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Will Entertainment Tonight dump Mary Hart?

She's been there for 28 years. But is time running out for co-host Mary Hart?

It’s practically unthinkable. Entertainment Tonight without one Mary Hart?

Hart has been the host of the show since 1982. But the New York Post is speculating that she could be about to be replaced.

Hart’s contract is up this year, and there are whispers her job could be offered to Lara Spencer, who anchors the syndicated sister show The Insider.

“Our source says Spencer wants the job badly,” states the report, noting that Spencer now lives in Beverly Hills where ET is also produced, after previously commuting from Connecticut to a Times Square studio, for The Insider.

Hart was hired for ET 28 years ago after being interviewed by the show after Regis Philbin’s first talk show was cancelled. The day after the interview, she was hired as a correspondent. Thirteen weeks later, she was named the show’s co-host, along with Ron Hendren.

“There are no plans to make host changes to Entertainment Tonight, ” said Lisa Summers Haas, a representative for both ET and The Insider.

There better not be!

Source: NY Post,

11 Responses

  1. Mary Hart doesn’t look a day older than ‘stunned mullet’… This show is done. Was a loooooooong time ago.
    When I was 10 it was entertaining.
    Now it’s just the donnie and marie show.

  2. Yes–since the late 90s it has been wall to wall tabloid stories and the latest reality shows: I fast forward through all of these most nights and it comes to around 4 minutes of decent celebrity news in each show.

    I have to admit from it’s start in late 1981 (on Network Ten as “Entertainment This Week”, we got the daily version when the show went to Nine in 1992) through to around 1997-98, the show was top heavy with old showbiz stories featuring stars of the past, Leonard Maltin’s film reviews and reports on the usual A-listers of the time. When they changed format, they changed it with a vengence and it’s pretty much stayed that way for the last decade. (The show would usually have a change of on-air graphics and there would be a set reconfiguration, usually timed with the beginning of the new tv season each September).

    Perhaps the show may be feeling the heat from the hip and very funny TMZ crew (are they actors or reporters?) and dumping Mary is their way of updating the format, most likely wheeling her out to do ‘special, in-depth interviews’ with celebrities who are having brushes with the law or who are in some sort of trouble (usually around 3 a month, currently).

    Sadly Leonard Maltin is sighted only in reports on movie premieres: for me, he was the best thing about the show in the past (always a kind of a hyper version of Ivan Hutchinson) and truly sorry to see him only making cameo appearences these days.

    Mary could be seen as the ‘Walter Cronkite of entertainment reporting’, if such a thing is imaginable (now, probably) and I don’t think the show would benefit from dumping her. But yes, Leeza Gibbons, John Tesh, Rob Weller, even in the very early days, Connie Chung — they were all pretty good.

  3. While I dislike the tabloid direction of the show too, I feel that if they hired Lara Spencer it would be heading in that direction even more. The Insider is a shocking piece of rubbish.

  4. Entertainment Tonight has been terrible since the late 1990’s. I used to watch it all the time when I was on school holidays or off sick. Then it became tabloid trash about no name celebrites on detox diets or getting plastic surgery and so called rumours with youtube video and out of focus magazine covers.
    It was much better when it was more related to TV and music and they would have on set interviews with cast and crew.
    Hopefully is Mary is kicked out of the job, she will move onto something better.

  5. What is the point? it’s a largely unwatchable show anyway. For every 30 minutes of the show, there is 25 minutes of telling us what we’re going to see – again and again – 3 minutes of titles, and 2 minutes of actual content.

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