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The View is a daytime television talk show on ABC created by Barbara Walters, Bill Geddie, and Jessica Guff and featuring a panel of women as co-hosts. As of June 2006 the panel includes Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Barbara Walters. The show premiered on August 11, 1997. The View is produced and recorded at the WABC-TV studios in Manhattan.
The concept of The View is to showcase women with a range of perspectives, as they speak with each other as well as with their guests. An early version of the show's opening credits, with voice-over from Walters, captured the premise:
- I've always wanted to do a show with women of different generations, backgrounds and views: a working mother; a professional in her 30s; a young woman just starting out; and then somebody who's done almost everything and will say almost anything. And in a perfect world, I'd get to join the group whenever I wanted ...
The show opens each day with "Hot Topics," in which the co-hosts provide lightweight commentary on the day's top headlines in politics and entertainment; the segment's popularity soon led it to expand.
The year 2006 has seen the departure of two of the show's original co-hosts: Meredith Vieira on June 9 and Star Jones Reynolds on June 27.
Initial reviews
A New York Times review Feet on the Ground, Heads Without Bubbles, an August 21, 1997 review from The New York Times, published ten days after the show premiered, describes what critic Caryn James thought was distinctive about the show:
- The idea of women talking to one another on daytime television is not exactly radical. The idea that those women should be smart and accomplished is still odd enough to make The View seem wildly different. It actively defies the bubbleheads-'R'-us approach to women's talk shows....
- If it keeps its mildly renegade spirit, The View should only grow stronger. It is easy to tease Barbara Walters; we've all done it. (She hasn't made anyone cry on the air yet.) But she and her production company deserve full credit for guiding this show in such a smart direction. During hot topics, it is often her voice that marks out some complicated middle ground and prevents The View from becoming Crossfire for Girls. This show dares to assume that women, even those watching at home in the morning, have minds of their own.
After a year on the air, a review of the show from Salon.comAugust 1998 review of the show from Salon.com attempted to summarize what had made the show a "(very guilty) pleasure" for its mostly female audience:
- The View has caught on with viewers because it gives expression to feelings more complicated, and real, than its detractors realize. Like the Rat Pack, it's all about freedom in an uptight world. Vieira, Walters, et al., have confessed to a lot of things on the show that women are supposed to feel guilty about: forgetting to vote, being too lazy to exercise, hating skinny models, letting the kids watch too much TV, admiring Hollywood's latest hunk. And, apparently, they don't care what people think. Look, I'm not holding them up as role models. And I'm not saying they're representative of the death of feminism, or the rebirth of feminism, or anything like that. I just like the way they don't give a damn. If the Rat Pack was Everyman's id, The View is Everywoman's. These chicks do it their way, and it's a kick in the head.
Changes in co-hosts
The show premiered with four co-hosts: Meredith Vieira, Star Jones Reynolds, Debbie Matenopoulos, and Walters. Walters and Behar initially took turns as the fourth co-host, an approach that at least one TV critic considered disconcerting:
- The comedian Joy Behar, who appears on the days when Ms. Walters is off, is truly funny but hasn't blended in yet; at times it seems as if a Joan Rivers clone had parachuted in.
Behar soon became a regular co-host, with the panel expanding to five when Walters joined in.
The show's youngest co-host has changed twice during the show's history. Matenopoulos was on from 1997-99. When she was fired, Lisa Ling took over, leaving in 2002 to host National Geographic Explorer. Hasselbeck replaced Ling after she, San Francisco#Rachel, and Erin Hershey Presley were the finalists in a competition that ended with each of the three getting a week-long on-air tryoutThe View Eyes Elisabeth, a November 2003 story about Hasselbeck's selection from E! Online.
Vieira announced on April 6, 2006 that she will be leaving The View in order to replace Katie Couric as the co-anchor of NBC's The Today ShowVieira Selected as Couric's Successor at Today, an April 2006 Los Angeles Times article. Several candidates were rumored to replace Vieira, including Patricia Heaton, Connie Chung and Soledad O'Brien, but on April 28 the announcement was madehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042800002.html that Rosie O'Donnell would be joining the show come September.
With the announcement of O'Donnell's hiring came speculation that Star Jones Reynolds would leave the show when her contract expired in August. In the months leading up to the hiring, O'Donnell had made comments about Jones Reynolds' weight loss, implying that Jones Reynolds' has not been honest when discussing her dramatic weight loss, implying it was a result of gastric bypass surgery and not of a change in diethttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/category?blogid=7&cat=534. For her part, Jones Reynolds said on Larry King Live she had always been honest about her weight loss, that it was, in fact a byproduct of surgery. On June 27, 2006, Jones Reynolds surprised the audience and her co-hosts by announcing her departure from the show. In an interview with People magazine Jones Reynolds claims the decision to leave was hardly hers, and that producers told her her contract would not be renewed as early as April.http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/1401AP_TV_The_View_Reynolds.html Many media outlets have reported that Gayle King, Oprah Winfrey's best friend might take over for Joneshttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194349,00.html, although King denied the reports in an interview with Access Hollywood in Aprilhttp://rebeccawright.com/2006/05/10/star-jones-leaving-the-view/. Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph has publicily stated her interest in the role, during an interview with The Insider. Meanwhile, The New York Daily News reportshttp://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/430176p-362666c.html that Jones Reynolds is reportedly meeting with executives at CBS, Court TV and the E! network. Jones Reynolds was to stay with the show until July but on June 28, just one day after Jones made her announcement, Walters annouced that Star Jones Reynolds would no longer be a part of The View except for the prerecorded segments of her. Both ABC and Jones Reynolds have publicly stated that the decision to not renew her contract was in no way related to the hiring of O'Donnell.
