On June 23, 2009, the trademark laugh of the greatest sidekick of all time was silenced as Ed McMahon floated up to the great sidekick couch on the sky. While Publisher's Clearing House commercials and 'Star Search' reruns will never be the same, the good news is that McMahon, who rose up in the wake of some pretty stellar sidekicks himself, set the bar high for those to follow.

Perhaps he set it too high, though, as newcomers to the talk show field like Jimmy Fallon and Craig Ferguson have chosen to fly solo on their talk shows. And that's a shame. Like wine in a box and BBC America series, these straight men of the chat circuit are all too often underappreciated and overshadowed but consistently, inconspicuously deliver the goods.

You might think that after finally breaking through at the Daytime Emmys and winning the golden statuette in the category Outstanding Host(s), the folks at ABC's The View would be resting on their laurels. Not so. The View is shaking up their production effective immediately.

According to Bill Geddie, executive producer, they're going to try and make The View more interactive, which is code for using email and web cams and other newfangled Internet sort of things to reach out to the viewers.

I might be a bit of a masochist for putting Paris Hilton and The View in one post, but here goes...

Barbara Walters says she'd like to see the currently jailed hotel heiress as a guest host on the show when she gets out of jail. But not so fast! Even though it would seem that Walters would have the final say on guest hosts, that might not be the case. The executive producer of the show says there's no way Hilton will guest host.

Executive producer Bill Geddie was on Walters' SIRIUS radio show this week and disagreed when Walters said she could be on the show. Geddie said "Let me answer that: No." That prompted Walters to say "Let me answer that: Yes."

Can a week go by without some controversy on this show?