This was a question that was posed to the contestants on Jeopardy:

But, we’re not sure Jeopardy was correct in their question.

The term “happy talk” was coined by Ron Powers who was the TV and radio columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Powers was the first television critic to win a Pulitzer for his writing about television in 1972

He used “happy talk” to describe the Eyewitness News format Al Primo installed at WLS-TV with the anchors Fahey Flynn, John Daly, John Coleman and Bill Frink.