Storm Watch ‘97: Hurricane Rosie Blows In to L.A.

Television executives looking to duplicate the meteoric success of “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” can study time slots, demographics, viewing trends and the like. Or they can just ask an 11-year-old to decode the puzzle for them.

O’Donnell is “like another person, but then, a lot of people know her, so she’s a star,” reasoned Angela Taylor of Ojai at Universal Studios theme park last weekend.

From the perspective of fans both young and old--several thousand of whom are descending daily on the park, where “Rosie O’Donnell” has taken up temporary residence for 13 shows that began taping Sunday--it is just that simple.

Fortysomething Jim McClure of Duxbury, Mass., put it this way: “She has the ability to still be a fan herself. She has that childlike quality.”

The show’s viewers see O’Donnell as pal, mentor, therapist, the funniest person they know and, oh yeah, a celebrity. When they meet her, they are far more apt to offer her a beer or an ice cream cone than they are to swoon. Frequently, these days, they also offer her their children, to cuddle and fuss over. (“They just stick their arms out and go ‘Here!’ It’s really quite disturbing,” O’Donnell says with a laugh.)

This isn’t just television minus the fourth wall; it’s television pulled completely out of the box.

When “Rosie O’Donnell” debuted in June, it did so to the highest ratings of any daytime talk-show premiere in a decade. Since then it has become No. 2 nationally, behind the long-established “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and has even managed to best “Oprah” occasionally (scoring highest with heavily promoted appearances by Tom Cruise and Madonna). In Los Angeles, it has been credited with providing a solid lead-in to KNBC-TV’s 4 and 5 p.m. newscasts, which now win their time slots.

Then there’s the marketing impact. When O’Donnell held up a Tickle Me Elmo doll during a show last fall, she single-handedly sparked the frenzy for what became that holiday season’s hottest (and often unattainable) toy. Because of her passion for Ring Dings and assorted other Drake’s cakes, that company is expanding distribution nationally. And Koosh balls--well, Koosh balls are through the roof.

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Jim Paratore, president of Telepictures Productions (a division of Warner Bros.), which distributes the show, says it was clear even in the test-show phase of production last summer that they had a winner, “but it would be arrogant to say that we knew this [level of success] was going to happen.”

And arrogance surely would not befit anyone connected with “Rosie.”

Before landing on daytime television, O’Donnell was a stand-up comic who had drifted into acting, fashioning a pretty steady movie career mainly out of witty Everywoman-as-best-friend roles (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “A League of Their Own”). In a 1994 interview with The Times, while touring as Rizzo in a pre-Broadway “Grease,” she announced prophetically that she’d one day like to do a David Letterman-style talk show.

Then in May 1995 she adopted a child, and a TV vehicle seemed the best way for her to be in one place long enough, with regular work hours, to be the kind of single mother she’d envisioned.

Since part of that vision is parenting without exploitation, O’Donnell speaks sparingly to the press about her son, Parker, though she frequently offers glimpses of his toddler behavior to audiences. (He’s fond of flushing Elmo down the toilet, for instance.)

“It’s a fine line to walk between sharing my experience as a mother and giving away stories that are not mine to sell,” she explains. “I don’t want him to ever become a prop.”

But Parker isn’t the only infant she’s concerned about on this road trip. Her 8-month-old show is out of the intimate confines of its 180-seat studio in New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza for the first time. Moved here for roughly two weeks at a cost of more than $1 million, it’s being taped at the Beetlejuice Theater, which has been dressed up in animated pastels and configured to seat about 900.

The main difference O’Donnell, 34, has noticed thus far is the noise level: “I was not really prepared for the amount of noise [nearly] a thousand people can make.”

At Sunday’s 5 p.m. taping, some in the audience had been in line since 5 a.m. (“Five a.m.?” remarked O’Donnell upon greeting them during a commercial break. “Geez. Get a life!”) Marilyn Henry, 33, had flown in from Phoenix just for the day, because she’s an employee of Southwest Airlines (read: free flight) and because she watches the show regularly with her 2-year-old daughter. “It’s G-rated and when she’s in the room, I don’t have to worry,” she said.

“G-rated” may not do the show justice, since it does have a hip edge that appeals to older teens, but it is far closer to the family-friendly shows once hosted by Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas--O’Donnell’s oft-acknowledged mentors--than it is to Letterman’s saucy and sarcastic brand of entertainment. “Whenever anyone sat down [as a guest] on those shows,” O’Donnell says of the Griffin and Douglas days, “you never saw fear in their eyes.”

You also never saw the kind of conflict and grotesque personal tragedy regularly traded on talk shows hosted by Sally Jessy Raphael, Jenny Jones, Ricki Lake and others today. Many in O’Donnell’s studio audience voiced a distaste for such programs and said they consider this show a reason for upscale, middle-aged women to come back to daytime TV.

“We’re tired of people’s problems,” groaned Cynthia Lincoln, 49, of Long Beach’s Belmont Heights. “We want the fun side.”

“If I’ve had a bad day at work, I come home, I watch it and . . . total attitude change for the better,” Carol Stockey, 36, of Granada Hills, chimed in. “It’s like going out with a girlfriend.”

But what happens when that girlfriend becomes a very rich, very famous personality? Does she eventually live a life too foreign for her old pals to relate to?

O’Donnell is aware of the potential Catch-22 that accompanies success: “When your life becomes so drastically different,” as she puts it, “you lose your ability to translate to your audience.”

But she thinks that her inability to see herself as a celebrity on par with those she interviews is her salvation.

“I see myself in a magazine and I still think, ‘Who’s that?’ ” she says. “People stop me and go, ‘Hey, Rosie!’ and I go, ‘Hey!’ and think, ‘Where do I know that person from?’ ”

It’s true, people do go, “Hey, Rosie!” a lot.

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At Universal Studios last Saturday, as O’Donnell was taping a series of remotes (out-of-studio segments) in the park, she was embraced by fans and was hollered to in a manner that recalled both whistle-stop campaigns and rock concerts. Them: “Hey, Rosie! Love ya!”; “Keep up the good work!”; “We brought you a beer!” Her: “How ya doin’?”; “Dude!”; “Bring me a beer!”

In general, production spokespeople say, the show and its star have been getting such a welcome--there were 50,000 to 60,000 postmarked requests for tickets--that they are already thinking of returning to L.A.

“So far, it’s been great,” says Hilary Estey McLoughlin, who shares executive producer duties with O’Donnell. “We’d love to be able to do this at least once a year.”

Both here and in New York, the show’s host says she’s been having a ball meeting stars she is still unabashedly gaga over, including Griffin, Mary Tyler Moore and Elton John. And the most gratifying part of all?

“I think it’s the letters I get from kids telling me, ‘I used to think my mom was a nerd, but now I think she’s cool, ‘cause she knows all those stupid songs you do.’ ”

* “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” airs weekdays at 3 p.m. on KNBC-TV Channel 4.