LIVE WITH KELLY & MARK Celebrates One Year Anniversary
By Movieguide® Contributor
This week, married talk show host duo Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are celebrating one year of LIVE WITH KELLY & MARK.
“If someone had told Consuelos and Ripa one year ago they’d consider themselves a co-hosting match made in heaven, they likely wouldn’t have believed it. In fact, Ripa admits she was ‘staunchly against’ the idea of having her husband by her side each morning on air,” Deadline reported.
Ripa told ABC they didn’t think a married couple could add much to a morning TV talk show.
“I just felt like we’re not that interesting, and we’re not a very controversial couple. We don’t really get up to much. I always liken us to watching paint dry,” she said to Deadline.
But they gave in, and now audiences love them.
“It quickly became clear that something about the two of them on screen every morning clicked with LIVE viewers,” Deadline said. “At a time when daytime talk shows are on a relative decline in viewership, LIVE seems to have found the secret sauce to retaining its audience. This season, it is one of just two syndicated talk shows to improve on its average total viewership from the previous year.”
The couple knows they aren’t perfect and don’t try to be. The audience can tell.
“I do think that there is something very possibly relatable about our relationship. We have disagreements like a normal couple, and we’re not afraid to let them unfold on the air and in front of America, and I think people find a lot of themselves in that,” Ripa said.
Michael Gelman, the show’s executive producer, said they give viewers what they want to see.
“Together Kelly and Mark deliver that rare authenticity that viewers crave,” he told Deadline. “This past year has been so much fun for the entire LIVE family – with a lot of laughs both on and off camera. It’s been fantastic watching their real-life dynamic thrive on the show.”
Debra OConnell, President News Group and Networks, Disney Entertainment Television, said, “It has been a phenomenal year at LIVE with Kelly and Mark together as co-hosts. We could not be more thrilled with how Mark has seamlessly joined the show family as permanent co-host. His undeniable charisma and his and Kelly’s natural chemistry are evident as they deliver the laughs and smiles to our viewers each morning. We are incredibly proud of how Live has continued to evolve and that the audience is responding so enthusiastically.”
The show took the No. 1 spot for entertainment talk shows over the past year, with 2.23 million views per episode.
“In the week ended April 7, LIVE averaged a 1.6 live-plus-same-day rating among households to lead all of daytime talk and come in well ahead of the second highest-rated talker, NBCUniversal’s Kelly Clarkson, which averaged a 1.0 in households in the same week,” Next TV reported Apr 18.
Ripa thinks Consuelos possesses a natural talent for his role.
“It took me eight years to get to where he got in two weeks in terms of ability to do this show by himself,” she said.
He only needed one piece of advice: “Don’t be afraid to voice those opinions.”
He said, “I know we have a predominantly female audience, but I’m not afraid to talk about sports. I love…sports on the show. And newsflash, women love sports as well.”
Ripa admires Consuelos for his authenticity.
“I find Mark utterly compelling, really interesting, super funny, and he’s bold in a way like nobody else. He says what’s on his mind. If he’s thinking it, he says it,” she told Deadline.
“I’ve done this a long time and oftentimes people will adjust their natural personalities to pander to what they think the audience wants to hear, and Mark will tell people what he thinks, and he doesn’t care if it’s not a popular opinion. It gives him an edginess that I think is really missing in the landscape today. Everybody’s so afraid to say anything, and Mark is unafraid to say exactly what he’s thinking.”
But Consuelos still thinks he could do some things a little better.
“I’d like to get better at my interviewing skills. I’d like to get better at reading a teleprompter…I think I’m getting better at throwing to commercial,” he laughed.
“The other day in the middle of the show as we go to commercial, my sign off was ‘See you guys around.’ I mean, the show wasn’t over. The most obvious thing to say would be, ‘We’ll be back right after this.’”
“But I just said, ‘See you around.’ So we went to commercial and one of the producers [goes], ‘What was that?’ I don’t know…So for the next few sign offs, as a joke, I’d say ‘See you around.’ We got a kick out of it,” he said.
Movieguide® previously reported on the couple, who are parents of three:
ALL MY CHILDREN co-stars Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, married 25 years ago, called their marriage “old-fashioned.”
Despite their busy schedules, Ripa said that raising children was a priority.
“I’ve been able to raise my kids here in this city, in the nest, and he’s always been willing to travel and go to a set and go off here and sometimes he’s had to go live in another country to work on a set over there,” Ripa, 50, said on the “Double Date” podcast. “What’s funny is I think of us as such a progressive as a couple. I always think of us as politically progressive. Yet, when it comes to our own family and our marriage and our roles, I think of us as very traditional and almost old-fashioned in our roles.”
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