BB8 | After Dark Update (8/1; contains spoilers[?])

• Dustin is head of household
• Kail and Nick are nominated for eviction
• “Late Night Crew” still angling for Nick’s eviction
• Eviction ceremony is Thursday night
• Also, head of household competition is Thursday night…

Rosie gives up ‘the daily grind’

A sticking point in Rosie O’Donnell’s eventual return to television (not that she’s been absent very long) is that she’s “too old and busy as a mom” to commit to a daily talk show. Her latest idea is a Carol Burnett/Ed Sullivan weekly hybrid, she tells Variety.

Before you dismiss it as her latest cockamamie idea, remember that the Mike Douglas-style chat show was a dead format until O’Donnell resusitated it in 1996.

Siskel, Ebert & Roeper live on in archive

Twenty years’ worth of movie reviews from Siskel & Ebert and Ebert & Roeper will be available online starting tomorrow. The late Siskel preceded Roeper, who’s been co-hosting the show with guest reviewers for the last year due to Ebert’s poor health.

PLUS | Ebert will do a live chat tomorrow night at 8 p.m./ET

GREY’S | Reaser back to ‘Anatomy’

Ask Ausiello reports that Elisabeth Reaser will be back for more than one episode this season on Grey’s Anatomy. Reaser played Alex Karev’s love interest-turned-Jane Doe last year and received a Emmy nomination for her performance.

Whoopi to moderate ‘The View’

The women of The View have spent the summer shopping around for a new moderator, and this morning Barbara Walters announced (as reported here and elsewhere last week) that Whoopi Goldberg’s got the job, effective after Labor Day.

The end of this search is the beginning of a new era at the chat show, which reinvented itself last fall when Rosie O’Donnell came on board for a tense, much-talked-about year as moderator. While O’Donnell’s opinions were not always popular, they made for good television and suddenly The View was must-see TV.

Can Goldberg, who is also outspoken about her politics, connect with and engage viewers in the same way?

Goldberg’s appointment fills two voids at the ABC talk show: moderator and minority panelist. Goldberg is the first non-white permanent fixture at The View since Star Jones’ abrupt and acrimonious departure last summer.

This isn’t her first attempt at a talk show, either, though her first entry was notably less successful than O’Donnell’s (Goldberg’s 1992 talk show barely lasted a season; O’Donnell’s Emmy-winning six-year run was wildly successful by comparison).

Since then, daytime audiences have embraced Whoopi on a flashy ’90s Hollywood Squares and primetime audiences panned her self-titled topical sitcom, in which she ran a hotel (shades of The Golden Palace). She currently hosted a syndicated weekday morning radio show, Wake Up with Whoopi (no word yet on how or if her radio duties will be affected by her View gig).

View mother Walters is counting on her new moderator to keep the show competitive, certainly. And her comments on the hiring of Goldberg are eerily reminiscent of the kind words she had in bringing O’Donnell on board last year. Perhaps it’s expected that Whoopi will keep the show in the headlines, making it a hot topic off the air as well.

It’s too early to tell whether lightning will strike twice for this show, which spent nearly a decade on the air without achieving a purpose, other than, perhaps, punting Star Jones (…and Debbie Matenopoulos). Since then, the gloves have come off at The View and Barbara Walters has come out looking at least a little deceitful and manipulative, but hey, she owns the show so I guess she can do as she pleases.

But. If this is The View‘s second perfect storm and Whoopi is at the helm of a second successful season, will Barbara turn on her too? Will she regret bringing together “different women, different points of view” as much as she seemed to at times this year? And if so, where will The View turn next?

RELATED | In the runup to her CourtTV/truTV talk show, Star Jones admits to gastric bypass surgery

AND | Rosie blogs about celebrity train wreck Paula Abdul

Cable TV’s summer success story

Summer has always been cable’s time to shine, but this summer, cable is outdoing itself and hitting new ratings records. Cable had a 62% audience share in July, according to Variety, owing in part to a record number of original summer series.

BB8 | ‘House Calls’: Where’s Gretchen?

A commenter points out that Bunky has taken up hosting duties this week at House Calls, the Big Brother talk show. Anyone know what happened to Gretchen? Is she on vacation? Did they finally shitcan her for not watching/paying attention to the show?

UPDATE | On Monday’s House Calls, Bunky says it’s his first time hosting by himself and that Gretchen is “not here.” At the top of Tuesday’s show, he says she’s off today. And she did all five shows last week, interviewing evictee Mike last Friday after eviction night.

Got answers? Leave ’em in the comments.