FORMER talk show host Richard Bey is breaking his three-year silence over the cancellation of his controversial talk show – and pointing a finger at President Clinton.
Bey says he suspects the show was suddenly yanked in 1996 because of an episode featuring Clinton’s former lover, Gennifer Flowers, and an anti-Clinton columnist.
“The show got the highest ratings of the [rating period] and I had just started a new contract for a lot of money,” Bey said. “But the day after it airs, I’m called into the office and told that we’re going out of production.”
On the syndicated “Richard Bey Show”” – which originated from Ch.9’s studios in Secaucus – Flowers’ claimed that then-Gov. Clinton had gotten her pregnant in 1979 and paid her $200 in cash with the understanding she would have an abortion.
On the same show was conservative columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell, who had just written a column about past drug-use allegations against Clinton called “Smoking Out the Particulars.”
Bey said he was initially interested in booking Flowers because he had heard about how she and other anti-Clinton guests who had been set to appear on other talk shows had been suspiciously bumped at the last minute.
After his show was canned, Bey said he asked if it was because of the Flowers show – but never got a definitive answer.
“At the time my feeling was that if I say anything about this people are going to think that it was a case of sour grapes,” Bey told The Post. “I thought it would be gracious to take responsibility and move on.”
“I have no proof of anything,” Bey said, “There’s no smoking gun here. I’m not saying that the show was cancelled because of [the Flowers episode], but these are the facts. The [episode] was high-rated and the next day we go out of production.
“At that time all talk shows were in trouble anyway – it was right after the Jenny Jones [murder], but the stuff that I was doing was mild compared to what is on daytime TV today,” Bey said.
“People should be aware that more and more sources of information for the American public are controlled by large corporations,” Bey said.
“It doesn’t matter if whether there are conservatives or liberals running those corporations because basically they all have to work with the government – we don’t have an adversarial press anymore,” he said.
Bey says he has been looking for a new show to host in recent years, but despite shooting several pilots he has yet to get back onto the air.