Anderson Cooper Pulling Dazed Viewers from the Oprah Diaspora

By Doug Barry | October 11, 2012 | 6:00pm

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All those former Oprah viewers wandering dazed and confused through the desert of daytime television have started latching on to Anderson Cooper, the silver-haired talkshow prophet who received journalistic superpowers after being struck by lightning seven times in a row. Or something like that — anyway, Anderson Live is no longer struggling after recording a 67 percent ratings spike in the New York Market from last week among the key demographic of women 25 to 54.

This (vast) improvement over previous numbers for Anderson Cooper’s talk show owes itself, according to The Hollywood Report, to a new format, including a name change from Anderson to the slightly-less narcissistic Anderson Live, as well as the addition of a daily guest host. That may be all well and good, but the New York Observer, ahem, observes that Anderson Live might be benefitting from the “continued diaspora of former Oprah viewers,” who were found and now are lost thanks to Oprah’s absence from the daytime talk show thunderdome, an arena that Dr. Phil continues to dominate.