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It’s Rosie O’Donnell

 

 

PROFILE. Rosie O’Donnell wants to bring back classic family TV time — a couple of little kids splayed out on the floor in footie pajamas sharing a bowl of popcorn while mom, dad, grandma and grandpa take their places on the couch and in various armchairs, everyone smiling, bewitched by the blue glow of the screen.

OK, maybe that golden age of television cliché is a little heavy-handed, but it’s not too far off from the scene O’Donnell imagines in living rooms the nation over for her new variety special, “Rosie Live.”

“‘Sonny and Cher’ was fantastic. ‘Carol Burnett,’ ‘Donny and Marie’ … I watched them all,” the former talk show host says. “It was the O’Donnell tradition to just sit around and everyone — my nana and my dad, everyone — would watch [variety shows] together. It was a huge event in our house, back when there were three channels.”

Now, of course, most households have over 300  channels to choose from. So despite taking cues from the variety show elite — O’Donnell’s one-hour, live special will include celebrity guests (Alec Baldwin, Jane Krakowski), musical acts (Liza Minnelli, Ne-Yo, Alanis Morissette), comedy skits (Kathy Griffin) and a giant prime time giveaway — there are inherent challenges to attracting a modern-day audience accustomed to gritty dramas and vapid reality shows to such an old-fashioned format. But O’Donnell is anything but pessimistic.

“Variety shows were a big hit in the ’70s when the economy was in the crapper and gasoline was scarce, and people’s belief in the political system was shaken,” O’Donnell says. “It’s the right time, I think, [to bring back the variety show] … and to give people an hour to forget about their troubles, to have an hour of fun, laughter and singing and dancing, no politics, no arguing, no talking, you know, about controversial things. Just a fun one hour to get around the TV with everyone in your family and laugh.”