Cut the cackle

Not long ago, Graham Norton hosted a chat show which was broadcast five nights a week. It was axed after its audience fell to just 300,000 viewers. Norton was only a guest host on Channel 5's Jack Docherty Show, but its failure was a salutary lesson in the folly of stretching the chat show format beyond its limit. It is strange, then, that the camp Irishman is about to do the same thing on Channel 4. So Graham Norton, already virtually a year-round fixture on Fridays, will go five nights a week in the spring.

The announcement came just a week after the launch of BBC1's own three-nights-a-week chat show, Johnny Vaughan Tonight. It is not as if viewers already lack choice: those seeking their regular celebrity fix can turn to Parkinson and Tonight with Jonathan Ross on BBC1, The Frank Skinner Show on ITV, Jo Whiley on Channel 4, David Letterman on ITV2 and Lorraine Kelly on GMTV and Sky One. Then there is the cosy daytime chat of This Morning, Richard and Judy, Ruby Wax - recently tried out on BBC1 - and the doomed Big Breakfast. It all adds up to around 40 hours of celebrity chat a week.

To its critics, the chat show explosion is a sign of the lack of imagination of broadcasters who are under more pressure to deliver ratings than ever before. "There is a herd instinct among broadcasters: a single genre becomes fashionable and they follow each other like lemmings," says Jocelyn Hay, chairman of viewers' group The Voice of the Listener and Viewer. "It is a direct result of competition and the pressure for ratings. They rush in to clone what the others are doing, when what viewers actually want is diversity."

In uncertain times, commissioning editors turn to formats which are well established - and cheap. Johnny Vaughan Tonight is thought to cost around £80,000 a show, not far off the expected cost of Graham Norton's daily dose. Sitcoms and sketch shows, in comparison, can come in at £250,000-plus.

"It is fundamentally safe TV," says David Wood, deputy editor of Broadcast magazine. "Everyone understands the concept of a chat show, although that's not to say that programme-makers don't try to innovate within the format."

Sebastian Scott, Big Breakfast launch editor and co-managing director of Princess Productions, which made Ruby, says innovation is key to the genre's continued popularity. "Chat shows will always be around as long as you are creative in the way you make them," he says. "Ruby is part chat show, part lifestyle. Johnny is in the Letterman tradition. Graham is a comedy chat show like Dame Edna or Mrs Merton. People tune in as much for the host as they do the guest, and he will do incredibly well even if he doesn't have big-name guests."

But commissioning editors seeking a ratings Holy Grail will have to look elsewhere. When BBC1's Wogan went out three nights a week, it was watched by four or five million - not much more than Watchdog, which followed it. Channel 4's early-Nineties equivalent, Tonight with Jonathan Ross, averaged just

Around eight million watch Parkinson, but like its first incarnation - and his legendary chats with Muhammad Ali and the like - may be more talked about than watched. "There was never a golden age of chat shows," says one ratings analyst. "Even in the Seventies, Parky never got ratings like Morecambe and Wise."

Ratings for Johnny Vaughan Tonight have been mixed, between 1.4 and 2.1 million viewers so far. Series editor Paul Ross says it is too early to judge whether it is delivering. "We have only been on air two weeks," he insists. "The show is not about Johnny, it's about the interaction between Johnny and his guests. Nothing against Graham Norton, but Johnny doesn't use them as the butt of a joke. Graham is a one-trick pony."

Ross accepts that there may be room to tinker. "Maybe the live band was a mistake, but I like the showbiz element. I would have loved to do it five nights a week to give it greater continuity."

TV executives have turned back to chat shows in the wake of the success of celebrity magazines such as Heat, now selling more 1.5 million. than a million copies a month. But viewers can have too much of a good thing, warns GMTV editor Martin Frizell. "Broadcasters are looking for ways to fill the schedules. Like gardening and cookery shows before them, now everyone's got to have their own chat show. We're reaching saturation point. People try to copy David Letterman or Jay Leno, and they can't do it. Graham and Channel 4 have got a very tough task going five nights a week."

Broadcasters also want to recoup their investments in the hosts. It is no coincidence that the two new nightly chat shows are hosted by the two presenters - Norton and Vaughan - who have the biggest "golden handcuff" deals with their respective channels. "Having paid all this money, broadcasters have to find something to do with them," argues one TV executive. "Not only is a chat show the easiest option, it's also the ultimate ego trip for the star involved."

Not surprisingly, perhaps, Parkinson executive producer Bea Ballard says the simpler the format, the more chance it has of success. "Chat shows are increasingly using a gimmick to make them interesting. Mrs Merton was a brilliant idea, but unfortunately it was one joke," she argues. "Then the joke ran thin and it was axed."

Industry legend has it that back in the 1970s, Parky was offered his own chat show five nights a week. BBC1 chiefs wanted him as the "British Johnny Carson", but lost their nerve after research suggested it would not work. "Michael was hugely disappointed," recalls one industry veteran. "But if he had gone five nights a week, would he still be on the television today?"