Anderson Cooper reflects on the end of his daytime talk show: “It was absolutely worthwhile”

It is so strange to me that Anderson Cooper’s daytime talk show was canceled last fall, just at the beginning of its second season.

Not much of a vote of confidence!

The pity is the show, which changed its name from Anderson to Anderson Live! and added rotating guest co-hosts, is better than ever. Anderson is openly gay this season and that makes him more relaxed, more humorous, more human.

The format has also changed from Oprah-esque to more Live With Kelly and Michael.

Anderson, more in demand than ever, looks at the whole thing positively.

‘It was absolutely worthwhile,’ he tells The Hollywood Reporter. ‘I like learning new things and I like developing new skill sets and I like challenging myself in different ways, and I think the daytime show has done that, you know? I certainly enjoy it. I wish we had the show the first year that we ended up with the second year. It took us awhile to kind of figure out what we wanted to do. I’m very pleased with the show this year and how audiences have responded to it, and I’ve had a lot of fun doing it every day. It’s been kind of a jolt of energy in my day and it’s working in front of an audience and doing a show that has a variety of topics and a variety of serious-to-light stuff.’

Anderson adds: ‘I really wanted a sidekick from the get-go. And I think we really were limited by the room the first year. I mean it was a beautiful room, a beautiful backdrop and stuff, but it wasn’t available to use when we wanted it — because it’s not a television venue, it’s a performance space that does concerts and things. We could only kind of shoot around their schedule and that was really a limiting factor. Every day was sort of Groundhog’s Day, and you couldn’t develop a life within the show. We were shooting shows two or three weeks in advance and it didn’t allow you say on the show, “Wow, did you see what happened yesterday on the show? Well, today we re-contacted that person and this is what happened.” That was something I really regret and we kind of realized early on, but you know, we weren’t able to make the change until the second year.’