Mike Wallace, CBS News
‘60 Minutes’
Sad, funny, undeniably authentic, Tabloid Baby tells the tale of what befell too much of mainstream
television news over the past couple of decades as the bad drove out the good.
Maury Povich
Burt was there for the birthing of tabloid, he became the
heart of the genre, and now he’s written the Bible.
Paula Zahn, Fox
News Channel
It was a fun read.
I laughed out loud!
Jim Ryan, Good Day New York, WNYW-TV
This one is terrific!
This one puts you there. It
gives you the flavor of being there and it gives you the kind of off-the-wall
gonzo journalism that was going on there!
From The Robins Report,
TV Guide
Tabloid Baby is a compelling, vodka-laced
chronicle that pulls back the curtain on the helter-skelter world of tabloid
TV. Celebrities’ bad behavior—illicit sex, substance abuse, betrayal and
revenge— are commonplace in the weird world of Tabloid Baby… Some of the
incidents in Tabloid Baby are laugh-out-loud funny… I can corroborate
how accurately he captures the era… Kearns does his subjective best to show how
the tabloid genre stripped away pretensions from the news. He demonstrates how a bare-knuckle style of
reporting often produced exclusives, while occasionally even bringing insight
to the most sensational stories of
the decade.
From John Strausbaugh,
New York Press
He helped change
forever the way the news gets told on TV. Kearns is
defiantly, happily unapologetic. That’s part of what makes his memoirs such an
absorbing read. Tabloid Baby is a funny, brash, packed-with-anecdotes
account of his role in the trashing (my usage) of TV news. If Kearns lays on
the mythologizing a bit thick–his portraits of colleagues like Steve Dunleavy
come straight out of 1930s hero-worship of the two-fisted, whiskey-pounding
newspaper reporter–it’s probably just because he’s looking to sell HBO the
movie rights, and why not. Besides, even his heroes show their warts, and
portraits of powerful media figures like Barry Diller, Diane Dimond, Anthea
Disney and Jeff Greenfield are boldly unattractive. On the broad scale, Tabloid
Baby is a simple and familiar tale
about the Aussification of the news: that is, it’s about the enormous, and many
would say enormously detrimental, impact Rupert Murdoch and his piratical
Aussie crew have had on news, both in print and electronic, both here and in
England, over the last decade. On a
more petty level, various other famous asses get satisfying comeuppances in Tabloid Baby. He tells some great Hollywood-sleaze stories.
The Straits Times, Singapore
Pop
culture history of the best sort -- dishy, gossipy, delivered with the
unerring ear of a TV reporter for the good soundbite and a healthy dose of
cynicism. A rough and tumble, zippily-entertaining
pop history of the birth of American tabloid television. In this kiss-and-tell, after a fashion,
book, he provides the lowdown on how American television reporting got from the
buttoned-down, WASP mentality of anchors like Walter Cronkite to the
sleaze-driven mania of the Lewinsky phenomenon in the 1990s.
Today’s Librarian magazine
Tabloid
Baby
is a realistic account of how the medium of television emerged from the mass of
“infotainment” programming it now embraces. A
master at taking the reader behind the scenes, author Burt Kearns goes one
better and shows in detail who’s calling the shots and the cut-throat nature of
the business. Kearns relates the down
and dirty to us—all first hand. The industry philosophy of “do whatever you have to do to get ratings,
no matter who you hurt” is the underlying theme throughout the book, and
Kearns’ experience as the former executive producer of A Current Affair and Hard Copy makes him more
than qualified to give us this accurate account. The reader is given the obvious advantage of hearing about the
people, the drinking, the sex, the drugs, from someone on the inside who lived,
ate, and breathed tabloid TV shows. Kearns’ book has all the makings of a
best-seller. It pulses and moves, and, like the medium it speaks of,
presents us with a hook, teases us, and leaves us wanting more. As a former
television show producer, I know many of the people Kearns writes about. Like
myself, many in the industry will be nodding their heads in agreement, and the
ones who won’t are those who will know they’ve been found out and that the jig
is finally up. Throw away any other book you’ve ever read about television
shows, and welcome to the real world of Tabloid
Baby. It’s powerful, addictive
reading, and despite the 500 pages to go through, I kept wanting more. Sequel?
