Big buzz: Rosie
plans return to daytime
Reportedly aims to launch a show as Winfrey exists
By Toni Fitzgerald
Mar 22, 2010
With Oprah Winfrey on her way out, another popular daytime host may be on her way back.
Rosie O'Donnell has teamed up with two syndication veterans in a bid for a daytime return without the backing of a major syndicator behind her, according to numerous reports.
O'Donnell, who had a stormy return to television four years ago as co-host of ABC's "The View," is said to be eager to maintain creative control over her show, allowing her to espouse the sort of political and personal opinions that ultimately led to her exit from ABC.
During a six-year run starting in 1996, "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" was one of daytime's most successful talk shows, winning the comedian a boatload of Daytime Emmys and earning her the nickname "The Queen of Nice."
But that image was tarnished at the end of the show's run as her topics became more controversial and as she took firmer stances on political issues, such as gun control. She also became involved in an ugly legal tussle with Gruner + Jahr, which published her self-titled magazine.
O'Donnell's new show would be sold with the backing of Dick Robertson and Scott Carlin, who both once worked for Warner Bros., which was behind O'Donnell's first show.
According to reports out today, O'Donnell would launch the show in fall of 2011, just months after longtime daytime queen Winfrey airs her series finale.
The timing of Rosie's return doesn't seem to be a coincidence.
Even if the local affiliates looking to replace Winfrey do not sign O'Donnell -- many of those affiliates are ABC's, and her relationship with the network took a hit after the "View" fiasco -- she will surely benefit from all the hype over who will succeed Winfrey as queen of the ratings.
Many have suggested Ellen DeGeneres in that role, but her ratings are roughly half of Winfrey's and she just doesn't have the fan base to support the hype.
O'Donnell does.
She still has a rabid following on "Rosie Radio," her Sirius XM show, and she has stayed close enough to the public eye all these years that reintroducing her to viewers wouldn't be hard.
O'Donnell's last attempt at a TV comeback was a year and a half ago, when she produced a disastrously low-rated variety show for NBC. Before that, she was rumored to be getting her own show on MSNBC, but it never happened.
As of this morning, O'Donnell had no comment on the rumored show on her blog, where she often expresses her opinions on the news media's opinions of her, in her trademark all-lowercase, punctuation-challenged posts.
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