TCA: Star Jones: View Needs a Minority

By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/15/2007 2:17:00 PM

Former View co-host Star Jones says she has but one beef with the show in its current state – it has no permanent co-host from a racial minority group.

“No person of color has been permanently placed as part of the cast of five,” she said at a presentation to television critics today in Los Angeles. “When you are putting forth a show, you need to make it look like the fabric of society and not just look like that way from the outside, but feel that way from the inside.”

Jones appeared on a panel for TV critics on Sunday to promote her new live afternoon talk show on Court TV, which debuts Aug. 20, but questions from the group centered less on the show than on Jones’ massive weight loss of late and her prior TV perch.

Jones said she would reveal details of her dramatic weight loss in a Glamour magazine column that will run before her Court show debuts. She declined to trash The View, from

which she was booted last June after nine years after widely reported feuding with the show’s creator Barbara Walters.

“I know you guys have wanted to hear me weigh in on this in the past year,” Jones said. “I’m gonna be real straight with you. I was part of an amazing pop culture experience and Barbara Walters gave me the opportunity of a lifetime to go on and do television and I really wanted to do, so I’m not gonna do anything that damages that warm feeling I had. I’m not gonna pile on or participate in any other silliness.”

ABC Daytime executives have yet to announce the show’s fall lineup of co-hosts, which will likely include several new players given Jones’ never filled seat, Rosie O’Donnell’s departure and Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s upcoming maternity leave.

After Jones left, View Executive Producer Bill Geddie told B&C he was looking for a minority to possibly fill the slot.

“I think it’s important to have an African American voice at the table, and I still feel that way,” he said in September.

Of new Court show, Jones promised it would “do the story behind the story” of current events in pop culture. She said it will be divided into three segments – “conversation, discussion and interrogation.”

The first two will feature Jones and guests in informal talk show chat. The third will put guests, including lawyers and newsmakers, in a witness box to face questioning from the attorney-turned-TV-personality on hot topics.

Jones and Court TV announced plans for her daily talk show in May. The show marks Jones’ return to the network where she got her TV start in 1991.