COVER STORY : All Ears, All Day in TV Hell : Around the clock, the airwaves are saturated with talk shows, news programs and infomercials, all adding to television’s ever-spiraling tower of babble. Could one lone critic watch it all--and live to write about it?

There’s no more abundant commodity on television than talk.

It spins on the airwaves almost around the clock, whether in traditional talk shows or in other programs that feature talk-show components--such as morning news programs and infomercials.

That on most days there is more talk than things to talk about has not in any way crimped the genre’s growth. Because they cost relatively little and have the potential to make so much, talk shows are on nearly every programmer’s wish list. They come and go continuously, as do the personalities who earn their livings as talk-show hosts (anyone who can dress himself is deemed qualified).

Only this month, former tennis star Chris Evert had her own talk special; her strikingly unforgettable chat with Eddie Murphy undoubtedly puts her in line for her own series.

Those weird viewers who somehow find television too tongue-tied for their tastes can look forward to the special talk-show cable channel that is in the works.

Until then, all of us will have to make do with what we have: more than three dozen programs a day in which talk, from babble to genuine dialogue, is a centerpiece.

Could anyone watch them all, and live to write about it? On June 16, I did my best, monitoring and keeping a journal on portions of every talk or talk-oriented show available in the area of Los Angeles where I live. There are some omissions, for which I mostly blame my cable system. Because CNBC is not accessible in my area, for example, I was unable to watch the block of talk shows that air nightly on that cable channel. And some other talkers (like those on Spanish-speaking KMEX-TV) were beyond my personal reach.

Because it merely encompasses one 24-hour period, there is nothing scientific about this survey. But with the endemic bizarreness of the cross-dressing, cross-schlepping May ratings sweeps having passed happily into history, I hoped to capture the true nitty-gritty of talk, on a day when the prevailing news headlines were about alleged Pepsi tampering, President Clinton’s tightrope walking on the political-economic front and the continuing miseries in Bosnia and Somalia.

In that regard, it’s worth noting that one could easily infer from a large chunk of what I watched that our society is dysfunctional, that starting with the basic family unit, we are a nation of self-abusers. That’s not to say it’s a true picture, only that (despite the viewing day’s few droplets of happy juice) it was the clearest one emerging from the TV talk circuit on June 16, 1993:

6:45 a.m. On Pat Robertson’s Christian religious program “The 700 Club,” co-host Terry Anne Meeuwsen interviewed housecleaning authority Mary Ellen Pinkham. “In addition to cleaning houses and things,” Meeuwsen noted in a segue for the ages, “you’ve had a special cleaning that’s taken place in your heart.”

After noting that she gave her life to Jesus as a child, Pinkham added: “There are things that the Lord wants me to do. He wants me to show people what to do around the house.” She demonstrated the cleaning of a fluted lampshade. “Now for stains,” she said, “this is what the Lord sent me.” She displayed a container. “It’s called Mary Ellen’s WOW. This will remove stains that have been with you for 30 years.”

“Born-again” entrepreneur Pinkham said the Lord awakened her one morning and announced, “Mary Ellen, you are going to have a giving ministry.” Having a giving ministry “is nice,” she mused, because “it’s nice making money.”

7:19 a.m. On NBC’s “Today” program, host Katie Couric led a discussion about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Good choice, bad choice?” she asked the show’s regular panel of journalists. “In the end, I think it’s an inspired choice,” said Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief.

7:28 a.m. “Focus on Beauty” looked like a talk show, with host Cher flanked on a couch by two full-maned beauties and hair-care mogul Lori Davis. Instead, it was an infomercial on Lifetime cable. “Well, we’re just about out of time for this edition of ‘Focus on Beauty,’ ” Cher said, “but before we go, I just want to tell you . . . Lori has made this one-month free trial offer that I just can’t believe.”

