In his search for a new morning television host that lasted months, the new head of CNN, Jeffrey Zucker, considered dozens of names, some boldface and some unknown. It wasn’t until he paired Christopher Cuomo, the former ABC anchor he hired in January, with a young Washington correspondent named Kate Bolduan that he thought he had a perfect match.
On Thursday, in something of a surprise, Mr. Zucker named Ms. Bolduan the co-host of CNN’s forthcoming morning show, which has attracted considerable interest in the television business this year, given Mr.
Zucker’s past life as a former producer of NBC’s “Today” show.
“We were floored with excitement when we saw Chris and Kate together on screen,” Mr. Zucker said in a statement, referring to the “screen test” of the two hosts that took place about four weeks ago.
Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Bolduan will lead the new show, which will have its premiere in the late spring, replacing “Starting Point,” which was hosted by Soledad O’Brien.
They will be joined by Michaela Pereira, a new hire by Mr. Zucker who is a morning host on KTLA, the most popular local morning newscast in Los Angeles. “Chris, Kate and Michaela are a dynamic team that will give our viewers in America a new way to start their day,” Mr. Zucker said in his statement.
Mr. Zucker has declined interview requests since taking over as chief executive of CNN Worldwide in January. But his pairing of Mr. Cuomo, 42, and Ms. Bolduan, 29, suggests that he sees an opening for a morning show that is generationally different — or, to put it more bluntly, a morning show that has younger faces.
The top producer of the forthcoming program will be Jim Murphy, who ran ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the late 2000s while Mr. Cuomo was the news anchor of that program. Mr. Murphy, whose hiring was announced internally in February, said in a telephone interview that the CNN program would be a “wide-ranging morning show.”
“We’re not going to reinvent the wheel,” he said, seemingly trying to manage expectations. “But what we will provide people, I think, is a fresher, more energetic, more conversational and more interesting morning show than what they’re used to.”
Some of the specifics about the format and the content are still being sorted out, Mr. Murphy said. But he indicated that the new show “will not be all politics like MSNBC is,” referring to “Morning Joe,” or “as consistently about social issues as Fox is,” referring to “Fox Friends.”
Both “Morning Joe” and “Fox Friends” routinely outperform “Starting Point” in ratings, which may be part of the reason why Mr. Zucker has decided to start over from scratch and make a new show. “Starting Point” was plagued by executive-level disagreements about what the show should and shouldn’t be. Ms. O’Brien’s associates complained that the show wasn’t supported internally or promoted externally.
Mr. Zucker and Mr. Murphy seem determined not to repeat those missteps. Mr. Murphy said in the interview that “we really did cast a wide net” as the new management considered possible co-hosts for Mr. Cuomo.
Of Ms. Bolduan, he said, “It is a surprising choice, and we know that.” That’s because Mr. Zucker originally planned to pair Mr. Cuomo with Erin Burnett, a better-known host who CNN hired away from CNBC two years ago. But the plan fell apart, reportedly due to Ms. Burnett’s unwillingness to move to the morning time slot. She currently hosts a 7 p.m. newscast, “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
CNN executives portrayed this as a good thing, because it led them to Ms. Bolduan, who wowed Mr. Zucker and his lieutenants. Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Bolduan had obvious chemistry when they tried hosting together in an internal test, and that’s what morning producers look for when they put people together.
Ms. Bolduan, who at 29 will be the youngest morning host on any major television network, will move to New York from Washington for the new job. She is currently a congressional correspondent for CNN. She joined the channel in 2007 as a correspondent for the CNN service that provides news to local television stations. She was promoted to the main channel in 2009. Ms. Bolduan has gained a little bit of hosting experience lately by co-hosting one hour of “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” in Washington. But she hasn’t anchored elsewhere, so the new morning show could have something of a learning curve.
“It is a huge opportunity to work on this new show,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “Knowing that we have the resources of some of the most experienced executives in the business, the backing of a brand like CNN, and to be able to sit alongside such great people as Chris and Michaela — I can’t think of a better combination.”
Executives at CNN have said they know — and they want others to know — that the rebuilding of the channel’s daily schedule will take time. But the channel’s recent ratings lows suggest that it is primed for a comeback of sorts. “Starting Point,” for instance, averaged just 234,000 viewers last year, CNN’s lowest total viewer number in that time slot in more than a decade.
Inside the network, there is confidence that Mr. Zucker can increase its market share in the mornings. Mr. Zucker is the producer credited with taking the “Today” show to first place in the ratings in the 1990s. He went on to become the chief executive of NBC, until Comcast took over the company in 2011.
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/after-casting-wide-net-cnn-finds-co-host-for-morning-show/?partner=rss&emc=rss