According to an interview with the Associated Press, Ms. Walters stated that ABC executives had apparently decided not to renew Jones-Reynolds' contract as early as last fall due to sagging approval for the co-host which was showing up in their market research. However, she also stated that "We tried to talk them executives out of it, and we tried to give Star time to redeem herself in the eyes of the audience, and the research just kept getting worse." Walters also felt "betrayed" by Star, since Star unexpectedly made the announcement 2 days ahead of schedule. "I love Star and I was trying to do everything I possibly could — up until this morning when I was betrayed — to protect her".Reynolds' Announcement Upsets Walters, a June 27, 2006 Associated Press story via ABC News
The show will use guest co-hosts for the entire month of July, before going back through August to the tenth season premiere on September 5. According to Peoplehttp://people.aol.com/people/article/0,26334,1209757,00.html magazine, the show is using the guest spots as try-outs for a potential full time job. The View will continue to use guest hosts to fill the seat until they go on hiatus in early August. Among the women who have made or who are scheduled to make an appearance:
The show occasionally uses guest hosts to substitute if one of the women is out. Past guest hosts have included: Monica Lewinsky, Myrka Dellanos, Felicity Huffman, James Denton, Daisy Fuentes, Ann Coulter, Mariah Carey, Hilary Duff, Marcia Cross, Kathie Lee Gifford, Amanda Bynes, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Anna Kournikova, Bo Bice, Rosie O'Donnell, Robin Roberts, Constance Marie, Melania Trump, Mario Cantone, Mariska Hargitay, Wanda Sykes, Brooke Sheilds, Kim Catrall, Mila Kunis, Ricardo Chavira, Lauren Graham, Dennis Miller, Teri Hatcher, Terrence Howard, Eva Longoria, Rachel Dratch, Nicolette Sheridan, Patricia Richardson, Lynda Carter, Chandra Wilson and various All My Children cast members including Rebecca Budig.
Politics of The View
While diverse in terms of host age and backgrounds, the show has been criticised for a lack of diversity in political viewshttp://newsbusters.org/node/5522, often being criticized for having a liberal bias. Changing this was at least one factor in the selection of Hasselbeck as Ling's replacement. Hasselbeck's conservative credentials were later demonstrated when she delivered a speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
The hiring didn't end the criticism, with some characterizing Hasselbeck a token conservative on The View. Joy Behar has been an outspoken critic of conservatives, stating that they are "so annoying". http://www.pr.com/article/1019 Comments made by Star Jones Reynolds in January 2006, comparing the ego of U.S. President George W. Bush to Osama bin Laden were controversial.
The complaints are notable given Barbara Walters' often stated goal of creating a show that has women of different backgrounds and views. This goal is read by Walters during the opening credits of each show.
On January 21, 2003, Jennifer O'Neill was a guest on the show promoting her "Silent No More" campaign to reduce teenager abortions. Having had an abortion herself, she spoke about her personal experience with abortion. She was harshly handled by the View hosts, in particular, host Joy Behar. In the following segment, the hosts together with actress Katey Segal ridiculed O'Neill.http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030122.asp#7
Awards
The show's longtime director Mark Gentile received a Daytime Emmy Award in its first year. The show's producers shared the "Outstanding Talk Show" Emmy in 2003, with The Wayne Brady Show.
Since 1999, the show's hosts have received Emmy nominations every year, though they've never won.
Trivia
- The show was originally called The View From Here. However, there was already a program airing in Canada with the same name, and ABC execs decided to change the name to simply The View.
- Their first day on-air was August 11, 1997 with Tom Selleck as their first guest; Regis Philbin was the first guest on their pilot episode.
- The women used to sit around a full-circle table. However, it was very difficult to interact with the audience with half of the women having their backs against the audience; the table was quickly changed.
- Their set was actually a leftover set from a cancelled soap opera, The City. ABC didn't commit to their own set until their fifth season.
- Since the show's premiere, The View has been the subject of numerous parodies. Arguably the most famous of which was a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live in the late 90s. It potrayed Star Jones (Tracy Morgan), Meredith Vieira (Molly Shannon), Joy Behar (Ana Gasteyer) and Barbara Walters (Cheri Oteri) as jealous older women and Debbie Matenopoulos (played by Claire Danes, Cameron Diaz, Sarah Michelle Gellar and even by Matenopoulos herself) as a simple-minded bimbo who was consistently being punished for making stupid comments. In 2005, Madtv parodied the show in a sketch, exaggerating the women's speech as simultaneous bickering. The sketch featured Michael McDonald as a farmer treating the women as hens, tossing chickenfeed on the ground and producing eggs from the women's seats. The role of Barbara Walters was played by Stephnie Weir. In The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz from the animated show Family Guy, another parody where the women were heard clucking like chickens was shown, with Star Jones Reynolds even laying an egg.
- Barbara Walters had hosted a similar program in the 1970s called Not For Women Only. A panel of four experts, moderated by Walters, would discuss serious topical issues of the day
- A similar show was produced in the 1960s called Girl Talk, hosted by Virginia Graham. It consisted of nothing more than three celebrity women, moderated by Graham, discussing current events, politics, women’s issues and their feelings about each other. The tone could get catty, as celebrities such as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Lee Remick and Totie Fields felt free to express their opinions.
- A counterpart to The View called The Other Half was hosted by four men instead of women, and ran from 2001-2003. Co-hosts included Dick Clark, Danny Bonaduce, Mario López, Dr Jan Adams (2001-2002), and Dorian Gregory (2002-2003). Like The View, the program was directed towards women. The program primarily focused on how men interact with women and vice versa.
References
External links
1990s TV shows in the United States | 2000s TV shows in the United States | ABC network shows | Television talk shows
"The View"