Talia Parkinson-Jones and Andrew Scher have joined Disney’s new daytime talk show, Tamron Hall, said William Burton, senior VP of daytime, sports and syndicated development and production at ABC Entertainment on Wednesday. The announcement came just before show host and executive producer Tamron Hall and executive producer Bill Geddie had an on-stage conversation at Promax Station Summit in Las Vegas.
“Talia and Andrew are exceptionally talented production professionals, and we are beyond thrilled to welcome them to the TamronHall senior production team,” said Burton in a statement. “Talia is a highly regarded trailblazer in the daytime space, and her vision combined with Andrew’s impressive track record will help position the show for the best possible success.”
Parkinson-Jones comes on board as co-executive producer, while Scher becomes supervising producer. The show will be produced in New York City and air live-to-tape on most days. Tamron Hall premieres in national syndication on Monday, Sept. 9.
On ABC-owned stations WABC New York, WPVI Philadelphia and WTVD Raleigh, Tamron Hall will air at 10 a.m., leading out of Disney’s Live with Kelly and Ryan, bumping CBS Television Distribution’s Rachael Ray to 2 p.m. in those markets. Disney's Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which the company canceled this year, has been airing in those 2 p.m. time slots.
Related: Disney's 'Tamron Hall' to Premiere Monday, Sept. 9
Prior to joining Tamron Hall, Parkinson-Jones was co-executive producer at Debmar-Mercury’s The Wendy Williams Show. She began her career in television at the Oxygen network and she has produced for ABC, NBC, Fox, MTV, BET and E!. She also was a casting director at Discovery’s Cash Cab.
Scher developed and launched CTD’s TheDoctors and then spent five seasons working on that show. Prior to that, he was a senior producer at Dr. Phil and has served as a producer for several other syndicated talk shows, including JohnWalsh, Queen Latifah and Ricki Lake.
Tamron Hall will be a multi-topic, single-host talk show, covering everything from celebrity to true crime to fashion and much more. Hall got her start as a local news anchor in her home state of Texas and later in Chicago, and then jumped to the national stage as a co-anchor of NBC’s Today and MSNBC. She also hosts a true-crime show on Investigation Discovery.
“The preparation for this daytime talk show did not come from my years on the national news stage, it came from my time on the local level,” she said at Promax Station Summit in Las Vegas on Wednesday. “When you are on a national news show, you are in a bubble -- you are. You can’t win without the local news. Local news is more trusted than the national news.”
The new daily talk show plans to incorporate technology that will let some guests join the show virtually. “We’re working on technology where it looks like they are actually in the audience. It’s all about making the show accessible,” Hall said.
Hall compared her entry into the world of syndicated daytime talk to the NFL.
“Walter Peyton, to my mind, is the greatest running back that ever played the game,” she said. “But when he retired, they didn’t retire the position. There are obviously still running backs.
“[In daytime], the greatest have played the game in [Dr.] Phil [McGraw] and Oprah [Winfrey] but the game still remains. We’ll be able to get on the field because of partners like your stations. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I’m happy to have the opportunity to get on the field.”
Tamron Hall is executive produced by Hall and Geddie, co-creator and executive producer of ABC’s TheView. It is distributed in national syndication by Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International, the global content sales and distribution segment of The Walt Disney Company.
