The good news: Meredith Vieira is retuning to ABC’s “The View.”
The bad news: She’s only staying for a day.
Actually, she’s only scheduled to be on for one segment, but here’s hoping it will be a long one.
Meredith Vieira… remember her? She was the daytime chatfest’s moderator for nine years before she left for her current gig at NBC’s “Today” show. Vieira replaced Katie Couric who left her cushy job for the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News. On “The View” Vieira was replaced by Rosie O’Donnell who was replaced by Whoopi Goldberg. Got that?
The sorely missed 53-year-old journalist will return to her old stomping grounds on October 8th. It’s her first visit since departing for bigger and better over at NBC. (Guess she was waiting for all the seats to be filled before venturing back to ABC.) According to show producers, Vieira is scheduled to discuss what life is like now that she is no longer a part of the controversial all-female talk show. (Though, come to think about it there’s wasn’t nearly as much brewing at “The View” when Vieira was there—unless you count that time she dressed as a hot dog and dominatrix, sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” while tap dancing and gave Wesley Snipes a lap dance…) Oh, and did I mention that the other reason Vieira is paying the ladies of “The View” a visit is to hawk a new “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” DVD game that will be released next month. She is host of the game show after all…
Moving on.
Attention all you celebrity chef wannabes… Rachael Ray could be your ticket to fame.
If you have the ability to whip together an edible 7-course meal (and still be smiling by the time you are done you) could be exactly who Ray is looking for.
The syndicated talk-show host is launching “So You Think You Can Cook?” – a nationwide search for the next Emeril/Bobby Flay/Paula Deen/.
“We just want to give a person – a real person, not a chef or somebody specially trained to do this for a living – a shot at showing everybody their personality and how much fun you can have with food,” Ray recently told reporters.
The 39-year-old waitress turned chef turned TV personality is taking her cue from other popular primetime shows that turn “regular” people into stars. Ray says she and her producers will narrow the field of candidates down to five finalists. They will then undergo two weeks of intense competitions before a winner is announced on Ray’s daytime show in late November.
“I’m always telling people how my career was an accident,” Ray announced. “I just wanted to sort of marry up the idea for the show that anybody who likes to cook could literally be Rachael Ray, the ’30 Minute Meal’ girl.”
Fans of Ray know her from her popular Food Network program “30 Minute Meals.”
The winner will co-host the “Rachael Ray” show for a day and receive training at a U.S. culinary institute. Also, the recipe for your original dish will be published in Ray’s magazine, Every Day With Rachael Ray.
Are you going to enter?