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One of the privileged subjects examined nowadays in discourse analysis is the media discourse, especially the television discourse which constitutes the main point of interest for the present study. The paper gives an account of the relationship between television and entertainment on the one hand, and impoliteness on the other hand, through the linguistic analysis of a fragment extracted from the French talk-show On n'est pas couché. The concept discussed here is that of impoliteness as entertainment, or "entertaining"-impoliteness, which describes one of the major tendencies in the French talk-shows broadcasted today: namely, the exploitation of impoliteness and/or verbal violence for the sake of the show. The paper highlights the way in which impoliteness -- staged here in the form of a moralizing story -- provides entertainment thus fulfilling the public's expectations. Following this analysis, some of the contributions brought by the study of media discourse in (im)politeness and media genre theories will be outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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