From Neal Travis, The New York Post
The navel-gazing that's going on at the TV
networks right now will be enhanced by the publication of Burt Kearns'
enthralling book, Tabloid Baby in which
the veteran of shows like A Current Affair and Hard Copy reveals the M.O. of
the programs that changed the way the medium covers news.
From Steve Dunleavy, The New York Post
Con men, criminals, celebrities, politicians -
all seemed to remain part of A Current Affair’s extended family, even when we
beat them up. Burt Kearns, in his new
book "Tabloid Baby," takes us on a delightful and raucous romp
through that world. It was a world that
will never be seen again. The wildest bunch of pirates imaginable. I know
because I was there. In eloquent if
sometimes brutal prose, Kearns, a senior producer on the show, unmasks all the
usual suspects, which would guarantee that Tom Brokaw wouldn't let himself be
buried in the same cemetery as any of us.
"We'd taken television to a delirious and dangerous edge,"
Kearns writes. In varying doses of
scandal, celebrity, crime, politics and morality, the tabloid television tales
riveted a nation for a decade and Kearns grabs it all in print. The title of the book, "Tabloid
Baby," tells you how it all went full circle until Kearns goes
respectable, marries beautiful British TV anchor Allison Holloway and has a
lovely son called Sam. All wrapped up in Los Angeles suburbia. Those wedding bells are breaking up that old
gang of mine. Of course, I normally
would have sued the son-of-a-gun for what he wrote about me, but I can't - it's all doggone true.
From Frank DiGiacomo, The New York
Observer
In the opening pages of Tabloid Baby, television producer Burt Kearns’ memoir about the
rise and fall of tabloid television, he writes that New York Post reporter
Steve Dunleavy, "the ageless legend with his silver pompadour, eagle beak
profile and rakish charisma, was the paragon of everything that made journalism
romantic and dangerous. He was friend to cops and criminals, bums and kings. He
knew the words to any show tune you could toss at him." And then Mr.
Kearns gets to the point: "Dunleavy, it was said, would fuck anyone, do
anything–fuck anything–for a
story." In journalistic parlance,
that is the nut graph to Mr. Kearns’ first-person account of his immersion in
the sweaty, up-all-night 120-proof world of tabloid television that media mogul
Rupert Murdoch brought to America when he imported a band of Australian
"wild pirates," as Mr. Kearns referred to them in a phone interview,
to run the American TV and media properties that he had purchased… Indeed, if
the book justifies anything, it’s that Mr. Dunleavy deserves his title as the
Keith Richards of tabloid journalism.
From The Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia
Young enough to be Steve Dunleavy’s son, Kearns arrived in
New York City from a sleepy suburban newspaper the night John Lennon died, and
elbowed his way up in television newsrooms before getting his big break—working
with Dunleavy and several other Australians to set up the hugely successful
tabloid show A Current Affair. It was a rollercoaster ride, and prompted
Kearns to write a book about the era—a rollicking number called Tabloid Baby. It’s during the launch that he coins the Keith Richards line
about his old mate, whom treats as a loveable but eccentric uncle. There’s plenty more where that came from, in
the book.
