Nobody is really expecting to be the next Oprah Winfrey because that's not going to happen, not even for Ms. Winfrey. But this fall, new aspirants are jostling for a perch on daytime television, and they seek a talk show less to cap a career than to expand their marketing horizons.

Like a cookbook, a perfume or a clothing label, the daily talk show has become the latest form of brand extension: product placement of the persona.

"The Queen Latifah Show" made its debut on Monday. bethenny Frankel, an alumna of "The Real Housewives of New York City," made her debut on Sept 9. Kris Jenner, mother of the Kardashian brood, ended a trial run last month.

New faces are popping up on even the oldest shows. "Today" introduced Carson Daly as a co-host on Monday, though he was partially eclipsed by the show's new blindingly bright orange set. Jenny McCarthy, an actress and former Playboy model who is better known these days as a champion of controversial alternative medical treatments, has joined "The View" as a host.

At the start-up end of the spectrum, Meghan McCain, daughter of Senator John McCain, began an on-the-road talk show on Saturday, called "Raising McCain," on Pivot, a new cable channel.

Back in the days of Mike Douglas, Dinah Shore and Phil Donahue, a talk show was a goal in itself, either as a second act for older stars or as the apex to years of climbing the show business ladder. Now it's added currency in the 24-hour-a-day business of being famous.

The field is crowded. Some of the most seasoned and popular television personalities - Anderson Cooper, Jeff Probst and Ricki Lake - recently tried to host their own talk shows and flopped. Katie Couric's show has held on, but the ratings are weaker than expected. At the moment, "Ellen" and "Dr. Phil" still lead the pack, but newer faces, including Wendy Williams and Steve Harvey, are holding their own. Like buying a lottery ticket, producing a talk show doesn't cost much, and somewhere, sometime, someone is going to win big.

What's striking about the newcomers is that their celebrity rests as much on commercial savvy as on conventional artistic talent. Even Queen Latifah, an accomplished movie actress and singer, has her own one-woman enterprise, with a line of CoverGirl cosmetics and two perfumes (Queen and Queen of Hearts). She is the star of an ad for Zyrtec, the allergy medication. She has also, despite the apparent contradiction, been a spokeswoman for both Pizza Hut and Jenny Craig.

For her debut, Queen Latifah chose to go old school. She asked one of Ms. Winfrey's favorite guests, John Travolta, to help kick off her talk show, and brought in Will Smith, an executive producer of her show, on Tuesday. Like Ms. Winfrey, she mingled celebrities and inspirational segments about deserving unknowns: she made over a classroom for a high school music teacher and his students, and helped war widows experience adventure travel. Tuesday's show was more animated than the premiere, but still surprisingly sluggish. The more dynamic moments were glossy CoverGirl ads that star the host and punctuate the show.

Ms. Frankel doesn't sing, dance or act, but she has parlayed her popularity on reality shows into an emporium of Skinnygirl products, from best-selling diet and advice books to her own Skinnygirl label of low-calorie wines, spirits and cocktails, which was bought by Beam, the company better known for bourbon.

Alternately brash, tearful, empathetic, zany, bossy and boastful, Ms. Frankel is a multipolar television personality. " Bethenny " is a dizzying carnival of girl-power news you can use and too much information, including where and how much Ms. Frankel waxes: she makes "Ellen" look like the "PBS NewsHour."

And Ms. Frankel seems to view her latest venture as a commitment she makes time for, not the pinnacle of her career. She said last week that she took a moment before each show to regroup, because, "I really want to be here for you, I want it to be kind of an hour that we just spend together, and I am focused and I am not thinking about anything else."

Ms. Jenner's trial run is over, and it seems unlikely that her show, " Kris," will be picked up. It turns out that without her boisterous Kardashian daughters, Ms. Jenner is poised, pleasant and about as exciting as a Sunday afternoon nap. Even an interview with her daughter Kim's famous boyfriend, Kanye West, couldn't liven up the show. The Kardashian brand may be golden on the E! channel, but it's a package deal.

"Brand" is an overused word, but it is so imprinted on the ethos of entertainment that those who have one no longer distinguish between a private label and a personal identity. When Mr. West made his star turn on "Kris," he didn't say that he and his girlfriend were from different worlds; he told Ms. Jenner that they are different "brands." He also said that he benefited from Kim Kardashian's lifestyle and personality, or, as he put it, "That's what I love about her brand."

Mr. West, like Mr. Darcy before him, was perhaps a little too candid about the downside of brand mixing, noting that love made him overlook warnings that dating Ms. Kardashian would damage his "credibility as an artist and a designer." Her mother didn't flinch, possibly because Mr. West publicly unveiled the first baby pictures of her granddaughter, North West, on her show.

Ms. McCain, a blogger who comes across as a Republican Party party animal, has an MTV-like show on Pivot, a channel with its own contradictions: it caters to younger viewers, the ones who don't watch conventional television. Ms. McCain poses as a bubbleheaded kook in grunge clothing who examines serious issues in a Holly Golightly manner. Her producers and film crew are all part of her on-camera inner circle, "TMZ"-style.

To her credit, Ms. McCain explores subjects like feminism and Internet privacy, not fashion or fads. But the effort to be both edifying and hip is a little strained, like recipes for kids that sneak spinach into brownies.

There are no rules to determine what works as a talk show. But increasingly, a talk show is something to be worked.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 17, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the child of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. North West is a girl, not a boy.

Source: Nytimes