• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 8, 2015

A talk show does not necessarily have to be an out-and-out trainwreck to get attention and build an audience these days.

But it can’t hurt to generate a little heat every once in a while. Even a burst of lukewarmth would be more than “The View” has given off in a couple of hundred weekdays.

When was the last time you heard anything about “The View,” other than the occasional gossip story that this or that co-host is being eyed for removal?

The latest of these stories have concerned both Rosie Perez and Nicolle Wallace. If the rumors are to be believed, these two have been working on borrowed time practically since they joined the “View” team last September. On Wednesday of this week, the news came down about Perez: She’s out.

Her ouster after one season came just a few weeks after the show announced a new “permanent” member of the co-host coterie -- Raven-Symone, former child actor from “The Cosby Show,” who is now 29.

What has she been up to since “The Cosby Show” went off the air? A little this and a little that (including the Disney show she did as a teen, “That’s So Raven”), but currently she seems to be distinguished mostly by her penchant for striking hairdos (such as the one she sports in the photo above -- that’s her on the extreme right).

Her “role” on “The View” would appear to be a mystery. Such mysteries were not a characteristic of this pioneering talk show in its heyday, which lasted a decade or more.

Whether you agreed or not with liberals Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar or rightie Elisabeth Hasselbeck, you knew where you stood with them. And you could rely on them for headline-making fireworks -- not every day, of course, because that would come across as a contrivance. When heated arguments did break out between these “View” co-hosts, you got the impression the dustups were real and the opinions expressed -- however clumsily they came out -- came from the heart.

These days, however, no such drama appears to be emanating from “The View,” at least not on-screen. Some are saying the malaise at “The View” is due to a more crowded field of competing, all-female talk shows on TV nowadays -- most notably “The Talk” on CBS and “The Real,” which is syndicated. But two or three such shows do not really represent a “crowd,” do they? 

As a journalist toiling on the TV beat, I can offer at least one perspective on the difference between “The View” and “The Talk”: In the publicity arena, “The Talk” is winning this contest hands down.

I can tell you that a day does not go by when I do not receive a timely recap in my e-mail inbox describing the topics the ladies of “The Talk” covered that day and what they said about them. 

I may never actually use this information in a column or blog post, although one never knows when such information will come in handy. But much more important is this fact: As a result of this daily effort on the part of the “Talk” publicity team, their show enjoys a high profile in whatever portion of my brain is responsible for brand recognition and familiarity, where the remembering of TV shows is concerned. Or to put it another way: I cannot ignore “The Talk” because they won’t let me. And that is the goal of publicity and media relations, isn’t it?

This is not the case with “The View.” If this show’s publicists are producing any notifications or recaps about what transpired (if anything) on “The View” on any given day, then I am not in receipt of them. And if they are not producing such material and shooting it out to the world’s TV-beat reporters and bloggers, then they should do so, if only to remind journalists that “The View” is still around. 

It would certainly help, of course, if the “View” recappers would have something worthwhile to recap. For that, you need a team of co-hosts who are not afraid to voice their opinions, however controversial they might be.