From The Australian, Sydney, Australia
“What’s wrong with you?” my wife asked, as I lay in bed on
Saturday morning, recharging the batteries, laughing, chortling and
giggling. I was just reliving a part of
my past, utterly engrossed in Burt Kearns’ book, Tabloid Baby. It tells the
rip-roaring, devil-may-care, booze-fueled story of the explosive rise of
tabloid TV in the U.S. Kearns tells it all in a vivid, brutally
honest account that is riveting, funny, yet ultimately sad. Not only do the central characters fall,
one by one, victims of booze, fatigue and Hollywood politics, but so does the
genre itself… In a sense, Tabloid Baby is a tabloid history of
tabloid itself; a potted, bovrilized, cut-to-the chase story about a ten-year
TV subset of the wider newspaper genre that grew, blossomed, and wilted within
the 20th century… The tabloid era maybe well behind us now, but
that’s why Tabloid Baby is such a good read—it’s pure nostalgia; a
portrait of the way we were, for those who may prefer to forget…
From Ed Breslin, Seek Books Update,
Seekbooks.com
Tabloid
Baby provides as much high-octane entertainment as any Hollywood expose, and, in
the bargain, it concerns a very serious subject, and sheds a sharp light on it:
the nature of journalism at the dawn of the millennium. Every big news story of the 80s and early
90s is showcased in here. What’s more,
Burt Kearns proves the old journalism adage that the story behind the story is
often the best story. All of these guys
would have attacked the Great Wall of China with a safely pin if a great story
had been on the other side. Reading about
them in Tabloid Baby, you feel that
Burt Kearns has done for them as marauding journalists what Robert Louis
Stevenson did for pirates in Treasure
Island.
From Connie Martinson Talks Books (PBS & Beverly Hills Courier)
Burt writes like a
young Harold Robbins,
fast paced, character descriptive and true situations that do not always speak
well of the teller. It is, as Burt
says, an uncensored account if the revolution that gave birth to 21st
century television news broadcasting.
Burt’s story of office politics from A Current Affair to Hard Copy is
riotous.
From The LA Weekly
The best parts of the book are his candid
confessions of the sleazy tactics — ranging from stealing a Joey Buttofuoco
tape off a New York satellite feed to copying the infamous Rob Lowe sex tape
off an Atlanta television screen— that got him into trouble. Kearns also pops off some good caps at
pompous media figures, including Jeff Greenfield, who greeted a tabloid
cameraman who baited him during the O.J. trial by saying, “This is the kind of
lack of civility that I really think is unfortunate.” And the boozy, Vegas-stomping, strip-club-hopping,
Sammy Davis Jr.–fawning life he describes, in vomit-in-the-office-trash-can
detail, is emulated by mainstream media personalities today.
"Kearn's book is a brutal chronicle of how exposure to the Australian tabloid ethos drove him to the brink of alcoholism."
From News of the World, London
TV boss confesses… Sensationally!
From The Jerusalem Post
A lively, compulsively readable account of his
experiences as a producer at the American tabloid television shows A Current
Affair and Hard Copy!
From The Hartford Courant
Kearns relates dozens of raucous adventures in his new
memoir, Tabloid Baby. It's a rollicking remembrance that
romanticizes tabloid TV, as if the shows A Current Affair and Hard Copy were
Hearst and Pulitzer battling over the Spanish-American War in the early days of
yellow journalism. Kearns, however,
suggests that the respectable press has always overstated the differences
between itself and the tabs. To him, a tabloid story is simply one with a lot
of emotion, real characters and a moral at the end -- a story with all the
elements and drama of real life. He's started a new Web site -- tabloidbaby.com
-- that promises links to the best tabloid stories of the day, and he revels in
how they come from places people might not expect, like The New York Times, the
Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News.
From The Malibu Surfside News
Tabloid Baby
is as entertaining a read as the television shows it describes. The book chronicles the last great
communication revolution of the 20th century, providing a
behind-the-scenes look at the birth of a new approach to network news.
From The Palisadian-Post, Pacific Palisades, CA
We cannot print the title of Chapter 4, but Kearns’ new
book Tabloid Baby features detailed
accounts of scandals involving Rob Lowe, the Kennedys and everything else he
covered during his decade in tabloid television. Producing for A Current Affair and later Hard Copy, Kearns did
anything, sometimes resorting to illegal measures, to get the story. Kearns never claimed that such stories were
vital information to American viewers… To him, the torrid tales served a much
different purpose: humor.