7:48 a.m. “The things we do for beauty,” co-host Joan Lunden told a beauty expert on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

8:11 a.m. The Catholic Church is incapable of responding to molestation charges against its priests, charged an author, the Rev. Andrew Greeley, to “CBS This Morning” co-host Harry Smith. What most Catholics are seeking is not punishment of the clergymen, Smith said, but “recognition that some kind of problem exists.” Greeley said the church had “no strong motivation” to provide that recognition. Also, he estimated that no more than 4% to 5% of Catholic priests are pedophiles.

8:17 a.m. David Koresh’s mother, Bonnie Haldeman, told “Good Morning America” co-host Charles Gibson on ABC that she spoke to her son by phone after he was wounded in the initial raid on his compound outside Waco, Tex., and that he said, “I love you. . . . I’ll see you in the sky.” Fashionably dressed, Koresh’s mother was surprisingly calm as she recalled watching on television as flames engulfed the compound during the second raid. “Them people were law-abiding, God-fearing people,” she said.

8:37 a.m. On “The KTLA Morning News,” entertainment reporter Sam Rubin interviewed actress Halle Berry.

8:38 a.m. “This film has an awful lot of negative buzz to it,” “Today” co-host Bryant Gumbel said to Arnold Schwarzenegger about the actor’s new movie, “Last Action Hero.” Schwarzenegger blamed some of the criticism on “jealous people.” The movie is “creatively written and extremely entertaining, and it also has a serious message,” he assured Gumbel.

8:40 a.m. “Thank you so much for being here,” Rubin told Berry.

8:41 a.m. “It is an exceptional movie,” Schwarzenegger promised Gumbel.

9:03 a.m. He’s b-a-a-a-a-a-ck . Desperately trying to be toxic enough to be noticed anew, onetime TV bad boy Morton Downey Jr. bared his “Jurassic Park” teeth and said he empathized with the pasting that Ike Turner gets in “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” having been “kicked around in the tabloids” himself. Turner was the guest on Downey’s struggling syndicated talk show, available on KADY-TV in Oxnard. The two of them faced each other like genetic experiments gone awry.

“Few people have had worse publicity than you for kicking the crap out of your wife and taking drugs and things,” Downey told Turner, who is portrayed in the movie as a druggie who repeatedly terrorized and beat his then- wife, Tina Turner.

Ike initially denied “kicking the crap” out of Tina but, when pressed by Downey, admitted he did it once, when he was on drugs. “In fairness, there is never an excuse to hit a woman,” Downey said. In fairness, Ike said, it was only when Tina provoked him by getting “real close to my face” that he broke her jaw. Well, as long as he had cause. . . .

There must have been something about his guest that touched Downey deeply, for he promised viewers that by the end of the show, “you are going to ask what’s Ike got to do with it, why he has to be the brunt of these attacks.”

Obviously touched, Ike rose from his chair and embraced his kindred spirit, who responded with the kind of blinding, white-hot grin that makes you see blue spots.

9:13 a.m. Joan Rivers interviewed former personal assistants to celebrities. “Why is she so disliked?” Rivers asked one of her guests. “Why is she so rude, allegedly, to all these people? I walk in the hotel and the woman cleaning up the john says the meanest person she has ever met is Diana Ross.”

9:28 a.m. “Regis & Kathie Lee” was outdoors at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., speaking to Detroit Pistons star Isiah Thomas, at the park there with his kids. “Isn’t it a kick for them to watch all these characters?” asked Regis, behind dark sunglasses. “Last night, Goofy was in bed with me.”

9:33 a.m. Super-salesman Ron Popeil demonstrated his Ronco electric food dehydrator for the studio audience on “Incredible Inventions,” another infomercial that apes talk shows. “It’s got to be complicated,” the female host said about the appliance. “No, it’s not,” he said.

9:36 a.m. NBC programming executives are “nincompoops,” producer Jay Tarses told David Steinberg on the new KNBC-TV Channel 4 talk show “Hosted By . . . “ Tarses was still angry that the network gave his new comedy series a lethal Saturday night time slot and inexplicably changed its name to “Black Tie Affair” from “Smoldering Lust.”

