Vying to Don Oprahs Mantle

It is only February, but those in the syndicated television industry care only about September. That is when a multitude of new daytime talk shows will come onto the market, the first real test for the genre since Oprah Winfrey signed off nine months ago.

There will be Jeff Probst, the Survivor host, whose talk show will be made by CBS, the same company that distributed The Oprah Winfrey Show; Ricki Lake, Steve Harvey and Trisha Goddard; and Katie Couric, whose talk show is, according to industry analysts, the most anticipated of them all.

None of the new hosts are making bold claims about reinventing the talk show genre; they merely want to keep it stable. That is not an easy task at a time when the overall broadcast television audience is shrinking.

But talk shows are reliable and relatively inexpensive to produce, and thus they remain alluring for local stations in a post-Oprah world. Come September, the new shows will join Dr. Phil McGraw and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the two Oprah protgs who rank No. 1 and No. 2, respectively; Ellen DeGeneres; Maury Povich, the most popular host among viewers under the age of 50; and Kelly Ripa, whose show Live is seeking a successor for her co-host, Regis Philbin, who left in November.

And then well see which new shows survive, said Bill Carroll, a vice president for the Katz Television Group, which advises stations on syndication.

I n the meantime, the new shows are hiring staff members and preparing marketing campaigns, while some underperforming shows, like Anderson Coopers five-month-old Anderson, are looking at September as a restart of sorts.

In syndication, there is less money at stake than there used to be. Local television stations, hurt by the recession, are being more cautious about the commitments they make, and in some cases syndicators are accepting lower license fees even for established shows.

Stations and syndicators are working more closely and collaboratively than in the past, said John Nogawski, the president of CBS Television Distribution. Of the shows starting in the fall, he said, No ones going to be making a fortune here, but everybodys going to have a shot.

Distributors and analysts say they have not seen this much daytime competition in a decade in part because Ms. Winfrey, whose show was head and shoulders above the rest, has shifted to OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, on cable.

We are still experiencing the effects of Oprah leaving daytime syndication, said Ken Werner, the president of domestic television distribution at Warner Brothers. The audience is looking for alternatives distinctive voices to fill that void.

In the summer, Warner Brothers, which has Ellen and Anderson, is running a six-week trial of a talk show by Bethenny Frankel, a former star of The Real Housewives of New York City. If received well, it will become a daily show in 2013. Also for 2013, Sony Television is preparing a show by Queen Latifah.

Almost all talk shows are made with women in mind; past attempts to tailor them for men have fallen flat.

Daytime TV is about companio! nship, M r. Werner said.

Over all, the single most popular syndicated show in the United States is the game show Wheel of Fortune, with 11.2 million viewers on a typical day this season, about two million more than its game show companion Jeopardy. Both tend to be shown in the evenings, when the number of available viewers is higher. Judge Judy ranks between them, with 9.8 million viewers, on average.

Daytime talk shows like Dr. Phil, which has about four million viewers a day, are lower-rated, but fill up far more hours on stations schedules.

Along with the syndicated shows, there are a number of new network-owned chat fests in the same vein as The View, which has been running on ABC stations since 1997. NBC has Access Hollywood Live, CBS has The Talk, and ABC now has The Chew and The Revolution, both of which replaced soap operas this season.

Theyre going that way because the shows are economically viable, Mr. Carroll of the Katz Television Group said. Or, put another way, they are inexpensive.

And when the shows are successful, he added, Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, Live with or without Regis, Dr. Phil, Ellen theyre a franchise pretty much forever.

This fact made Ms. Winfreys exit last spring all the more remarkable. CBS has made clear to her producers that she is welcome back to broadcast syndication anytime, but there are no indications she will return. Although it has had ratings difficulties, the OWN cable channel is slightly more than a year old, and Ms. Winfrey and others involved say they believe they can increase its audience in the next two years.

After Ms. Winfreys show ended in May, some of her viewers started watching Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Judge Judy, Ellen or local newscasts instead.

And some just turned off the set, Mr. Nogawski of CBS said, adding, We always knew there ! was goin g to be some of that.

Ms. Couric, formerly of NBCs Today and the CBS Evening News, is being positioned as a trusted friend like Ms. Winfrey. Ms. Lake will also make a play for Ms. Winfreys former audience, although it remains to be seen whether she can shed her tabloid skin. Meanwhile, the show by Ms. Goddard, a British TV personality, will specialize in the kinds of conflicts Ms. Lake used to showcase.

Mr. Probst and Mr. Harvey, both of whom bring existing fan bases but no specific subject matter expertise, are being positioned as everymen.

Im only an expert at one thing: thats the mind-set of a man, Mr. Harvey said in an interview at a conference of program executives in Miami last month.

Rick Feldman, who is stepping down as president of the National Association of Television Program Executives, which held that event, says he suspects that a bigger shake-up of the syndication market could be looming, as contracts for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy end in 2014 and the contract for Judge Judy ends in 2015. As Ms. Winfreys departure demonstrated, he said, Things dont last forever.