"I Had A Dream..."

Delicate Dance of Daytime

DAVID CARR
Published: Sunday, November 6, 2011 at 8:04 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, November 6, 2011 at 8:04 p.m.

I had a dream about Anderson Cooper the other night. He was in a vast, cavernous studio and was hanging from the ceiling in a harness, far above the stage.

There was an audience of mostly women and they were clapping wildly as he spread his arms, all but flying above them.

Except it wasn’t a dream. I had DVR’d his new daytime talk show, “Anderson” and had nodded off — it was late — while listening to Mr. Cooper discuss conquering your fears. He is afraid of heights, you see, and a cherry picker had lifted him up to the ceiling of Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he films his new daily talk show, and then left him there, suspended.

He looked lonely, as he sometimes does during stretches of his show.

Over the past few years, Mr. Cooper occasionally filled in for Regis Philbin next to Kelly Ripa on “Live! With Regis and Kelly,” to warm reviews, in part because he could play straight man to Kelly’s bubbly persona. He was known to covet that show and was considered a strong candidate to replace Mr. Philbin when he retired. But those retirement plans were uncertain and no real offers were made, so when Oprah Winfrey announced that she was retiring as the unchallenged ruler of daytime talk, Mr. Cooper saw his chance and he took it.

(His timing, it turns out, was terrible. Mr. Philbin announced his own retirement a few months after Mr. Cooper committed to doing “Anderson.”)

In addition to his journalistic interest in global calamity, Mr. Cooper is a professed fanboy of the conjured drama and celebrity of shows like “Real Housewives.” Rather than try to blend those high/low interests on his evening news program, Mr. Cooper decided he would host a daytime talk show.

There’s no shame in any of that. We all contain multitudes, so if Mr. Cooper — who likes to work all the time and has another job on the side doing occasional stories for “60 Minutes”— wanted to take on another assignment, good on him.

Like many of you, I have grown used to spending quality time with Anderson Cooper in the evenings, he of the knitted brow, the emotional response, and, occasionally, the rugged line of questioning. But watching “Anderson” — the lack of an anchor desk, his tight sweaters and bonhomie with the audience — well, it takes some getting used to.

With about a million viewers and a 1.4 rating on a grab bag of stations that broadcast his show during disparate parts of the day, Mr. Cooper is no immediate threat to become the next Oprah — but then, maybe no one will. The daytime audience, like the one for network programming, has splintered, and talk is cheap. The reigning queen of daytime? Judge Judy by a mile.

Hilary Estey McLoughlin, president of Telepictures Productions, which syndicates Mr. Cooper’s show and like CNN is a division of Time Warner, acknowledges that daytime talk is a tougher slog than it used to be. But she likes the odds for “Anderson.”

“I think the show is off to a good start and has the opportunity to grow organically into something unique,” she said. “Anderson is empathetic, has a real connection to people and is a champion of the underdog. I think as audiences find it, they will connect with what he is doing, in part because of his experiences as a reporter.”

Mr. Cooper, who braved the chaotic warfare in Somalia, was punched around in Egypt and stood waist deep in the fetid flood waters of Katrina, might be confronting his toughest assignment yet: Wading through the dreck of daytime talk without sliming the rest of his career.

In signing up to do “Anderson,” Mr. Cooper has split his personal franchise: serious newsman by night and chatty host in front of adoring crowds of women during the day. He is probably hoping that the twain never meet. CNN has to hope as much as well.

Though it moved him into the cursed 8 p.m. time slot, Mr. Cooper has done well there, and it would be a problem if his daytime job messed up his real day job.

Still, a daytime hit can be incredibly lucrative, like nothing else in television. In a phone call, Mr. Cooper said that the money was not something he thought much about.

“I am having fun doing this, learning about how to do it right,” he said. “I want to have real conversations with people and tell their stories. I am personally happiest when I do multiple things, and I think people understand that we all have multiple interests.”

Maybe so, but after watching a recent episode of “Anderson” in which Mr. Cooper discussed the merits of plush toilet paper versus bargain brands, and engaged in a race to see which roll runs out first, I wondered if I would watch his next dispatch from a hurricane with new eyes. And that assumes he will have the time to put on the parachute and go. With an hour as a prime-time news anchor and an hour spent during the day, oh, say in a “Toddlers and Tiaras” debate with a woman who dressed her 3-year-old daughter as the hooker from “Pretty Woman,” who has time to get to the next earthquake?

A daytime show requires more than an enormous commitment; there is a bottomless need to find content for 180-plus shows a year. Not all of them are going to be winners.

“We have been on the air for six weeks and it’s going to take a while to figure out what we are good at,” he said. “Daytime television might seem easy, but I have been surprised, really surprised, at how hard it is to get your arms around it.”

Mr. Cooper is not one to put on airs. Before he became the main attraction on CNN, he was the host of a reality game show called “The Mole,” after all. Someone who has known Mr. Cooper for a long time, but who did not want to speak for attribution so that he could be frank, explained it this way: “Although Anderson is quite shy personally, he has an omnivorous appetite for renown,” he said. “I think it has to do with how he was raised.”

His mother, Gloria, whose appearance on his show packed an intimate, emotional punch and was a high point thus far, was famous from birth, having been at the center of a public custody battle among the Vanderbilt family.

But seeing Mr. Cooper dip his hand into a container full of bugs — another of his fears — I wondered what need was being met, both in the culture and within the individual.

The best of daytime television is driven by a sense of mission. Oprah wanted to help you be a better you. Dr. Drew wants people to make better choices and Ellen wants to help people laugh at themselves while they laugh at her. The mission of “Anderson” is harder to discern.

Right now, there are moments of genuine warmth on the show, but there are plenty of squirm-inducing moments that have nothing to do with touching bugs.

When I pointed this out to Mr. Cooper — and said some other rugged things about the show — he, oddly, was not defensive.

“If I look lonely up there, maybe that is something we will be looking at,” he said. “We’re pretty open to what is going to work. And if every once in a while it seems awkward, well, that’s me. I am a socially awkward person. A nerd. But that’s authentic. That’s me.”

As someone who is good at one thing — typing — I always have trouble understanding why very accomplished people in one realm feel the need to own another. Is it ambition, narcissism or boredom? Mr. Cooper said it was none of those things. He likes his news job, he just has other interests; in this instance, ones that happen to dovetail with the format of a daytime talk show.