All in all, the morning taping of “The View” had been rather . . . eclectic.
First, a retired plumber sprang from the audience during the preshow warm-up and proceeded to shake his booty with alarming gusto. Then TV trashman Jerry Springer made an innuendo-laden appearance, cheered on by a studio audience hooting “Jerry! Jerry!” Finally, a guest chef cooked up a batch of bugs, and offered one to Barbara Walters.
Through it all, Walters wore an expression America knows well, her eloquent face fixed somewhere between bemusement and incredulity. It was the look she wore when Monica Lewinsky blithely discussed having sex with the president of the United States. Discussed it in front of nearly 50 million viewers. (“Everybody said `I’m not interested, I don’t care,’ and then the whole country watched,” Walters remarked dryly in an interview after the “View” taping).
A vivid presence on TV, Walters is surprisingly diminutive and soft-spoken. Spectators inside the “View” studio on Manhattan’s West Side, even those seated 15 feet from her, sometimes had to strain to hear her words. Yet since she’s the show’s resident legend — and co-producer — there’s no question as to who’s in charge.
This was another hectic day for the 68-year-old Walters: After wrapping up the taping of a second show, she was scheduled to tape two segments of her newsmagazine, “20/20,” while making preparations to fly to Texas to interview Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.
There are times when she feels like cutting back, and this day in late April seems to be one of those days. After noting that her contract with ABC will be up in August, Walters picked up a fortune cookie and asked: “Is this going to tell me whether I should renew my contract?” She opened it and intoned dramatically: “You should not renew!”
Later, more seriously, Walters opened up about the demands of her schedule. In addition to co-producing and appearing on “The View” a couple of days a week, she anchors the weekly newsmagazine “20/20,” does four editions of “The Barbara Walters Special” per year, plus her annual “Ten Most Fascinating People” program. And of course, there is the pressure of landing the big “get,” the interview everyone else covets.
Just as people expect Mark McGwire to hit a homer each time he comes up to the plate, so too do they expect Walters to land the big gets, even though the competition has never been stiffer (Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Koppel, Mike Wallace, Connie Chung, “Entertainment Tonight,” “Access Hollywood.”)
“It’s harder and harder to do because there is so much competition,” said Walters. “It is very hard now, and I really don’t know how much longer I’m going to do specials.”
“When my contract was signed, I didn’t have “The View,’ ” she added. “So I have to really start thinking about just what it is that I can give up, that I want to give up. And I don’t want to climb another mountain. I’m not a workaholic. I have a very strong social life, and many friends. My work is not my entire life.”
The paradox of being Barbara Walters at this stage of her 39-year career is that she is far more famous than many of the people she interviews. She waved away the observation. “Listen, you sell chickens on television now and you’re famous,” she said.
Fine, but she’s no chicken vendor. She’s a walking piece of TV history, with a resume studded with firsts: first female cohost of the “Today” show, first woman to coanchor a network newscast, first woman in television news to earn a salary of $1 million (it’s now reportedly closer to $10 million). She did not invent the celebrity interview on TV, but she made it into an art form, and turned “the Barbara Walters interview” into a genre with its own distinct hallmarks. She was one of the pioneers of the TV newsmagazine, and she, more than anyone else, built a bridge between news and entertainment.
“She may be the most influential person in the history of TV,” says Steven D. Stark, an NPR commentator who wrote “Glued to the Set: The 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We Are Today.”
“People often think of Edward R. Murrow as the patron saint of TV news,” adds Stark. “No, Barbara Walters is the patron saint of TV news. For better or worse, she created what we now think of as television news. She’s a genius of a sort. If Mike Wallace were to leave `60 Minutes,’ `60 Minutes’ would go on the same way. But `The Barbara Walters Specials’ are Barbara Walters; there’s nobody else. She’s irreplaceable in a way that no one else is.”
Within the TV industry, Walters is known for doggedly pursuing interview subjects herself rather than leaving it to producers, yet she frets about the public perception that “I just sit around and everybody comes to me.”
“It’s harder and harder to get the big interview, and I hate it,” she said. “Also, every murderer has an agent and a lawyer. They want to know your ratings, they want to know how much time you’re going to give them. If you put them on, how much promotion? I mean, it’s just amazing.”
Besides, if you’re Barbara Walters, what interview coups are left?
“People always say to me: `Who would you like to get?’ ” said Walters. “But the people who are left do not do interviews.
“And people are not interested in foreign policy. They’re not even that interested in politics. You have to make George W. interesting to a prime-time audience.”
