The View premiered 11 August 1997 replacing Caryl & Marilyn: Real Friends. The original set was a leftover set from a cancelled soap opera, The City; so ABC didn't introduce a new set for The View until its fifth season.
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A New York Times review published ten days after the show premiered, and it described what critic Caryn James thought was distinctive about the show.
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The idea of women talking to one another on daytime television is not exactly radical. The idea that those women should be smart and accomplished is still odd enough to make The View seem wildly different. It actively defies the bubbleheads-'R'-us approach to women's talk shows....
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After a year on the air, a review of the show from Salon.com attempted to summarize what had made the show a "(very guilty) pleasure" for its mostly female audience.
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The View has caught on with viewers because it gives expression to feelings more complicated, and real, than its detractors realize. Like the Rat Pack, it's all about freedom in an uptight world. Vieira, Walters, et al., have confessed to a lot of things on the show that women are supposed to feel guilty about: forgetting to vote, being too lazy to exercise, hating skinny models, letting the kids watch too much TV, admiring Hollywood's latest hunk. And, apparently, they don't care what people think. Look, I'm not holding them up as role models. And I'm not saying they're representative of the death of feminism, or the rebirth of feminism, or anything like that. I just like the way they don't give a damn. If the Rat Pack was Everyman's id, The View is Everywoman's. These chicks do it their way, and are very inspirational to all women.
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The show premiered with four co-hosts: Meredith Vieira, Star Jones Reynolds, Debbie Matenopoulos, and Barbara Walters. Walters and Joy Behar initially took turns as the fourth co-host, an approach that at least one TV critic considered disconcerting.
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The comedian Joy Behar, who appears on the days when Ms. Walters is off, is truly funny but hasn't blended in yet; at times it seems as if a Joan Rivers clone had parachuted in.
Behar has since become a full-time co-host.
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The panel expanded to five when Walters joined in. The subsequent opening credits for the show, featuring voice-over from Walters, made the show's premise explicit.
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I've always wanted to do a show with women of different generations, backgrounds and views: a working mother; a professional in her 30s; a young woman just starting out; and then somebody who's done almost everything and will say almost anything. And in a perfect world, I'd get to join the group whenever I wanted....
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