Sideshow: New Cosby show may get here by next summer

The Bill Cosby comeback isn't just talk, rumor, and innuendo any longer. A new sitcom starring the Philly comic as the head of a large (and hopefully happy) family may premiere as early as next summer.

Actual, real-life scribes are writing scripts for the "classic, extended-family sitcom," NBC suits said Sunday. The Cosby Show, which aired from 1984 to 1992, is credited by historians as one of the shows that saved NBC from ruin.

Meredith Vieira, 60, stood up in front of TV critics Monday and admitted she's afraid.

She was talking about her new job, hosting the new syndicated daytime gabfest The Meredith Vieira Show this fall. The prospect, she said, is "really scary." After all, two of her esteemed colleagues, Jane Pauley and Katie Couric, failed at their return to daytime broadcast TV.

The trick is to be authentic.

"The audience can smell a fake a mile away," she said. "They connect to it in such a personal way."

Gavin Rossdale will join wife Gwen Stefani on The Voice this season as a mentor. . . . Reality star, talk-show host, style goddess, and Kierkegaard scholar Bethenny Frankel proved how super-thin she is by posting an Instagram pic of her in 4-year-old daughter Bryn's PJs . . . On Wednesday, departing View cohost Jenny McCarthy will premiere a live, limited-run weekly talk show on SiriusXM. . . . On Monday, when asked about her rep for being difficult and obstinate on set, Katherine "Krazy Kat" Heigl said, "I can only say that I certainly don't see myself as being difficult, I would never intend to be difficult. . . . If I have ever disappointed somebody, it was never intentional."