Chatty Is His Middle Name

.

10.05.10 By: Michael Giltz

Anderson Cooper Gets Chatty

Is silver the new black? CNN fixture Anderson Cooper certainly hopes so. He's the latest big name to jump into the daytime talk show void that will be left when The Oprah Winfrey Show signs off next year. (Mind you, Oprah's ratings have been in free-fall -- her show is barely in the top 10 of syndicated shows behind reruns of sitcoms. So maybe the biggest challenge facing all these Oprah wannabes is bringing audiences back to daytime TV when Hulu and DVRs and, you know, life keep intruding.)

Ellen DeGeneres, of course, is the most likely winner when it comes to the "who is the next Oprah" sweepstakes. But along with Cooper, people like Oprah-blessed designer Nate Berkus, Sara Gilbert with her chatfest The Talk, and Rosie O'Donnell (airing on Oprah's new cable channel OWN) all have eyes on the prize. TimeWarner -- the owner of CNN and desperately in need of keeping Cooper in-house as it launches two new primetime shows -- made the deal a solid year before Cooper's CNN contract is up for renewal, and everyone pledged to everyone else that they're in the CNN/Cooper business for years to come.

Cooper has been practicing his daytime skills for years as a regular substitute host on Live! With Regis And Kelly. You might think that would force him to be a little more forthcoming since that show positively revolves around chats about their personal lives. But no luck. Maybe actually taking the leap into daytime for good can give Cooper the courage to simply acknowledge what everyone already believes -- a la Gilbert, who came out professionally when launching The Talk. After all, anyone who buys a former firehouse in Greenwich Village at the very least has a great sense of humor.

Below, watch Kelly Ripa flirt shamelessly with Cooper. (And by the way, it's a lot more sweet and amusing if you believe that the married Ripa is joking around with a gay man,isn't it?)