In August 2001 I had just begun working for CBS, which distributed her show(through King World Productions, who at the time distributed shows like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune). The King World offices were across the street from the Broadcast Center(where I worked), and I used to get my parking validated at the security desk there. I went in there one day and saw a bunch of posters on the wall, most were of Deborah Norville and Inside Edition. One poster was the new Ananda Lewis Show, and sitting underneath it was Ananda herself! But I was there to get cheap parking, I wasn't going to bother her. But that was cool.
Just a few weeks later, I was playing back the Ananda show for the affiliates to take and promote the show nationwide. N*SYNC were the guests(I imagine she used her MTV connections to get them), and as I got ready to play back the show, I noticed that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center on one of my monitors...you kinda know the story.
Her show only lasted one season. Really, they spent so much time on 9/11 topics that there was next to no shows they could re-run that weren't about that terrible day, and people tuned out. I don't think it had to do with Ananda, nobody knew what to do after that day, lots of plans failed, tours got cancelled, it was a mess.
I had heard she was sick, but I always hoped for the best. Whatever this "thing" is, with the losses of Rick Derringer, Sly Stone, Brian Wilson, and now Ananda, this has to stop.
