'The View' for Men May Not Be Coming to TV

"It's not happening," says Mapa's agent, Aggie Gold. "I've been representing Alec for 30 years. I think I would have known if he were doing something."

Reports surfaced this week that 'View' executive producers Bill Geddie and Barbara Walters were in discussions about doing a version of the ABC daytime hit that caters to men. The project was reported to be in the development stage.

The personalities they're said to be after -- Mapa, Gumbel, former Fox News Channel anchor E.D. Hill and ex-BET anchor Jacque Reid -- have all appeared as guest hosts on 'The View.'

But Gold says she spoke to Geddie after the media contacted her, and he had a different story.

"I called the executive producer [Geddie] at 'The View,'" she tells PopEater. "He said to me they had talked about it in the past and were just throwing ideas around. He told me, 'If we had anything concrete, we would have called you, of course.'"

The unisex spinoff concept isn't new, and has been bandied about "for years," according to Gold.

Watch Alec Mapa During a Recent Visit to 'The View' >>


Officially, ABC is mum on the project, telling PopEater that the 'The View's' publicist is on vacation and won't have anything to say about the matter until September 7.

Citing an unnamed inside source, the New York Daily News said Wednesday that Walters and Geddie want a sister -- or should we say brother? -- show with a male perspective. 'The View,' a roundtable discussion with five female hosts (including Walters), has been a runaway hit with women since it premiered in 1997.

The Daily News source claims Walters and Geddie picture the spinoff being on in the afternoon, in the timeslot that will open when 'Oprah' goes off the air, so as not to take away from the original.

"They don't want to do anything that will compete with 'The View,'" the insider says.

And they see it filming in Los Angeles and not New York, where 'The View' is taped, according to the report. Gold says that doesn't ring true, since Walters is a Manhattan fixture.

"LA is out of the question," she says. "It would be done here in New York City if they ever do it."

Gold says Mapa was well-received when he performed his standup act on 'The View,' which led to an invitation to be a guest host.

"They loved him," she tells PopEater.

But that's where his affiliation with the enterprise ends, Gold says. She isn't sure how or why the 'View'-for-guys rumor took hold.

"I don't know where it started, he [Geddie] doesn't know where it started," says Gold.

Some TV industry experts are skeptical that a testosterone-infused spinoff would even be of interest to men, especially if it aired during the day.

"The audience tends to skew female in the daytime," Bob Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse, tells PopEater. "A 'View' with a male perspective could work if it were really well done ... if you could execute it as well as the original, and that's a big 'if.'"

Mapa, who played a TV reporter on the recently-ended ABC comedy 'Ugly Betty,' is hard at work on other projects, according to Gold. This fall, he'll begin shooting a film tentatively titled 'Mean Cuisine' about rival celebrity chefs that stars Billy Crystal and Dana Carvey.

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