MONTEL WILLIAMS ENDS HIS SYNDICATED TALK SHOW AFTER 17 YEARS ON AIR.

Montel Williams says 17 years is enough. The talk show host has announced that his syndicated Montel Williams Show will take its final bow at the end of this season. “I can’t say thank you enough to those who’ve welcomed me into their homes for the past seventeen years,” Williams says in a statement. “It has been both an honor and a joy.” Williams says the show has taken him around the world, including visits to the Middle East, a post-Katrina New Orleans and Ground Zero in New York City. He says: “[I] talked with over 30,000 guests and over a half million studio audience members."

CBS Television Distribution, the syndicated show's producer and distributor, is offering the compilation series Best of Montel for fall, which includes 52 weeks of highlight episodes from the show. "We have been honored to have Montel as a part of our family for the past 17 years, and we're very excited that Montel will live on through these 'best of' episodes," said John Nogawski, president and COO of CBS TV Distribution.

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MONTEL WILLIAMS OFFERS APOLOGY TO REPORTER HE BLASTED IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA.

Talk show host Montel Williams has apologized for an angry confrontation with reporters who said he threatened them. Williams -- in Savannah to promote a program giving free prescriptions to low-income people -- became upset with a reporter's question Friday and terminated an interview. When the Savannah Morning-News reporters later returned to the hotel for an unrelated assignment, he approached one of them -- high school student Courtney Scott, an intern at the newspaper.

"As we were preparing to film, Montel walked up with his bodyguard and got in Courtney Scott's face pointing his finger telling her 'Don't look at me like that. Do you know who I am? I'm a big star, and I can look you up, find where you live and blow you up,"' said Joseph Cosey, a web content producer for the newspaper. At this time he was randomly pointing at all of us." Scott said she wasn't sure how to interpret Williams' comment. "I'm not sure if he meant 'blow me up' and ruin my career or really blow us up, but it was threatening," Scott said.

Williams, a patient advocate since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, later issued a statement apologizing for the outburst. "I mistakenly thought the reporter and photographer in question were at the hotel to confront me about some earlier comments," Williams said. "I was wrong, and I apologize for my overreaction."

The earlier interview ended after Scott asked Williams: "Do you think pharmaceutical companies would be discouraged from research and development if their profits were restricted?"

According to the reporters, Williams reacted angrily, saying: "I'm trying to figure out exactly why you are here and what the interview is about. I'm here as a patient advocate talking about the fact that medications available today are saving people's lives, that's what's saving mine and after that, this interview is done."

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MONTEL WILLIAMS MARRIES FOR THE THIRD TIME IN BERMUDA

Well, if the old, cliched saying, 'the third time's the charm' is true, talk show host Montel Williams latest marriage just might last longer than his first two. Besides, he has (that often times inaccurate) psychic Sylvia 'I See Dead People' Brown to put a bug in his ear if it's not.

Williams and his fiancée, Tara Fowler, wed before an intimate gathering of friends and family Saturday afternoon on a beach in Bermuda, PEOPLE has learned exclusively. "I am ecstatic! Unbelievable," Montel told PEOPLE immediately following the ceremony. The laid-back seaside wedding also included a V.I.P. ring-bearer: The couple’s 1-year-old black toy poodle, Mr. Max, wearing a harness with a ring-pillow on his back. Among the 60 guests were both the bride’s and groom’s parents and siblings. And Williams’ 18-year-old daughter Maressa (from his first marriage) served as one of Fowler’s bridesmaids.

Williams, 51, proposed to Fowler, 36, a former American Airlines flight attendant, on July 12, 2006, in front of both of their families at Manhattan’s Tavern on the Green restaurant. “A key to any successful marriage is that you’ve got to have friends, you’ve got to have family to support that union,” Williams told PEOPLE the night before the wedding. “And from day one we’ve had family and friends together that support this.”

On Friday night, the couple treated all of their guests to a cruise around the island on a 100-ft. yacht. “Instead of it just being ‘our day,’ we wanted everyone to enjoy it,” the new bride told PEOPLE that night. Her wish certainly came true, as guests gathered on the beach for a cocktail hour before the ceremony even started. “We just wanted it to be really laid-back, and fun! Nothing stuffy.”

This is the third marriage for Williams, who has four children – two from each of his previous marriages. It is the first for Fowler.

SOURCE: PEOPLE.com

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