After the Star Flameout, the Negatives Are Rising

By Lisa de Moraes
Thursday, June 29, 2006

One day after "The View" executive producer Barbara Walters billed and cooed over departing co-host Star Jones Reynolds, she opened the show by sticking a shiv in Star's gullet.

While this is way better TV than that treacly send-off Babs gave her other departing co-host, Meredith Vieira, earlier this month, it's unclear how this advances Babs's carefully constructed image as the Mother Abbess of TV journalism.

"Then there were three," B-Wa said at the top of the show, in re the fact that the tacky kitchen table around which the gals cheep, cheep, cheep at the start of each show was noticeably Star-less, sporting merely the aforementioned B-Wa, Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

"This is truthfully a very difficult day for us and it is a sad day for us," B-Wa continued, her Sad Face now firmly screwed in place.

Difficult and sad because the day before, Star had upstaged what we're certain would have been a riveting Babs-led discussion on air conditioning to announce she was leaving the show on which she had vamped for nine years.

Upstaging B-Wa is a serious crime, and here's how she executed Star yesterday morning:

"The truth is that Star has known for months that ABC did not want to renew her contract and that she would not be asked back in the fall," she told her studio audience in marked contrast to what she'd said 24 hours earlier about how important Star had been to the launch of the ABC daytime series.

(That's because, B-Wa had told the New York Times the day before, ABC's research showed that Star's "negatives were rising" and "the audience was losing trust in her. They didn't believe some of the things she said.")

Speaking of rising negatives and not believing some of the things a woman has said, B-Wa had been telling her fellow journalists for months that there was no truth to the rumor Star was being dropped from the show. In early May, while in Washington for a "coming out" dinner for Saudi Arabia's new ambassador, The Post's Reliable Source column said she told them that Star Jones was not being dropped from "The View." A couple of weeks earlier the New York Times quoted her as saying, "If Star wants to continue to be [on 'The View'], she is welcome."

These days, B-Wa explains she told those little white misinformations to "protect Star."

Back to yesterday's execution, where B-Wa was explaining to her studio audience that they have grown to dislike and mistrust Star, according to ABC research.

"But we were never going to say this. We wanted to protect Star," B-Wa said.

"And so, we told her that she could say whatever she wanted about why she was leaving and that we would back her up. . . . We hoped she would announce it here on the program and leave with dignity."

But Star did say what she wanted about why she was leaving. And she did announce it on the program.

So why did they not back her up? Why did they instead sack her newly skinny heinie?

Yesterday, B-Wa would only say, coyly, that Star "made another choice" and that since her announcement Tuesday on the show, "she has made further announcements that have surprised us."

By "other announcements" we presume she means "interview with People magazine," in which Star said, "I feel like I was fired," and which popped up on the mag's Web site before Tuesday's edition of "The View" had ended.

Yes, Barbara Walters got scooped on her own big story by People magazine.

Chatting with Ryan Seacrest on his Los Angeles radio show yesterday, Star acknowledged she's known for months they did not want her back on the show in the fall. She said that the parties involved had agreed to orchestrate an on-air announcement this week and she had been asked to remain with the show through mid-July. Did you know that July is a sweeps month? You can just imagine the treacle fest they were planning for Star's bow-out.

But, with Star going off-script and, it appears, telling the truth about the reason for her departure, B-Wa told viewers yesterday Star had made it "uncomfortable for us to pretend that everything is the same" on the show.

Star told Seacrest yesterday she got word late Tuesday "they did not want me to return today."

"I was told yesterday was my last day," she told Seacrest.

Actually, she said, she did not get the call, her agent did. And, in response to a direct question from Seacrest, Star said she had not heard from B-Wa.

B-Wa preferred to convey her message to Star through the medium of television, which is rated, versus a phone call, which is not.

"We wish her well in this new chapter of her life as we begin a new chapter on 'The View.' When we come back, we will do what we do best, or worst -- hot topics."