Go West, young Chenbot: CBS confirms that this fall it will replace long-running soap opera As the World Turns with a new five-day-a-week, L.A.-based panel talk show hosted by Big Brother star/Early Show co-anchor/CBS supreme leader Les Moonves’s better-half Julie Chen and five other females: former child star/lesbian mom Sara Gilbert; former Kevin James TV wife Leah Remini; professional loudmouth/America’s Got Talent judge Sharon Osbourne; ex-sitcom star/footballer’s wife Holly Robinson Peete; and, Vulture has learned, Broadway star/sitcom actress Marissa Jaret Winokur. In other words, The View, but based in L.A. (Chen, by the way, will step down from her daily co-anchor role but may maintain a presence on the Early Show in some other way.) CBS says that the hosts, all of whom have kids, will talk about their home lives on the show; since Chen is married to Moonves, this means there’s at least a small chance we may hear details of what the CBS supreme leader likes to snack on while watching Cake Boss.
Hollywood insiders have been watching for what CBS would do with the World Turns time slot, since it represented a rare opening in the slow-changing daytime landscape. The Eye network also developed an unusually large number of possible projects for the one-hour slot, taping a new version of The $1 Million Pyramid (with Andy Richter as host), a cooking show with Emeril, and a talk show fronted by Jenny Craig spokeswoman Valerie Bertinelli and some dude from Australia. Of all those now-dead also-rans, Pyramid has the best shot of finding life somewhere. Vulture hears that producer Sony Pictures Television is very keen on the idea of reviving Pyramid and could very well try to find another home for the show now that CBS has opted to go with talk in daytime. But first, Chen and her new TV friends will ready their show for an October debut on CBS, a few weeks after World Turns ends its 54-year run in September.
