Wendy Williams
“I am a woman from New Jersey who happens to have a talk show,” says Williams, 47.
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Image Credit: Photo Credit: Eric Ogden -
Wendy Williams
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Eric Ogden It’s a combination of relatability (“Bullying and cooking are things all women with families deal with”), high energy, daily obsessions (Kim Kardashian’s flour-bombing incident and a serious Trayvon Martin discussion) and her signature phrase, “How you doin’?” that earns Williams cheers from her syndicated show’s devoted and diverse audience.
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Mika Brzezinski & Joe Scarborough
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Miller Mobley "It's an island of sanity across the board in television news,” says Brzezinski, 44, about the dynamic duo’s 4-year-old morning show that concerns itself with smart news coverage and analysis. “What I think people like is that while we both come from different ideological standpoints, our objective is to be objective.”
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Mika Brzezinski & Joe Scarborough
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Miller Mobley Co-hosts, MSNBC's "Morning Joe"
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Sean Hannity
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Wesley Mann Married for 19 years with two kids, Hannity says he is partial to movies like the Navy SEAL drama Act of Valor and TV shows like American Idol. “Sometimes,” he admits, “I watch six episodes in a row.”
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Barbara Walters
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador It’s not easy to get Walters to concede that she might be a legend. “I do think people know I do my homework and don’t come into any interview with an agenda,” says Walters, an octogenarian who has enjoyed an unmatched, zeitgeist-y run of more than 50 years in entertainment and hard news.
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Ben Sherwood
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Matt Furman President, ABC News
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Ben Sherwood
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Matt Furman With multiple best-selling novels under his belt, Sherwood published his first nonfiction book in 2009, The Survivors Club, about the science of human survival.
COMPLETE LIST: 35 Most Powerful People in Media
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Ben Sherwood
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Matt Furman Since moving back from an L.A. sabbatical to New York with his wife, Imagine Films consultant Karen Kehela-Sherwood, and their two young sons, Sherwood is more likely to be found coaching one of his 7-year-old’s sports teams than at the proverbial typewriter. “I will always love writing,” he says. “But this job taps all of my curiosity and creativity.”
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Matt Lauer
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador In the New York issue of The Hollywood Reporter, NBC's morning mainstay opens up about the new deal that will likely keep the juggernaut on top and has the industry marveling over one man's ability to alter news media landscape.
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Matt Lauer
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador Earlier this month, Lauer signed a four-year contract with NBC’s Today for a reported $25 million a year.
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Matt Lauer
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador “I should have retired,” he jokes, as he contemplates his evening plans — the Bruce Springsteen concert at Madison Square Garden. “I have to nap to go to a rock concert… That’s how sad it is.”
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Barbara Walters
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador After 15 years on NBC’s Today, where she began as a writer, she was officially designated its first female co-host in 1974. Walters followed that with 25 years as host of ABC’s 20/20, then anchor of ABC Evening News — another female first — during which she developed signature lighter fare via her annual Oscar night and 10 Most Fascinating People specials.
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Barbara Walters
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador Predating Oprah, Walters has been making a wide range of personalities, from entertainment to business to politics, squirm, confess and cry (notably drawing 48.5 million viewers for her Monica Lewinsky interview in 1999) since the ’70s.
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Katie Couric
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Rebecca Karamehmedovic “It was fun,” Couric says of her week-long stint on GMA, likening her return to morning hosting to seeing an old boyfriend again. “You’re reminded why you fell in love and why you broke up. But I don’t want two jobs.”
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Katie Couric
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Wesley Mann Her goal with Katie? “I want to have real conversations about important things but have fun, too,” says Couric, 55, the mother of two daughters, 16 and 20. She also will give her colleagues in the TV business some renewed competition in the booking wars. Couric already has begun the process of courting “some of the people I’ve had relationships with,” though she won’t tip her hand.
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Kelly Ripa
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Dan Hallman Ripa doesn’t consider herself the official host of her own series. “Our show has always been a love note to New York,” she says. “I feel like the city is the real host, and we have two ambassador co-hosts who sit in.”
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Kelly Ripa
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Dan Hallman Ripa, whose on-air mentions of her husband and three children comprise a large part of the bond with her primarily female viewership, underscores that the show continues to be a draw for talent. “One reason celebrities remain loyal is also a reason the audience maintains its loyalty — it’s not an anxiety-inducing show,” she says. “I don’t even think the publicists have to tell us what they don’t want to talk about.”
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Kelly Ripa
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Dan Hallman In November, not long after hitting his 10th anniversary with Ripa, Regis Philbin left his seat of 28 years at Live! With Regis and Kelly. The months since the show’s subsequent rebranding as Live! With Kelly have found Ripa, 41, sitting alongside a revolving door of famous friends — Jerry Seinfeld, Neil Patrick Harris, Alec Baldwin — and potential torch carriers such as Jerry O’Connell, Michael Buble and NY1 anchor Pat Kiernan.
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Kelly Ripa
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Dan Hallman Even without Philbin, Live! With Kelly recently matched its February 2011 sweep rating of a 2.7 in households and is now the top syndicated talker among the coveted women 25-to-54 demo.
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Matt Lauer
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador Before the Today deal, his former co-host Katie Couric reached out to Lauer about joining her on her ABC daytime talk show, bowing in September. “The opportunity for us to team up again would have been really exciting,” says Couric, who called her pitch a "pipe dream." Lauer confirms he considered: “I wasn’t just wasting time. There’s no crime in listening.”
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Mika Brzezinski & Joe Scarborough
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Miller Mobley One early defining moment came when Brzezinski, the daughter of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and a mother of two teenage daughters, tore up a script on the show. “The news director wanted us to cover Paris Hilton getting out of prison,” Scarborough, 49, remembers. “Four million YouTube hits later, we had made our stand.”
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Kelly Ripa
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Emily Blank Live! With Kelly recently revealed an entirely new set, designed to look like a "contemporary downtown-style loft." The new set features a larger performance area, an upper balcony for the studio audience and a new lighting system with 109 LED monitors.
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Kelly Ripa
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Emily Blank Ripa receives a touch-up during her shoot with THR.
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Kelly Ripa
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Emily Blank Ripa was photographed by Dan Hallman on April 5th at Emilio Ballato's in Nolita.
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Sean Hannity
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Wesley Mann Hannity, who tapes his radio show near his home on Long Island and his TV show in Manhattan, can laugh. His show draws an average of 2.02 million viewers, including 456,000 in the core news demo of adults 25-to-54, handily beating MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Piers Morgan in the 9 p.m. slot and making him Fox News’ clear No. 2 to Bill O’Reilly. Hannity also is the only current cable-news personality who has remained in the same time slot, topping it for 39 months as of the end of March.
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Wendy Williams
Image Credit: Photo Credit: Eric Ogden Renewed on Fox-owned stations through 2014 after being top-rated in its slot among its core demo of women 25-to-54 in New York and a handful of other large markets, Williams started 2012 with a bang, hitting record ratings for the week ending Jan. 15.