Victor Neufeld,
executive producer, ABC News 20/20
I enjoyed the book a lot.
I am a closet "Current Affair" aficionado here at ABC News…
although some of what I learned happened at the program from reading the book I
trust would never happen here!
From TV Guide, The Web Page
A hilariously scandalous account of the birth of tabloid
TV!
From Salon.com
Tabloid television isn't dead. Shows such as A Current Affair and Hard Copy that thrived on
news, gossip and scandal and brought the world dramatic reenactments and
hidden-camera scoops were simply made redundant. Burt Kearns was a producer on both of
those shows. To hear him tell it,
tabloid TV simply morphed into network news magazines, syndicated talk shows,
ceaseless cable "news" coverage and those morning programs where the
men all wear sweaters and the coffee is decaffeinated.
From The Chattanooga Times & Free Press
Do you remember when the national news shows
were serious, dull and only watched by your parents who felt some obligation to
turn it on before dinner? Do you
remember when all that changed? During
the '90s, the lines that once divided real news, real life and real
entertainment were completely erased and replaced by a TV gumbo that includes
cop shows, paramedic shows, judge shows and more news magazines shows featuring
real people than there are real people.
Burt Kearns was there at the beginning, and he has written a book about
tabloid TV and its rise to prominence and eventual merger with "real
news." Tabloid Baby is the story
of how shows like A Current Affair and Hard Copy, with their behind-the-story
stories of real people, went from industry joke to industry leader to the
industry norm…
From The Trumbull (CT) Times
At times his life sounds as if he escaped from one of those
old-time movies such as The Front Page, about newsmen who planned stunts, lied,
stole stories and would do anything to get The Big Story first!
From The Daily
Grind, Radiodigest.com
One of the most popular radio show guests the last week or
two has been Burt Kearns, author of the tabloid TV memoir. Has he got stories!
Barry Farber,
nationally-syndicated radio host
Burt Kearns is one of the early revolutionaries who
changed television forever and put it between the covers of Tabloid Baby. He didn’t only write about it, he lived it. He made that particular piece of
TV history happen!
Art Bell, nationally-syndicated radio host
A great book!
Bill Diehl, ABC
Radio Network
You ruffled some feathers with this book. You named names—you didn’t pull any
punches!
Joey Reynolds, WOR’s
nationally-syndicated radio host
An excellent book.
I want everybody who listens to my show to buy this book. You’ll love it!
Nick DiGilio, WGN
Radio, Chicago
Bridges have been burned like you would not believe with
this book! It’s incredibly
entertaining. You’ll rip right through
this book. Very entertaining—and honest. Boldly honest.
John Carney, KMOX Radio, St. Louis
Opens up the world of tabloid television as you have never
seen it!
Paul Harris, KTRS Radio, St. Louis
Burt has great stories in his tell-all book!
Bill Handel, KFI
Radio, Los Angeles
Karen Grant, KSRK Radio, Monterey
Tabloid Baby
really is a hoot!
Ross Stevenson, 3AW Radio, Melbourne, Australia
What a ripper book!
I bought a separate copy for the programme director. He too declared it a beauty. A great read. Well done!
Chaunce Hayden, Eyada.com
It’s a great book!
I swear to God, Tabloid Baby is the real deal. No one has the balls to
write what he wrote, knowing the consequences.
And he knew what would happen! I
think Burt is the best tabloid journalist
in America!
George Pennacchio,
Hollywood Wrap Weekend, ABC-TV News
Explicit! Author and former TV tabloid producer Burt
Kearns writes all about the rise of tabloid TV in a book guaranteed to cause a
scandal!
Caslon Analytics, Australia
A tabloid-flavoured expose of the birth of the
Fox television network. It replaces
Alex Block's Outfoxed: Marvin Davis,
Rupert Murdoch, Joan Rivers & the Inside Story of America's 4th Television
Network!
From Willamette Week, Portland, Ore.
