To Whoopi, Meredith and Katie: It's broke; fix it
By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV/Media Critic
Published September 4, 2007
It is the kind of showbiz serendipity that makes your head spin.
Today, comic Whoopi Goldberg starts a new chapter on ABC's daytime chatfest, The View, filling Rosie O'Donnell's sizable shoes as resident comic-gadfly-social commentator. O'Donnell was hired last year - on Sept. 5 - to fill in for Meredith Vieira, who departed for NBC's Today show, where she marks her first anniversary next week.
Vieira got her promotion thanks to another landmark event last year: Katie Couric's Sept. 5 debut on the CBS Evening News as network TV's first solo female anchor.
It's a daisy chain of high-profile changes with one thing in common: None of them have matched the giant-sized expectations the industry had just 12 months ago.
Despite boosting The View's ratings, O'Donnell barely lasted seven months, embroiled in a toxic feud with conservative co-star Elisabeth Hasselbeck. A decidedly toned-down Vieira, meanwhile, is repeatedly overshadowed at Today by co-host Matt Lauer and her own un-Katie-ness more on that later.
As for Couric, maybe it would take less space to list what hasn't gone wrong there.
Bob Thompson, head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, blames a single culprit in all three situations.
"In each case, you've got a combination of someone trying a new job while the entire world is looking at them," he said. "And in some ways, the promotion and hype for these transitions lasted so long, the actual change itself was anticlimactic. They kind of wore these people out (in the public's mind), in some cases, before they even took the chair."
One man who knows about high-profile transitions, former CBS anchor Dan Rather, says Couric in particular has been caught between a transformation that takes time and a media culture which demands instant results.
"I had been told when I took the anchor chair . . . when you make these kind of changes, we have to expect the ratings will go down and flatten out for two or three years," said Rather, who replaced legendary anchor Walter Cronkite in 1981.
"But the people who write about television and the public at large is quick to make decisions," he said.
"The question is whether the damage has already been done and whether the damage is so deep that they won't be able to dig out from underneath it."
Plenty will be said on what has gone wrong in the past year for these women. Instead, let's look at what could go right, if they follow a few choice nuggets of advice.
To Whoopi Goldberg:
Bring the noise, but keep it outside the family.
What kept me and an estimated 15 percent more viewers watching The View during O'Donnell's tenure was the high-wire factor; you never knew who she might unload on next, or what feud she might ignite.
Unfortunately, when she tangled with her follow panelists, especially Hasselbeck, it felt more like watching a married couple fight at a dinner party - embarrassing, uncomfortable and way too revealing.
So Goldberg's challenge is to keep the topical pugnaciousness that stoked the gossip columns while playing nice with her co-stars.
How much you want to bet the star of Sister Act and Burglar comes up short?
ON TV: Catch Whoopi Goldberg's debut on The View,11 a.m. today on WFTS-Ch. 28.
To Meredith Vieira:
Own the Today show, already.
When Vieira first joined the Today show family, she came off like a well-meaning stepmom; all she wanted was for the kids to like her.
But we're past that now. Couric and Lauer may have been the best morning show hosts in the history of the form, and you don't approach those heights by laughing at everybody's jokes and letting Al Roker look like the sharp one.
Vieira needs her own signature franchise, like Lauer's globe-hopping "Where in the World" workouts, and she needs to get off the syndicated Millionaire show to focus entirely on NBC's program.
When Couric was in the big chair, there was little doubt who ruled the roost. Vieira still feels like she's visiting someone else's show,leaving viewers disconnected from the show's top female talent.
Time for Vieira to step up. Because nice only gets you so far.
ON TV: Meredith Vieira co-hosts the Today show, 7 to 10 a.m. weekdays on WFLA-Ch. 8.
To Katie Couric:
Consider the stop of last resort -
rebuilding The Early Show.
We can all agree on a few things now: bringing a celebrity to the evening news won't make more people watch it, and good as Couric was at hosting a morning show, she hasn't proven to be similarly talented at anchoring a hard news broadcast.
Truly talented anchors - including Couric in her Today show heyday - make the job look effortless. Who couldn't face a camera and read off headlines, we think; until somebody doesn't do it so well.
For those of us who spent years waking up to Couric, this new gravitas-filled woman seems a shell of her perky self. She hasn't yet owned a story as a journalist the way NBC rival Brian Williams nailed Katrina - though she's anchoring from Iraq and Syria today through Friday - and she doesn't have the hard news tenure of ABC's Charlie Gibson, who had subbed on the evening news for decades before taking it over.
Even Connie Chung lasted two uncomfortable years in CBS's anchor chair alongside Rather before a messy ouster, so talk of Couric departing now seems painfully premature.
But it's obvious Couric has not brought something unique - or something new viewers really want - to the evening news chair. So why not go back to what we know she does best?
When Bryant Gumbel failed as a newsmagazine anchor at CBS, they parked him on its revamped Early Show. He didn't succeed there either, but like Vieira, he's no Katie Couric.
Saving a perpetually third-place morning show may not be the history-making role Couric envisioned. But pit her against her old colleagues (and Vieira) at Today, and you'll have a competition well worth watching.
ON TV:The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,6:30 p.m. weeknights on WTSP-Ch. 10.
Eric Deggans can be reached at (727) 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com. See his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/media.