2:00 p.m. | Updated Chris Cuomo, a former news anchor on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” is on his way back to the morning shift, this time for CNN.

The cable news channel said Tuesday that it is developing a brand-new morning show to replace “Starting Point,” the news and interview show it created just a year ago. The new, unnamed show, with Mr. Cuomo as a co-host, will start sometime in the spring.

Many observers in the tight-knit television news industry, including some at CNN, expect he will be paired with Erin Burnett, who like him is a former morning co-host. But in a news release on Tuesday, CNN said only that Mr. Cuomo had been hired to “have a major role in a new CNN morning show.” It declined to comment on Ms. Burnett’s status.

The moves come just one week after Jeffrey Zucker formally took over CNN Worldwide, following his appointment to president last November. The morning time period is a top priority for Mr. Zucker, and the television industry has been paying close attention to his plans because he led NBC’s “Today” to ratings highs two decades ago, starting a 16-year winning streak for the show.

Last year, he was a sounding board for Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC News, as ABC’s “Good Morning America” finally put an end to the “Today” show’s streak.

TMZ first reported Mr. Cuomo’s impending move on Monday night. Mr. Cuomo said in a statement, “This is a fantastic opportunity to do what I value the most and hopefully to do the work that I do best.”

His brother, the Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, said in a radio interview Tuesday morning that Mr. Cuomo “had a lot of fun at ABC,” but CNN would “work better for him personally.” Governor Cuomo added, “He’ll be on every day, so there will be a certain relevance to what he’s doing.”

Cuomo has been the co-anchor of the once-a-week ABC newsmagazine “20/20″ for the past three years. He previously spent three years as the news anchor on “Good Morning America.”

Mr. Cuomo was in the running for the co-host chair on “G.M.A.” when Diane Sawyer left the morning show for the evening newscast “World News” in 2009. But the co-host job went instead to George Stephanopoulos. At CNN, Mr. Cuomo will have a new opportunity to lead a morning newscast.

CNN could use the help. “Starting Point” had just 234,000 viewers on a typical morning in 2012, its lowest total viewer number in more than 10 years. Of those, just 96,000 were between the ages of 25 to 54, the crucial demographic for cable news advertisers.

“Starting Point” is anchored by Soledad O’Brien, whose political interviews were widely praised last year despite the program’s relatively low ratings. CNN tacitly acknowledged on Tuesday that Ms. O’Brien will be moved out of the morning time slot. A spokeswoman said in an e-mail, “Soledad is very important to the network, and we’re discussing various options with her.”

As it seeks a bigger audience in the mornings, CNN risks irritating the audience it already does have by making sweeping changes. After all, “Starting Point” had its start just 12 months ago.

Ms. O’Brien’s supporters say the show never received the internal support and the external marketing it was promised; they imply that the show wasn’t given a chance to succeed. But top executives at CNN and its parent company, Time Warner, have been dissatisfied with the show and they believe a shakeup is in order.

Meanwhile, pairing Ms. Burnett with Mr. Cuomo would create another hole in CNN’s weekday schedule. Ms. Burnett is best known for her years at CNBC, where she and Mark Haines were at the helm of the midmorning markets newscast “Squawk on the Street” from 2005 to 2011. She is now the anchor of the 7 p.m. hour on CNN. But the hour has suffered like “Starting Point” and the rest of the channel’s schedule.

Representatives for Ms. O’Brien and Ms. Burnett declined to comment on Tuesday.

Mr. Cuomo is the third boldface name from ABC to be hired by CNN in the past year. The first was John Berman, a longtime ABC correspondent, who now co-hosts “Early Start,” the predawn newscast that precedes “Starting Point.” The second was Jake Tapper, the chief White House correspondent for ABC.

Mr. Zucker was instrumental in signing Mr. Tapper, who will begin anchoring a daily program for CNN later this year. The executive in charge of talent at CNN, Amy Entelis, is also a transplant from ABC. She arrived at CNN about three months before Mr. Berman.

Now, Mr. Zucker is figuring out where they and CNN’s other hosts fit on the channel’s schedule. Mr. Zucker, who rose from “Today” to run all of NBCUniversal in the 2000s, was hired two months ago to revitalize the ailing channel. He officially started last week, and he seems to be wasting no time.

On Tuesday, CNN Worldwide’s managing editor, Mark Whitaker, stepped down, stating in a e-mail to staff members that Mr. Zucker “deserves his own team and management structure and the freedom to communicate one clear vision to the staff.” Mr. Whitaker was a top lieutenant of the prior CNN Worldwide president, Jim Walton.

Mr. Zucker has declined interview requests about his plans, but a talent announcement last week — the poaching of the sports reporter Rachel Nichols from ESPN — was a hint of what’s to come. He said Ms. Nichols would host a weekend sports program and called her hiring “an important step in expanding the range of programming and storytelling on CNN.”

The channel was starting to do that even before Mr. Zucker arrived. Late last year, it ordered documentary series from Anthony Bourdain and Morgan Spurlock. The two series will have their premieres this spring.

Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/abcs-chris-cuomo-is-said-to-jump-to-cnn/?partner=rss&emc=rss