Steinberg introduced a clip, which concluded with the male and female protagonists in a state of no-longer-smoldering lust, kissing passionately atop a desk. “I would say, ‘Black Tie Affair,’ if I saw that,” said Steinberg, drolly ridiculing the title. “Or ‘Two People Near a Desk,’ ” Tarses added.

9:38 a.m. Conflicts with the producers still keeping Vicki Lawrence away from her own series, “Vicki!,” substitute host Cristina Ferrare heard from the mothers of Soleil Moon Frye, Christina Applegate and other youthful celebs.

9:47 a.m. “Now when you’re making fruit roll-ups . . . ,” Popeil continued.

9:50 a.m. Isiah Thomas was gone. “Regis & Kathie Lee” was now exploring the world of sushi.

9:56 a.m. “Thanks for coming,” the host of “Incredible Inventions” said to Popeil on his own infomercial. As the paid studio audience spontaneously applauded on command, the host provided a final tribute: “The man behind Ronco, right here!”

9:57 a.m. “Thanks for joining us here today,” another host said. “On behalf of ‘Hamilton Beach Showcase,’ I’m Sarah Purcell.” Then Purcell, whose regular job is co-hosting ABC’s “Home” show with Gary Collins, began shaking hands with the audience in this talk-show-style infomercial on international station KSCI-TV.

10:01 a.m. Purcell and Collins greeted “Home” viewers on ABC.

10:02 a.m. “Priests and the sexual abuse of children,” announced Sonya Friedman, opening CNN’s “Sonya Live.”

10:03 a.m. “I had totally lost every sense of who I was,” a woman named Michelle disclosed on “Sally Jessy Raphael,” adding that after she left Robert, she first stayed with a friend, then with Lonnie.

“After Lonnie kissed me, I did feel nauseated,” Michelle said. “After the sexual experience, I vomited. I never did really--I hate to say this--reach orgasm.”

Michelle, you see, is white, and the absent Lonnie is the African-American father of her child. Sitting beside Michelle was her white husband, Robert. A slide on the screen explained that he was “raising his wife’s love child.”

Wearing a bolo tie and dressed in black like Zorro, Robert began his own story. “Things were going great in North Carolina. . . .”

10:11 a.m. On NBC’s “John & Leeza From Hollywood,” John Tesh and Leeza Gibbons discussed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

10:12 a.m. “Robert, did she tell you it was your child?” asked Sally. “No, ma’am, she didn’t,” he replied.

10:13 a.m. On “Home,” a healthy looking young woman named Melissa explained to Collins and Purcell how she became HIV-positive. “I was in love, and we practiced safe sex at first. But it is really hard when you’re living with somebody.”

She said she now lives day to day. “I mean, I make plans, but I don’t see far into the future. It’s depressing, basically.”

10:20 a.m. On “Sonya Live,” a priest representing the archdiocese in St. Louis answered Friedman’s question concerning the church’s response to molestation charges against Catholic clergy. “What happens is that the priest is immediately removed from his position,” he said. “If a call came in about me this afternoon, I would be out of my rectory tonight.”

10:36 a.m. “John & Leeza” welcomed “Last Action Hero” cast member Mercedes Ruehl. “So, Mercedes,” Tesh began, “how was the premiere?” Ruehl recalled the first time she saw Schwarzenegger in person: “Down the steps floated this vision. . . .”

10:50 a.m. “We’re going to talk about bargains,” said Purcell, standing in front of a washing machine that could be ordered by mail.

10:52 a.m. From the “Sally Jessy Raphael” audience came a question for Michelle: “I want to know why you think it was important that you didn’t have an orgasm. You are a Christian.”

11:02 a.m. “Couples who have lost the sizzle in their relationships” raised hell on the syndicated “Jerry Springer.” Couple No. 1 had been married seven years. He said she was always too busy to have sex, using their five kids as an excuse. She said all he wanted was “biff, bam, thank you, ma’am.”

