It’s tough because you gotta stay serious when it’s time to stay serious – I shed a couple tears on the show I wasn’t really looking for. How do you walk that line between also making it funny? You cover such serious topics sometimes – people looking for missing loved ones, for example. I think that they enjoy smiling during the middle of the day. I don’t give them the answer that my publicist told me I should say, or my marketing guy told me I should say. Because they know I’m going to be very honest, and they know that I speak from a position of realness, that I don’t give them canned answers.

They’re interested in my take on a lot of different things. The honesty resonates with them – a lot of times I hear that from women. They trust me and know I’m not going to lie to them. When a woman hears advice directly from a man, I think it resonates for them a little better than when they hear it from their girlfriends. I think also, having a male perspective in daytime TV that’s a champion for women like I am, that helps.

My thoughts on child-rearing, on dating, on relationships, on your boss, o n your attitude about money, whatever it is. I think the authenticity resonates with people for the most part, because I have opinions and I’m not afraid to say them and I don’t care if it’s politically correct or not. So many daytime talk shows struggle and get canceled almost immediately. We got him on the phone shortly after he landed in Chicago (he films his talk and radio shows there and travels between “Family Feud” tapings in Atlanta) and asked him about what’s left to conquer in the entertainment world what he’s learned from the cutthroat daytime talk show world and if he really can find his fans a man.

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