The Caroline Rhea Show is an American syndicated variety/talk show that was regarded as the successor to The Rosie O'Donnell Show. It premiered in September 2002 and ran until June 2003 and was hosted by actress and comedienne Caroline Rhea, who was hand-picked by Rosie O'Donnell as her replacement and who had hosted the last few weeks of Rosie prior to her show launching. Like its predecessor, The Caroline Rhea Show was taped in Studio 8-G at NBC's Rockefeller Center Studios in New York City.
In many ways, The Caroline Rhea Show was similar to the more-successful Ellen DeGeneres Show; both programs were daytime talk shows that were run like nighttime talk shows, with monologues and house bands and celebrity (and sometimes non-celebrity) guests. Unlike with Rosie's daytime show where an audience member opened the show, by announcing the day's guests, Chip Zien was the announcer of the show announcing "Live from New York, it's The Caroline Rhea Show! On Today's Show...Here's Caroline!" The first five words, "Live from New York, it's," mimicked the opening tagline to Saturday Night Live, produced in the neighboring Studio 8-H. The show's intro song was Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", which the audience often sang along to, particularly in vocalising the three beats after the song's eponymous line and chanting "so good, so good" in response to "good times never seemed so good".
Most television markets which had aired the show replaced it with The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which was offered by the syndicator of both Rhea's and O'Donnell's show, Warner Bros. Television's Telepictures division. Some stations that aired Rosie also aired Caroline Rhea, but some (like WABC-TV in New York, which gave the former Rosie spot to The Wayne Brady Show) aired the show at an undesirable late-night time slot.
The show's house band was led by trumpeter Chris Botti. Former David Bowie guitarist and musical collaborator Carlos Alomar was the musical director for this program.
Famous quotes containing the words caroline and/or show:
“In the drawing room [of the Queens palace] hung a Venus and Cupid by Michaelangelo, in which, instead of a bit of drapery, the painter has placed Cupids foot between Venuss thighs. Queen Caroline asked General Guise, an old connoisseur, if it was not a very fine piece? He replied Madam, the painter was a fool, for he has placed the foot where the hand should be.”
—Horace Walpole (17171797)
“What we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)