Research Guides: Audiovisual Materials at the Schlesinger Library: Women's Television Talk Shows

Women's Television Talk Shows

Are You Listening? (1968-1984)

Martha Stuart was the producer of Are You Listening, a talk show featuring "people who are endlessly talked about and rarely listened to." Stuart brought together groups of people who had a particular experience in common and encouraged them to speak openly and candidly with each other in order to exchange their perspectives and experiences. Stuart would record roughly 3 hours of conversation in order to produce a 29-minute-long episode.

The Flo Kennedy Show (1978-1995)

The Flo Kennedy Show was a thirty-minute talk show hosted by the charismatic Florynce Kennedy, aired regularly on Manhattan Cable Television from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. Kennedy interviewed marginalized individuals, including leaders of gay and lesbian communities, political radicals, grassroots activists, outspoken lawyers, New York City politicians, and national and international figures. Watch The Flo Kennedy Show episodes online in the Internet Archive

Focus on Women (1983-1996) and Focus on Women additional videotapes (1996-1999)

Focus on Women, a television program featuring women of achievement, was initiated by Florence Rapoport in 1983 and produced by Long Island Cablevision. Prevalent among the women interviewed are writers, psychologists, artists, teachers, scholars, social activists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and health professionals. Watch episodes on the Schlesinger's Vimeo channel.

Woman (1975)

Woman was produced by Sandra Elkin for WNED, Buffalo, NY. This collection contains the episode “Women: Battle for the Vote,” in which host Sandra Elkin talks with Midge Mackenzie about the British suffrage movement. There is also one episode of this show in the Betty Friedan papers: "Controversies within the Women's Movement, Part II." These and other episodes of Woman can be viewed online at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

Woman Alive! (1974-1977)

A collaboration between Ms. magazine and public television, Woman Alive! was produced by and for women; it was intended to show "the changing mood of women in America," and "the new possibilities, alternatives, and choices open to them and their families." The first feminist magazine show on PBS, it documented many of the goals and issues of the women's movement of the mid-1970s.

Woman to Woman (1983-1984)

This collection consists of 100 episodes of the talk show Woman to Woman. On each 50-minute episode Pat Mitchell talks with five to ten women who have personal or professional experience with a topic pertaining to women, couples, children, relationships, religion, sexuality, health, or a social or political issue.