CBS producers are 'frustrated' as 'The Talk' ratings sink against ABC's 'The View' after Marie Osmond's ouster
CBS and its rival network ABC have always competed against each other for more numbers. And this time, ABC is leading, leaving the former's network producers in distress. The ratings of CBS’ ‘The Talk’ have dropped to 1.5 million, while ratings of ‘The View’ are at three million. 'The View' has been "growing at a huge rate during the Covid-19 lockdown, and ‘The Talk’ is literally the lowest-rated show in the whole CBS lineup," a source told Page Six, adding that at one point, ‘The Talk’ and ‘The View’ were only 30,000 viewers apart. "Sharon Osbourne and Sheryl Underwood’s plan of getting rid of Marie Osmond was clearly a mistake in terms of ratings and number of viewers," the source further revealed.
It has been speculated that the drop in the number of viewers is because of Osmond’s firing. Osmond co-hosted ‘The View’ for one season, but after that, she was fired when Osbourne and Underwood went to executives of CBS and insisted to throw her out. The reason behind their insistence is not known yet, but Osmond said she left the show to spend more time with family and to “pursue other projects.” Temporarily, Amanda Kloots, Rumer Willis, and Elaine Welteroth are hosting ‘The Talk’ on rotation, but are not able to get great numbers, which has left producers and executives “panicked and frustrated.”
The show source stated: “Nothing is working. We are now the lowest-rated network program and we can’t get any traction. To lose more than half a million viewers in a year is catastrophic for a daytime show. Unless we can hire Gayle King, Oprah or Meghan Markle, the writing is on the wall.” While another insider noted, “’The Talk’ does better than the other competing syndicated daytime series. [It] is the newest show in the daytime lineup and other shows in the lineup have been on the air for decades prior. Show producers and execs are not panicked and the show is not in jeopardy of getting canceled.”
This comes months after Osmond said in April she was trolled for resuming work a week after her son’s funeral in 2010. Not just that, the 61-year-old also faced shaming for supporting her gay daughter. She said, “I've been shamed before. You know, if you take the topic of shame, you can say what you want about me, but when they start attacking your children or your family or those type of things, I think this world is into too much of this shaming thing."
Before she opened up about trolling, in March, she was heavily criticized for saying her money will go to charity and not her kids. The singer said on ‘The Talk’ at the time: “Congratulations, kids. My husband and I decided that you do a great disservice to your children to just hand them a fortune because you take away the one most important gifts you can give your children, and that's the ability to work. You see it a lot in rich families. where the kids don't know what to do so they get in trouble, so I just let them be proud of what they make. I'm going to give mine to my charity.”
After Osmond made those statements, a lot of people reportedly sent her hateful messages. Addressing the hate, she stated, “This weekend I deleted someone. I blocked them for the first time. I don't block people... It was interesting because they will say things like, ‘You're fake, you're phony, you're plastic’. Why I blocked this person is, I talked about how I'm going to give my money to help other children. My children are taken care of. I got this person, and she said, ‘Finally the real you comes out, you are a horrible person, you are awful, any person that would cut their children off is a miserable person. And it's why your son took his life.’ How does a person even go there? That is like the most mean, awful -- it's going to upset me again... I ate a pint of Haagen Dazs and I blocked her.”