Do you think the stand-up Mediums/Clairvoyants with their TV shows are for real or are they clever hoaxes?

Yes they are just plain nasty especially Sylvia Browne.

Check out this site, it has dozens of examples how she guessed wrongly about things and caused untold grief to families desperately looking for answers.

http://stopsylvia.com/

People like John Edward (another huge fraud) use a technique called cold reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

Transcript of Edward's waffle.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=130899

degree magic is a clever misdirection of the audiences interest to cover the tactic by potential of which the purpose is performed. Magic as practiced by potential of countless non secular paths is greater or less defined as changing actuality in accordance to the guy will. it is to not say that consequences could be performed as seen on Charmed, or different Hollywood exaggerations. What could be carried out is many times interior the component of private advance, i.e. - i could prefer to give up smoking, come across a job i could be happy with, or come across a existence companion. in spite of the fact that the purpose, what the practitioner is rather doing is employing some sort of ritual placing to concentration the choose on the needed effect. there's no 'poof, this is finished', extremely, there is an greater advantageous concentration of interest on the needed effect, with the feasible effect that the practitioner is a lot greater probably to confirm possibilities to reason the effect to happen. additionally feasible is the greater advantageous probability that the practitioner will see how they're entering into their own way. To take the existence companion occasion, the practitioner could understand that they've some own difficulty that motives them to gravitate to fallacious applicants, or makes them unlikely to be eye-catching to suitable ones. In such an occasion, correcting those subject concerns turns into the concentration.

fake they just play people and remember there getting paid good for it.

john edward is REAL ..Sylvia is a phoney..every one needs their thyroid checked in her readings..she looks at the questioner..if they are short and have dark hair ..she sees their mom and dad or siblings with simular features ..

My take is showmanship, not legitimate.