Couple No. 2 had been married a year. He complained that she was always too tired for sex. She said he treated her like she was a computer. He argued that he massaged her “four or five times a week.” She replied, “You don’t massage me right.”

Like battling fools on “The Newlywed Game,” the spouses continued clubbing each other with sexual insults. “We’re using aliases here to protect your names,” Springer said. Protect their names? After they had shouted out intimate details of their sex lives on national television?

“I think you’re wasting time,” said a matronly member of the audience. “You should be home right now, doing it.”

Noon. No talk shows for an hour. Hallelujah!

1:01 p.m. Foregoing its customary noodle-head talk format for a day, the syndicated “The Richard Bey Show” went highbrow, presenting its own version of “The Gong Show.”

1:02 p.m. Platonic couples led off “Maury Povich.” The catch was that half of each couple secretly wanted to make the relationship romantic. While a man on the Bey show was inflating a balloon to music (“For a second there it looked like you were being breast-fed by Dolly Parton,” said the always tasteful host), Tanya was coming on to her best friend, Ryan, on the Povich show. Her: “I’d really like to carry this relationship further.” Him: “Over a bit of time, sure.”

1:46 p.m. Povich’s genuinely moving second segment starred a middle-aged couple whose dead son’s heart now beat in the body of the 23-year-old woman who sat between them on the stage. Then on came the heart recipient’s fiance with their infant daughter. The older mother recalled putting her hand on her dying son’s heart and saying, “This isn’t going to die.”

“Please give your organs,” Povich urged America.

1:56 p.m. On the Bey show, a man danced to music while trying to extricate himself from a straitjacket.

2:01 p.m. On a different edition of “Sally Jessy Raphael,” a couple whose son died in a motorcycle accident prepared to meet the woman who received his heart.

2:08 p.m. “He says her jealousy drives him crazy,” announced the host of “Jenny Jones.” Immediately, Mike and Franky began arguing furiously.

2:12 p.m. “Come on out, Cindy,” Raphael called to the grandmother who received Jeff’s heart. Meeting her for the first time, Jeff’s parents embraced Cindy in a scene as shiveringly real and emotional as television gets. Amazingly, Cindy bore a close resemblance to Jeff’s mother.

“Now we meet the man who received the boy’s liver,” Raphael said.

2:25 p.m. Jenny Jones and her studio audience responded badly to thudding Russell, accused of being so jealous of his wife that he drives her to and from work and the grocery store, and even escorts her to public bathrooms when they go out. Russell admitted that he wouldn’t allow her to go fishing with a 75-year-old man who recently underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery.

He told Jones that he’s “been messed around on too many times” by former girlfriends. Jones asked why he didn’t trust his wife. “I do trust her,” he replied. “Then why do you drive her to work?” Jones asked. “Well, she’s been raped a few times,” he said.

3:01 p.m. On “Oprah Winfrey,” an African-American father recalled being irate when his daughter was romantically approached by one of her college professors, and that he was especially angry because the man is white. An academic in the audience acknowledged having affairs with students.

3:10 p.m. The subject of “Donahue” was a middle-aged man who helped authorities build a criminal case against his father for bilking elderly women out of their jewels and money. “Do you love your father?” Phil Donahue asked. “Absolutely not,” the son replied.

3:15 p.m. A former student related on “Oprah” how shocked she was to learn that a professor she was contemplating marrying “had a fiancee living at his home.” Another former student recalled the time one of her professors phoned her from around the corner after his wife left town, saying he wanted to sleep with her. Academics in the audience debated the pros and cons of campuses regulating student-teacher dating.

3:40 p.m. Lifetime’s youth-oriented “The Jane Pratt Show” was the day’s only talk series that offered young people hope of empowerment, rather than depicting them as victims. The guests were young political activists who challenged their peers to become politically involved.

“That’s one of the great things about voting,” one student said. “If Bill Clinton doesn’t keep his promises, he’s outta there.”

