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Steve Wilkos
In happy news, the low brow daytime television talk program,
The Steve Wilkos Show, which relied heavily on polygraph results to titillate audiences, has been cancelled!
People magazine published the news (https://web.archive.org/web/20260601144054/https://people.com/daytime-tv-shows-canceled-in-2026-11974352) on 25 May.
As previously discussed here on this message board (https://antipolygraph.org/forum/index.php?topic=5677.0) as well as on the blog (https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2020/01/25/polygraph-test-drives-innocent-steve-wilkos-show-guest-to-attempted-suicide/), a distraught Steve Wilcos Show guest, Anca Pennington, attempted to kill herself after the show's polygraph operator, Dan Ribacoff, falsely accused her of lying when she denied having burned her infant daughter, and Steve Wilkos made a spectacle of her on stage. That episode never aired.
In another episode, Jesse Wayne Perkins (https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2021/08/24/steve-wilkos-show-guest-who-passed-polygraph-later-confessed-to-murdering-15-month-old/) denied any responsibility for the death of a 15-year-old infant who had been in his care, and he passed a polygraph about it. But he was later criminally charged and pled guilty to first-degree murder in connection with the child's death. The
Steve Wilkos Show deleted video of that episode from its YouTube channel.
In yet another episode, a young mother, Kandie Meinhart (https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2024/07/21/steve-wilkos-show-guest-kandie-meinhart-passed-polygraph-but-pleaded-guilty-to-murder-of-infant-daughter/), denied having caused any harm to her infant daughter, and she, too, passed a polygraph on the show. But she was later charged with murder and was sent to prison for her daughter's death, which was ruled a homicide. Video of that episode was withdrawn from
The Steve Wilkos Show's YouTube channel.
And infamously, Dan Ribacoff, the show's long-time polygraph operator, was documented in a civil case (https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2020/12/22/tv-polygraph-operator-dan-ribacoffs-international-investigative-group-allegedly-bilked-client/) to have sent racist text messages (https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2021/10/08/celebrity-polygraph-operator-dan-ribacoff-sent-racist-text-messages/), which ultimately cost him his contract with the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority Police Department (MTAPD).
The Steve Wilkos Show eventually scrubbed Dan Ribacoff from its website (https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2021/10/27/steve-wilkos-show-kicks-polygraph-operator-dan-ribacoff-off-team/).
Shame on NBCUniversal for having produced this horrid show for nineteen years!