{alltv} Hart's 'ET' departure a surprise

HOLLYWOOD -- It has been a year of notable departures, what with Larry King hanging up the suspenders over at CNN, Simon Cowell vacating his American Idol judge's seat and Oprah proclaiming her upcoming season will be her last -- at least on network television.

But the one departure which has sort of taken everyone by surprise was the one that will be made by venerable Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart, who, by this time next year will be over and done with those ET birthdays, just short of 30 years on the job.

Of all the high-profile exits, that was one we didn't see coming.

Even though her name never appeared in the show's title, Mary Hart had become synonymous with the groundbreaking syndicated showbiz tabloid ever since she and her shapely gams first became a permanent fixture on the program back in 1982.

When ET originally bowed in the fall of '81, it served up a unique blend of entertainment news and gossip, providing a quick, daily Tinseltown fix for the soundbite-driven MTV generation.

But there was something about Mary, a former Miss South Dakota who had previously turned viewer heads as co-host of Regis Philbin's short-lived initial stab at a morning talk show, that really brought ET home.

Perky but never bubble-headed, effusive without gushing, Mary Hart set the often-imitated, never-duplicated entertainment co-anchor template for all those tabloid shows to follow.

While the copycats have essentially all come across as TelePrompTer-reading mannequins, Hart has been the affable cheerleader with a good-natured, self-effacing sense of how she may be viewed.

"Sometimes, I must seem like the world's biggest cornball," she once admitted early on in her ET run. "But that's who I am, and what I do."

Mind you, most cornballs don't have their legs insured with Lloyds of London for $1 million apiece (thanks to her manager), nor have their voices been documented by the New England Journal of Medicine as triggering seizures in an epileptic woman.

Still, three decades is a long time, and 59-year-old Hart, who originally planned on staying just three years, conceded in her farewell statement, that "I've reached a point where I clearly realized it's time for a change."

That realization was no doubt prompted by a recent disclosure that Hart was taking a 50% pay cut for her upcoming final season, dictated by declining ratings and ad revenues.

Those economic woes are being experienced by syndicated shows across the board, and no doubt helped Oprah make the decision to finally walk away from her once-invincible syndication powerhouse.

We wish Hart well in her future endeavours.

She may choose to continue to host the annual star-studded Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala -- she and her husband Burt Sugarman (creator of that late-night '70s TV staple, The Midnight Special) have a residence in neighbouring Palm Desert -- but one thing's for certain.

Even though Entertainment Tonight is renewed through the 2011-12 season and could conceivably continue beyond that point, ET just won't be the same without her.

When it comes to dominance in today's fiercely competitive tabloid TV arena, you gotta have Hart.