4 p.m. “I Hate My Mother” was the theme of this “Geraldo” episode, with Geraldo Rivera alerting viewers to the “civil war” devastating millions of U.S. families. First on the battlefield were Sidney and her 14-year-old daughter, Sidney Marie, who Geraldo said was once so angry at her mother that she considered suicide. And Sidney was so angry at Sidney Marie recently that she had her arrested, for reasons not specified.

What promised to be a blockbuster screamathon, however, turned out to be a nightmare for Geraldo when he could not provoke his “haters” to express their venom verbally. Egad! They were wimps!

Keeping their anger submerged, Sidney and Sidney Marie spoke calmly and softly. Geraldo gave it his best shot. “Two weeks ago, you had your daughter arrested ,” he pleaded to Sidney. “Right, and I’d do it again,” she said softly. The host tried again. “Was what she did so awful ?”

“I thought it was,” Sidney said softly. “She was testing the limits.”

The next pair of combatants, David and Melody, would surely yield better results. “David,” Geraldo asked, “do you think if you could, you would trade in your parents?” David murmured: “No.” “Isn’t it true,” Geraldo pressed on, “that your real name is Larry and you don’t use it because it’s your dad’s name?” David replied in a quiet voice: “No.”

Would the third twosome rescue Geraldo from this dark abyss of hideous minimalism? “During Jenny’s teen-age years,” he said, “things got so bad that she pulled a knife out.” But that was in the past, and--oh, no!--Jenny and her mother were now holding hands.

Undeterred--hadn’t he proved he could provoke a riot on the air and get his nose broken from a thrown chair?--Geraldo dispensed with Mr. Nice Guy. Like a prosecutor badgering a witness, he grilled the mother about the time she got “angry” when Jenny moved in with the wrong kind of guy. “You don’t mean angry ,” Geraldo protested. “You were absolutely beside yourself !”

Nothing.

“When your daughter came at you with a knife,” he continued, back to being the good cop, “did you think she was actually going to stick you?” The soft reply: “No.”

4:20 p.m. On “Montel Williams,” viewers heard from female-to-male transsexual identical twins.

4:25 p.m. Sidney Marie told Geraldo that her parents divorced when she was 2 and that her father is a manic-depressive who hears voices. Then Jenny told Geraldo that her former husband beat her.

4:38 p.m. David Brock, author of “The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story,” was attacked by Michael Kinsley on CNN’s “Crossfire.”

4:40 p.m. A woman in the “Montel Williams” audience accused the twin transsexuals of being self-indulgent by spending money on sex changes “when you could be feeding people in Somalia.”

4:50 p.m. On “Geraldo,” Melody accused her son David of stinginess in buying her and her husband a can of cashews one Christmas. “And his father just had oral surgery and couldn’t chew.”

4:54 p.m. When Sidney Marie tearfully promised to start speaking to the mother she hated, Geraldo rubbed her head. If you can’t make ‘em scream, make ‘em cry.

4:55 p.m. On “Montel Williams,” the fiancee of one of the transsexual twins revealed that she was a victim of incest.

4:57 p.m. A caller to “Geraldo” said she makes believe her mother is dead.

5 p.m. One of TV’s most exploitative talk series, “The Jane Whitney Show,” sought to retry on TV in an hour an alleged child abuse case that took weeks to try in court. “He was rubbing my butt so hard it was raw!” charged 14-year-old Michelle, claiming that Richard Barkman, then her day-care worker, sexually molested her when she was 3.

Barkman--who spent five years in prison before his 1984 conviction was overturned when a judge ruled that a 5-year-old boy who testified against him may have been coached--sat on the panel with Michelle and Michelle’s mother. With them was the mother of the alleged victim whose testimony was later deemed suspicious on appeal. The women shrieked at Barkman. Michelle at times pointed at Barkman, jumping up, her body out of control and quivering with anger. Continuing to maintain his innocence, Barkman screamed back at his accusers.

Michelle claimed to remember in precise detail everything that happened, even the clothes she was wearing when she said Barkman molested her. “I kind of wonder if a 3-year-old can be that positive and explicit,” an audience member said.

