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Jenny McCarthy to Join ‘The View’ on ABC

The show’s creator, Barbara Walters, announced on the air Monday morning that Ms. McCarthy would become the next co-host on the program.

Her selection had been widely expected; she has been a frequent guest host on the program and her name was at the top of the list for prospective permanent hosts.

Ms. McCarthy will fill one of the empty chairs left by the departures of Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, both of whom had long been regulars on the program. Ms. Hasselbeck left for Fox News last week and Ms. Behar is scheduled to leave in August.

Ms. McCarthy will start on “The View” on Sept. 9.

To accept the position, Ms. McCarthy had to win a separation from the VH1 network, where she had been hosting a late-night show. That show has not been scoring big ratings.

Ms. McCarthy, 40, has had roles in a few short-lived situation comedies but is probably best known on television for the game show “Singled Out” on MTV, where she was a host in the 1990s.

In a statement, Ms. Walters said, “Jenny brings us intelligence as well as warmth and humor.”

“She can be serious and outrageous,” Ms. Walters added. “She has connected with our audience and offers a fresh point of view.”

But Ms. McCarthy has also been the subject of intense criticism from groups associated with autism for her frequent statements tying the condition — from which she has said her son suffered — to vaccines for immunization. That much-debated and widely disproved theory has led to unnecessary illnesses in children, according to child health experts.

One group, Every Child by Two, which has begun a campaign to urge parents to vaccinate their babies, sent a letter on Monday to producers of “The View,” including Ms. Walters, saying:

“Ms. McCarthy’s unfounded claims that vaccines cause autism have been one of the greatest impediments to public health in recent decades. These false assertions, in addition to her condemnation of public health officials and the medical community over all, has spread fear among young parents, which has led to an increased number of children who have not received lifesaving vaccines.”

Lauri Hogan, a spokeswoman for “The View,” said the show had made no request to Ms. McCarthy that she keep the vaccine issue off limits.

“All the hosts speak openly on a variety of topics and as has been stated repeatedly, Hot Topics are not scripted,” Ms. Hogan said in an e-mail message, referring to the part of the show in which the hosts discuss issues in the news.

Even after naming Ms. McCarthy, “The View” will still have decisions to make, first to fill the other current vacancy, and then whether another person will be added when Ms. Walters herself leaves the show a year from August.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/business/media/jenny-mccarthy-to-join-the-view-on-abc.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder Blog: Barbara Walters Said to Be Nearing Retirement

Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press

Barbara Walters, whose television career spans more than a half century, will retire in May 2014, an executive familiar with the newswoman’s plans said Thursday.

The formal announcement of Ms. Walters’s plans will probably be made this May on her ABC daytime program, “The View.” The executive familiar with the plans said the following year will include a number of specials and retrospectives of Ms. Walters’s long career in television on her network, ABC.

Ms. Walters’s decision follows a year in which her health became a national story. She suffered a concussion in Washington after the inauguration. That developed into an infection that was ultimately diagnosed as a case of chicken pox.

In 2010, Ms. Walters underwent a successful heart bypass operation.

In recent years, Ms. Walters, 83, has stepped back from a number of her longtime roles, limiting the number of interview specials for which she has become famous. But she maintained her base at “The View,” a consistently successful program she created.

The future of that program has recently been the subject of much speculation, with one longtime host, Joy Behar, leaving and another, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, rumored to be coming to the end of her tenure.

But most of Ms. Walters’s career was spent at network news divisions, first at NBC, where she became the first prominent woman to anchor the “Today” show, and then at ABC. There she started as the first woman to anchor a network evening newscast and went on to become one of the network’s chief correspondents, with the newsmagazine “20/20” as the base for many of her interviews.

She also gained fame for her annual interview special that preceded coverage of the Academy Awards, a program that was often among the highest-rated news specials of the year.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/barbara-walters-said-to-be-nearing-retirement/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Jenny McCarthy to Join ‘The View’ on ABC

Media Decoder Blog: Barbara Walters Said to Be Nearing Retirement

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