OUCH: It was announced that Anderson Cooper’s show was canceled last week, but it still has seven months to run. (
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Anderson Cooper got his own October Surprise last week — his afternoon talk show is going out of business at the end of the season.
The show, renamed “Anderson Cooper Live” in September, was the victim of poor ratings and higher-than-normal costs.
“It was a very expensive show,” said one insider — $20 to $25 million a month, according to reliable estimates versus $10 to $15 million for an average show.
The company producing the show — Telepictures, an arm of Time Warner — was actually losing money on it, unusual for a syndicated daytime show, according to sources, with little chance of getting into the black any time soon.
The announcement last Monday came just hours ahead of Hurricane Sandy striking the East Coast and the news hardly made a dent.
While some questioned the timing, it was, at least in part, dictated by the contracts local stations — like Ch. 5 here, which airs the show weekdays at noon — had with Cooper’s syndicator.
Telepictures had to tell stations by Oct. 31 if Cooper would be back in fall 2013 — and to the surprise of many, the syndicator said, “no.”
“The stations loved the show,” says the insider. “It was a perfect lead-in to the early news. They were shocked.”
It was Cooper, according to another source, who insisted that Telepictures announce immediately that the show was ending — not something that is customarily done in October, because the show still has seven months to run.
“He felt very strongly about this,” said the source. “Once the affiliates were informed, Anderson and Telepictures wanted to be similarly above-board with the staff.”
At the show’s offices in the CBS Broadcast Center on far West 57th Street, the staff was told early Monday — the morning before the storm hit.
Besides a bland written statement — “I look forward to doing more great shows this season, and though I’m sorry we won’t be continuing,” it read — Cooper has not talked about finishing out the last seven months of his show without a future.
He declined to be interviewed for this story.
Cooper refashioned the show over the summer — going from taped to live and moving the studio from the high-priced Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle to an empty studio where, years ago, CBS used to produce soap operas.
In some ways, the show was jinxed from the beginning.
Cooper had long been speculated about as the likely successor to Regis Philbin on the morning show with Kelly Ripa, a close friend and longtime fill-in co-host, when Regis decided to retire from “Live.”
Privately, he admitted that — when he signed to do his own daytime show in September 2010 — he had not been told that Regis was going to leave just 90 days later.
Cooper will keep his primetime show on CNN as well as contributing to CBS’ “60 Minutes.”