Michelle’s mother wondered what kind of man would sexually abuse a child. And what kind of mother would encourage her young daughter to go on national television in a circus environment and put herself through such a painful, traumatic confrontation?

5:35 p.m. “Jane Whitney” panelists were joined by a man who was exonerated of his wife’s charges that he sexually abused their daughter.

5:43 p.m. The mother of the boy who testified against Barkman announced that she too was sexually molested as a child.

6 p.m. Craig Weatherup, president of PepsiCo’s North American Division, was interviewed on CNN’s “Larry King Live” about those widespread reports of cola can tampering. Weatherup was followed by an Israeli journalist who infiltrated Germany’s Nazi movement.

7:48 p.m. “Life & Times” co- host Patt Morrison interviewed a Latino Elvis on KCET-TV.

8-11 p.m. No talk shows available on my channels (except repeats of programs seen earlier in the day). I must remember to write a thank you note to my cable operator for not carrying CNBC.

11:08 p.m. On another edition of “The Jane Whitney Show,” the host accused the Rev. Al Sharpton of using inflammatory rhetoric that whipped blacks and whites into a frenzy. “People are already into a frenzy,” he replied. Sharpton and another African-American later disagreed on how to end racism in the United States.

11:20 p.m. On “Arsenio,” black comic George Wallace poked fun at African-American rituals.

11:23 p.m. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) lauded Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg and defended Justice Clarence Thomas on PBS’ “Charlie Rose.” “I’ve known Clarence Thomas for 13 years,” Hatch said. “He is a ‘born-again’ Christian.” As for the David Brock book’s rejection of Anita Hill’s sexual-harassment charges against Thomas? “I don’t know that anybody is going to have the full story on that,” Hatch said, “but I believe Clarence Thomas.”

11:30 p.m. On “Nightline,” Ted Koppel reviewed the cases against Muslim fundamentalists arrested in the bombing of the World Trade Center.

11:55 p.m. A white man charged on “The Jane Whitney Show” that whites are discriminated against in the United States.

11:55 p.m. Critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert discussed summer movies on “The Tonight Show.” They and Jay Leno debated whether the film “Jurassic Park” is appropriate for kids. “I’d say 7 and up,” said Leno. “I’d say 10 and up,” said Siskel.

12:03 a.m. On another edition of “Montel Williams,” a woman said that her 17-year-old son hired a hit man to murder her.

12:06 a.m. On “Whoopi Goldberg,” Jewish Defense League leader Irv Ruben said Jews should not “sit there and pontificate” when victimized by violence. When Ruben asserted that “Jewish blood is cheap,” Goldberg reminded him that in today’s violent society, everyone’s blood is cheap.

12:18 a.m. Laurence Fishburne, who plays Ike Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” told Leno about running into Turner: “He looked at me and said, ‘Whatcha doin’?’ I said, ‘I’m trying to be you.’ He said, ‘Well, do a good job.’ ”

12:25 a.m. Montel Williams asked a young girl when she started having parties at home without her mother knowing. Sitting beside her, the mother told Williams that she was afraid of her daughter.

12:33 a.m. “I’ve got you on my prayer list,” a preacher guest told TBN’s “Praise the Lord” hosts Paul and Jan Crouch. “God bless you in Jesus’ name,” Paul Crouch replied.

12:55 a.m. Comedians Penn and Teller placed four squirming maggots in front of David Letterman on “Late Night With David Letterman,” asking him to select three. Then they proceeded to wow the audience with their famed maggot magic routine.

1:33 a.m. On “Later With Bob Costas,” actor Eric Stoltz was asked by Costas if it were true that he had to mediate disputes between Cher and director Peter Bogdanovich on the set of the 1985 movie “Mask.” “Well,” Stoltz replied, diplomatically, “they were two proud lions.”

At 2 a.m., this proud lion hit the sack, feeling pretty darned pleased with myself. I not only had endured this marathon, but had indeed lived to write about it. On the other hand, you call this living?