, in contrast to its appallingly bad Monday premiere, about religion. Putting your worst foot forward is a curious way to make a first impression.

In fact, that opening show--in which Reagan wisecracked unmercifully and his panelists spoke only in sound bites--was an aberration, if the rest of the week is any indication.

“The Ron Reagan Show” for most of this week has been that rare TV commodity, a talk series that is thoughtful without being dull, and provocative without being sleazy or superficial. Plus, its host is a surprisingly astute interviewer who rarely lets his presence or playful wit eclipse his guests or the topic they’re discussing.

And as a bonus in Week 1, not one transvestite.

Tuesday’s witty show on comedy disproved the theory that the unfunniest thing you can do is sit around and analyze what’s funny. Wednesday’s blockbuster show on the destructiveness of steroids was a triumph of guest booking that explored the issue in ways rarely done on network TV. And Thursday’s look at homosexuality is followed tonight by a raw, emotional and brightly luminous episode on rap music. It’s an hour where the bleeps hit the fan and rap’s diversity is given a rare airing before a mainstream audience.

Just as Ron Reagan’s hour--which is entirely unlike Johnny Carson’s, Arsenio Hall’s or Ted Koppel’s--airs out diversity on late-night TV.

HOT GAS ATTACK: He’d covered hot spot after hot spot. He’d reported from Afghanistan on the bloody war between guerrillas and the Soviet-backed government. He’d been in China when the government ruthlessly put down pro-democracy demonstrators. He’d faced personal peril while witnessing the chaotic fall of the Ceausescu government in Romania. He’d survived falling Scuds and worn a gas mask to protect himself from possible chemical attack in the Persian Gulf War. He’d been in the line of fire and the heat of battle. But now NBC correspondent Arthur Kent faced a challenge more terrifying than anything he had faced before.

Willard.

Yes, cool, serious, urbane, respectable Kent has had more to do than merely introduce stories, interview guests and sustain anchor chitchat while filling in for vacationing Bryant Gumbel on NBC’s “Today” this week. He’s had to make those obligatory exchanges with that doomsday weapon of gaseous gab, weatherman Willard Scott, posted in the field.

“Hey, Arthur, are you there?”

“Always glad to talk to you, Willard.”

Then why did Kent initially look like someone watching a missile zoom right toward him?

The tone was set on Monday, Kent’s debut as co-host. Scott reminisced with Kent, veteran to veteran, about their mutual experience in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where Willard spent three days on “assignment” for “Today” during the war buildup, and Kent spent what must have seemed like a lifetime.

Scott mentioned how swell he was treated in Saudi Arabia, where everyone was not always forthcoming with the media. “When you arrived,” Kent said, “doors began to open.”

Meanwhile, Scott’s mouth continued to open. “I remember Bahrain. I kissed the bartender on the lips, I was so glad to get to Bahrain.”

“Willard,” Kent admonished him. “Weather!”

The fact that the handsome Kent is a very able reporter has nothing at all to do with his vacation-relief stint on “Today” and his coming substitution for Tom Brokaw on “NBC Nightly News.” He’s there because his frequent TV appearances during the war lifted him from relative obscurity to pin-up-boy status, making him the love object of many female viewers.

It is amazing how television is able to homogenize and neutralize, blending everything and everyone into the same flat landscape. Henry Kissinger does a turn as a weathercaster on “CBS This Morning,” Arthur Kent comes in from the cold on NBC.

As the week progressed, the Rome-based Kent demonstrated that he is a thoughtful, creative interviewer on serious topics, and he appeared more and more at ease in a light-hearted studio setting. Joining “Today” news anchor Faith Daniels, who was substituting for the show’s other absent co-host, new mother Katie Couric, Kent achieved variety if not total victory.

That included vacuuming a toy stuffed bear to demonstrate how he once cleaned a stuffed buffalo as a high school student working in a Canadian museum. It also included participating in an extended bit about Willard’s toupee (“You could put that on your chest and go out there and wow them,” Scott told him), then having to make one of those abrupt “Today” transitions to a story about a proposed anti-abortion law.

At the end of Wednesday’s show, Kent was dancing with Daniels to music by Johnny Rivers. Funny, likable guy, that Arthur Kent.

Here’s some dark reality. In the current atmosphere of cost-slashing and severe news cutbacks at NBC, there’s far greater longevity in the softer line of work that Kent has been doing this week on “Today” than in the global hard news coverage that’s his regular beat.

Kent and Daniels signed off Thursday by cutting into a world-class watermelon and wolfing some of it down as Scott carried on a continuous commentary on a monitor in the background. By now, everyone was so familiar that Willard was referring to Kent as “old watermelon lips.”

Where’s a gas mask when you really need one?