I Couldn't Disagree More

Why Anderson Cooper should stay put

We need a serious newsman, not a daytime TV celeb mired in pop stars and plastic surgery

By Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun | June 9, 2011


Anderson Cooper speaks at a CTV-hosted media conference showcasing his new program, Anderson, which will be added to the station's fall lineup. He has credibility as a newsman, and doesn't need daytime TV.
Photograph by: Aaron Lynett, Postmedia News, Vancouver Sun

Anderson Cooper is many things.

A For starters, he's the best accidental broadcast news journalist of a generation, having shown up with little fanfare and absolutely no formal journalism education nearly two decades ago, turning his intelligent, comforting inquisitiveness into a career that has made him one of North America's most respected newsmen.

He's the face of his nightly CNN news report, Anderson Cooper 360°, a frequent contributor to 60 Minutes, and a familiar poloshirted figure on breaking news fronts, in places like New Orleans during Katrina, Sri Lanka after the tsunami and, recently, in Missouri covering the tornado aftermath.

He's also a Manhattan blueblood, Yale-educated in political science and the son of designer Gloria Vanderbilt and her fourth husband, the late writer Wyatt Emory Cooper.

Here's the accidental part: During college, Cooper interned at the CIA and, after college, landed a job as a fact checker at a television station, but his nose for news and adventure found him sneaking into Myanmar on a forged press pass to cover a student protest against the government, and then he worked his way to Vietnam, where he studied Vietnamese, and went on to cover the wars in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia.

Back in the U.S., in 1995, he worked for ABC News, including a stint as co-anchor of World News Now. In 2000, he became host of a reality show called The Mole and then, post-9/11, he got a call from CNN and found himself on the ground in Afghanistan.

And he's been a (mostly) serious journalist ever since, recalling a prematurely grey-haired incarnation of that other most trusted man in America, the late Walter Cronkite, always there, perennially calm, forever trustworthy.

But Cooper, who is 44 and has been dubbed one of the most powerful gay celebrities in America, would surely be the first to admit his forte is hard news and not pop culture or social issues.

He's ill at ease, if eminently watchable, when paired with raunchy comic Kathy Griffin in Times Square for the annual New Year's Eve ball drop. He was something of a fish out of water covering the recent wedding of William and Kate in London, and he's the perfect straight man for perky Kelly Ripa, all handsome and deer in the headlights as a guest host on Live With Regis and Kelly.

In many ways, that's part of Cooper's charm. He's not afraid to be bookish, to speak in full articulate sentences, to ask the obvious questions the viewers want answered, and then turn more middle-class than Ivy League when he's getting publicly schooled on why Snooki seems to matter or how American Idol has changed the music industry.

Which is why the recent news of his latest venture -a daytime talk show called Anderson, slated for Sept. 12 and airing in Canada on CTV -is cause for both skepticism and consternation.

Daytime talk shows -whether Dr. Phil, Jerry Springer, Ellen DeGeneres or Maury Povich -thrive on drama, dysfunction and dime-store psychology.

And, most tellingly, a healthy sprinkling of Hollywood fairy dust.

The View, for all its Barbara Walters influence, may tackle political issues and other socalled hot topics, but every morning it invariably delivers a newly refreshed celebrity flogging a book, CD, movie or Dancing With The Stars move.

That's because the daytime audience for North American television largely comprises seniors, students, shut-ins, stay-at-homers and many a middle American whose daylight tastes on the small screen run to game shows, soap operas, cook-offs, relationship advice, makeovers and celebrity upon celebrity.

The interminable strife in the Middle East? The economic suicide of easy credit? The planet in peril?

Um, important but boring, so no thanks, Tyra Banks.

At a recent CTV press conference, Cooper told reporters his new show will focus on pop culture and human interest stories and that "I watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Atlanta as much as anyone else, and I don't think that makes me any less credible because I care about Syria as well."

No, it doesn't. But do people want to watch Cooper yakking about Camille Grammer and her messy divorce and plastic surgery nightmares, or do they need him knee-deep in mud in the middle of a hurricane, interviewing survivors?

Cooper says he's taking on talk because he wants to "exercise different muscles" and because "you can connect with an audience in an emotional way" and, no, he isn't trying to fill the hole left by Oprah Winfrey, who last month retired from daytime after 25 years of setting the talk show standard.

Cooper, who's already tweeting invitations to the live Manhattan taping of Anderson, certainly has the interviewing chops. And the credibility.

But he's far too serious and earnest for daytime television. He's not given to laughing out loud, or crying on demand or sharing his secret skeletons as a means to impart empathy, much less cosying up to exposure-hungry pop stars.

And that's what makes him such a good newsman. And we need good newsmen.

In the CTV interview, presumably by way of explanation for taking this personal road less travelled, Cooper invoked the name of that news icon with a famous penchant for boating: "If Walter Cronkite was on TV today, I think he'd also have a sailing show on the Travel Network."

No, Anderson, he wouldn't.

sfralic@vancouversun.com Blog: vancouversun.com/socialstudies