Anderson & Dr Drew

By Neal Justin | Fri Sep 9 2011

Anderson Cooper, Dr. Drew are branching out to daytime

LOS ANGELES — Can’t get enough of Anderson Cooper and Dr. Drew Pinsky? You might soon change your mind. The two hosts are adding daytime talk shows to their already hectic schedules.

Cooper, who anchors for CNN two hours a night, does six pieces for 60 Minutes a year and hotfoots it to trouble spots like Joplin, Mo., or Cairo, Egypt, will preside over Anderson (premiering Monday), which promises to be a hipper version of the old Phil Donahue show.

Pinsky, who has a weeknight show on CNN’s Headline News channel, co-pilots the long-running radio program Loveline and still sees patients at the University of Southern California’s school of medicine, has Dr. Drew’s Lifechangers (begins Sept. 19). The emotionally charged hour will guide guests through personal problems. Oh, and the good doctor says he’s open to doing more editions of Celebrity Rehab.

Who will burn out first, the audience or the talent?

Don’t bet on either man to ease off the accelerator.

Cooper, 44, said he’ll use only 20 of his 30 vacation days this year, about the same ratio he’s stuck to for the past decade.

“I manage my time really well,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot of work, but I like working hard. I find it energizing as opposed to tiring. Plus, it’s TV, so it’s not like it’s real work.”

Pinsky, 52, swore that his current schedule is light compared with his time as a full-time doctor, when he worked 16 to 18 hours most weekdays, and eight hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

“He’s an enigma wrapped in a taco shell,” said Lisa Gregorisch-Dempsey, senior executive producer for Lifechangers. “We’ll go play golf. He wants to be at work. We’ll be editing a show at night and we’ll say, ‘We have to tell Drew about that,’ and he’s like, ‘I’m right here.’ We’re like, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”

Pinsky never planned on being the media’s go-to guy for everything from sexual advice to sobering up Gary Busey.

“If you had told me in the early ‘80s that I would be where I’m at in 2011, I would have been torn between calling a psychiatrist or punching you,” he said.

In 1983, Pinsky volunteered to appear on Los Angeles radio because it gave him a chance to clear up misinformation about the AIDS epidemic. Plus, the station was only a block from his house. Ten years later, KROQ decided to put Loveline on five nights a week. Then TV came calling.

“The usual thing with physicians is to say, ‘Media? No, no, no, no. We don’t want to do that,’” Pinsky said. “But I thought: I’ve got all of these skills and the opportunity to reach people and make a difference. Maybe I ought to really focus on that.”

Cooper’s background is vastly different. Being the son of socialite Gloria Vanderbilt gave him an early taste of the spotlight. He played a munchkin at age eight on The Mike Douglas Show, masqueraded at age nine as the world’s youngest bear trainer on the quiz show To Tell the Truth and met such legends as Charlie Chaplin and Gordon Parks.

“My mom was always telling me to eat more, but all the food we had in the house was Carr’s water biscuits and aquavit,” he said. “It was very sort of odd.”

Cooper made his way into the ABC news department after freelancing as a war correspondent — interrupted by a mild flirtation with reality TV by hosting The Mole. He’s got a goofy, laid-back personal style, most recently demonstrated by his giggle fit while reporting on Gerard Depardieu’s public urination.

He hopes to bring the side of him that’s obsessed with The Real Housewives of Orange County to viewers who know him mostly for delivering hard news.

“With a newscast, you’re just trying to get information across,” he said. “In daytime, you’re really talking to people in a much more human, much more conversational way.”

Pinsky also plans to be more intimate, letting the audience into his home, which his 18-year-old triplets have just left to attend college.

But will audiences want to know so much about personalities who are teetering on the ledge of overexposure?

“We’ll have to see,” Pinsky said. “My instinct is that the media has changed so much and people will pick their poison. They might like me on Lifechangers and not like me on Headline News. If I can reach a different population in a different way, I’ll be happy.”

McClatchy-Tribune