Visiting A Non-Disaster Zone

The daytime Anderson Cooper


Anderson Cooper visited San Diego to discuss his new daytime show, "Anderson," premiering
Sept. 12 on KFMB/Channel 8. — John Gastaldo

Written by Nina Garin
8:54 a.m., July 29, 2011


Anderson Cooper knows the joke.

The one about how you can tell your vacation is about to be ruined if he’s staying in the hotel room next to you. It’s a joke that stems from the TV personality always being at the forefront of major news stories — from the earthquake in Haiti to Hurricane Katrina.

So when Cooper visited San Diego on Wednesday, it was only natural to feel a bit anxious.

“Nothing’s going on, I promise,” he said. “I’m just here to talk about the show.”

The show is “Anderson,” a daytime program that will feature everything from celebrity interviews and trends to topical issues such as bullying and human interest stories. It premieres Sept. 12 on KFMB/Channel 8.

The most obvious thing about “Anderson,” at least at first, is that it will take over the 4 p.m. time slot vacated by Oprah Winfrey after 25 years, a fact that’s not lost on the pop-culture-savvy host.

“Obviously I’m not Oprah, and anyone who would pretend to be Oprah would be foolish,” he said during an interview at the KFMB studio in Clairemont Mesa. “The most you can do is be yourself and be honest. When people get to know me and see the range of stuff we’re going to be doing, I hope that they will feel like they want to check in on us every day, like they belong.”

Though he has grand ideas for the show, it’s difficult for Cooper to elaborate on what’s in store because shooting hasn’t actually begun. Because he wants the issues to be current, the creators haven’t booked any guests or started producing the program, which is based in New York.

All he can say is to expect something smart, provocative and honest.

Still, even once the show does find its routine, don’t expect Cooper to abandon his other jobs. You’ll continue to see the silver-haired host talking to politicians on CNN, doing interviews with people like Lady Gaga on “60 Minutes,” and even filling in for Regis Philbin every now and then.

“I like to work and I like working hard,” he said. “And even though it’s a grueling schedule, it doesn’t feel like work to me, really. It’s just an extension of myself and what I like to do.”

Cooper has such a passion for telling stories that when he was just out of college, he quit his job as a fact checker for the teen news outlet Channel One. He did it so he could sneak into Myanmar (formerly Burma) with a fake press pass and become a war correspondent.

Even though he didn’t have an official assignment, he traveled through Southeast Asia alone with a camera, reporting about teens in the jungle fighting the government. He slept under roofs of buildings, ate one meal each day and hardly spent more than $5 a day.

When his piece was finished, he sold it to Channel One for $2,000 and secured a deal to do more pieces from Africa.

“It was a really passive-aggressive thing to do,” he said. “I didn’t ask if I could go because I knew they’d say no for insurance purposes. So I left and just did it on my own.”

It’s a confident move that perhaps comes from Cooper’s upbringing. Not so much because his mother is heiress and fashion icon Gloria Vanderbilt and his father author Wyatt Cooper, but because his parents allowed him to sit at the dinner table with such houseguests as Charlie Chaplin and filmmaker Gordon Parks.

Cooper said that not being relegated to the “kids table” gave him the feeling that his thoughts and opinions mattered. And it’s also why his favorite kinds of stories aren’t the celebrity interviews, but the ones that also give a voice to people who normally wouldn’t have one.

“After 20 years of doing this, I’ve realized that the thing I like most about reporting is going in the field and talking to people who are dealing with something real, a life-and-death situation,” he said. “I like to be able to give those people a voice and share their stories and learn from them. In news, thankfully, those stories only come around once in a while. But in daytime, you get to do those kinds of human stories on a much more regular basis.”