And another one bites the dust.

Tyra Banks had long been contemplating ways to forge an Oprah-style media empire well before the debut of her eponymous talk show in 2005. Setting aside her guest shots on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' in the 1990s, Banks decided to establish her TV-Q as a host by successfully launching 'America's Next Top Model' in 2003. That gave her the clout to fashion 'The Tyra Banks Show' -- which she segued to just three months after leaving the runway -- into something that was part tabloid, part tasteful.

Now that Banks has announced she's ending her talk show this season -- she'll be focusing on her production company, Bankable Studios, among other projects -- we formally add 'The Tyra Banks Show' to the pantheon of great talk shows we wish hadn't bit the dust.

The late eighties and early-to-mid nineties brought out some of the filthiest, bottom-feeding talk shows our country has ever seen. From Morton Downey Jr. and Sally Jesse Raphael to Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, it was the era when "trash TV" became a symbol of a country's swift spiral down one giant cultural toilet in opposition to people like Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, who effortlessly made interviews with, like, Fran Drescher come off looking like Masterpiece Theater.

Around the latter half of the "boom" came Ricki Lake, the formerly obese star of Hairspray (no, seriously, that was basically her résumé), with a show that combined the usual elements of trashy talk (read: "freaks") with something impossibly dumber yet: catchphrases. Unlike today, when it takes weeks to months for squawk-boxes to latch onto cultural buzzwords like "metrosexual" and "baby daddy," Ricki Lake was trotting out episode "subjects" like "You're not all that!" and "Dump that zero and get yourself a hero!"

Naturally, she was a smash.