Hilarious exposé of the news we love to hate!
Steve Powers, Ph.D., co-author, "How To Watch TV News"
An insightful, incisive, and revealing history of the last
television revolution of the twentieth century. With his combination of detailed reporting, novelistic approach
and raw honesty, Kearns spins a compelling, rousing adventure that takes the
reader behind the scenes of the decade’s most important as well as most
sensational news events. This is the
first and best insider account of a movement that changed the face of
television news.
Jonathan Vankin, MediaNews Extra!
Good reading for journalists. A three-fisted insider's account of the early days of tabloid
TV!
From John Austin, Hollywood Inside Syndicate
Tabloid
Baby could even be considered ”The Front Page” of the millennium, the “Boogie
Nights” of journalism. We found it to be
an utterly fascinating look at tabloid (TV) journalism that we didn't even know
existed. Kearns has revealed more
"dirt" than we expected.
Celebrities, we are sure, will not like being exposed by such an
"inside source"- nor will other members of the media. From
our inside knowledge of tabloid journalism after thirty five years in the
newspaper & TV business, we can assure you that Kearns has given us a
really realistic account of what goes on.
Believe us, this book is
undeniably true and authentic. You can be rest assured that you, the reader
have been given the obvious advantage of reading about the people, the
drinking, the sex, the drugs, from someone on the inside who lived, ate, and
breathed tabloid TV.
Anita Talbert, E! Entertainment TV
& syndicated gossip columnist
A fantastic
compendium of the history of Tabloid TV-- from a man who lived it. Stars better be braced! Kearns is sparing no
expense on anyone and no one is safe.
It is 500 pages of scathing tell-all right from the horse’s mouth… all
the behind-the-scenes scandals that have never seen the light of day. Right now
there are lots of celebrities squirming in discomfort. Between this book and Heidi Fleiss’s
memoirs, no one in this town is safe!
Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D., cable TV show host
Tabloid Baby earns my highest
commendation. It reveals the innermost
secrets of the world of tabloid television like no other book!
Carol Vitale, The Carole Vitale Show
We are in love with this book, Tabloid Baby. Never a dull moment!
John Cluckie, Under the Covers with John Cluckie
This book is fabulous!
It’s full of celebrity sleaze and scandal and gossip. A must read!
Linn Taylor, Screentime Access, Sydney,
Australia
A rip-snorting, page-turning, knee-slapping
trip down television's memory lane--the good and the bad--written by a talented
wordsmith who lived through the era--helped shape it--and came out alive! If you've ever wondered how television is
made--look no further for a reference book!
Brett Hudson, star of CBS’s Hudson Brothers Comedy
Hour
This is one of the best books I have ever read! Burt Kearns is the author of the
millennium. Having been in show
business my whole life, I can honestly tell you that Mr. Kearns has written the
"behind the scenes" truth of the television industry. Tabloid
Baby is a winner. I can't wait to see the movie!
Luke Ford, lukeford.net
An absorbing book!
Jan Thomas, Good
Evening Norway TV
Entertaining and funny!
Very funny! Read this and find
out what’s going on behind the scenes!
Eames Yates, Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker
Tabloid Baby tells a truth that I have demanded
from myself and others. It is a brave
and daring look at those who have given their lives, their families, their
fortune and their health to bring to the American people the stories that tell
them who they are, what they are, and why they are.
Joe
Hamill, Court TV
This book is nothing less than an underappreciated
masterpiece. Cast as a memoir, it is
also, perhaps, the most densely-packed and exhaustive inside history of the
phenomena of Tabloid TV during its reign.
Michael
Raffaele, author, "The Editor:
Steps to Saving A Dying Newspaper"
Tabloid
Baby was TREMENDOUS. It is a breath of fresh air and should be taught in J-Schools
(and bars) across the country.
Rafael Abramovitz, legendary Tabloid TV correspondent
Burt Kearns is a very lucky man. Because best friends don’t sue!