NEW YORK - After less than a year as host, Rosie O’Donnell will leave ABC-TV’s The View after a string of controversy that included mocking how Chinese and Chinese Americans speak and her insincere apology for the racial insult.
O’Donnell said that she would leave the Emmy-winning women hosted daytime talk show in June after she and ABC could not agree to a new contract after earning more than $3 million for her season as host. The television station was willing to increase her compensation after helping to boost ratings as she feuded with mogul Donald Trump, attacking Rupert Murdoch and equating “radical Christianity” with “radical Islam.”
“It just didn’t work,” she said last Wednesday on The View.
“That’s show biz. But it’s not sad because I loved it here and I love you guys and I’m not going away.”
During her brief tenure, the comedienne and actress had stirred controversy. Last December, O’Donnell described a drunk appearance by actor Danny DeVito as international news, saying, “You can imagine in China, it’s ching chong… Danny DeVito, ching chong, drunk, The View, ching chong.”
APA groups demanded that ABC and co-executive producer Barbara Walters pressure O’Donnell into apologizing.
She did apologize, admitting she had no idea that “ching chong” was a racist phrase. However, she warned, “I’ll do something like that again probably in the next week – not on purpose – that’s how my brain works.”
She is expected to make guest host appearances on the show next year.
Through mid-April, the show had averaged 3.5 million viewers since the controversial O’Donnell had joined, an increase of 17 percent or a half-million viewers since April 2006, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Ironically, the longtime actress and comedienne was a gay rights advocate who spoke out against intolerance. The show in 2006 had effectively fired its only African American host, Star Jones. The show’s only Asian American, Lisa Ling, left in 2002.
One of O’Donnell’s critics, executive director Margaret Fung of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund of New York, said “We believe that the Disney-ABC Television Group made the right decision in refusing to renew Rosie O’Donnell’s contract on The View.
On March 14, APA groups, including AALDEF, met with ABC’s president of daytime programming and other network executives. They repeated points made in a January letter signed by nineteen community groups to Walt Disney Company President and CEO Roger Iger. He was criticized over O’Donnell’s “lack of sensitivity” and “silence of ABC over this matter.”
The national letter was signed by groups such as the Asian American Federation of New York, Asian American Bar Association of New York, Japanese American Citizens League, Organization of Chinese Americans, YKASEC – Empowering the Korean American Community.
Associated Press contributed to this report.