And what of the 2012 contender with a slashing debate style, who prolonged his primary run seemingly to remain in the media spotlight? Newt Gingrich has also earned his just deserts: he has been named a host of CNN’s revived “Crossfire,” the granddaddy of political debate shows. The appointment will ensure that he remains the most prominent Republican from the presidential class of 2012 to retain influence in the national conversation.
Mr. Gingrich gleefully bashed “the media elite” as a candidate, but now he is unquestionably a member. “Yes,” he agreed. “And I hope to move it to the right.”
Eight years after the original “Crossfire” was canceled, its revival is a bet by CNN that there is an audience for an evenly matched, left-right debate show five times a week, in contrast to the partisan conformity that prevails at other cable outlets.
Besides Mr. Gingrich, the hosts will include S. E. Cupp, a conservative columnist and commentator; and the liberals Van Jones, a former adviser to President Obama; and Stephanie Cutter, a deputy manager of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. The new show, which will start on Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m. and which is already being heavily promoted by the cable network, will feature two of the four hosts nightly, plus two guests. They will debate one topic for 30 minutes — a counterintuitive gamble in an age of hummingbird attention spans.
Mr. Gingrich, 70, is the marquee attraction. Reviving “Crossfire” with him as a host was one of the first ideas that Jeff Zucker floated on becoming president of CNN Worldwide in January, said Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington bureau chief.
Mr. Gingrich may be the only Republican in America who believed the 20 primary debates in the 2012 campaign were too few. Twice he brought his candidacy back from the dead through debate performances, most memorably in winning the South Carolina primary by attacking the moderators for daring to question him about a) insensitivity to black Americans and b) his second wife’s statement that he asked for an open marriage.
It was all quite calculated. “Particularly in a Republican primary, taking on the media immediately resonated with almost half the primary voters,” Mr. Gingrich said.
That is a section of voters that CNN is eager to engage. During an onstage interview at the Brainstorm TECH conference in July, Mr. Zucker said: “Newt is an incredibly smart, intellectual thinker. I think, frankly, one of the criticisms of CNN that it didn’t have enough conservative points of view on the air was probably a valid criticism.”
The renewed “Crossfire,” which will displace the final 30 minutes of “The Situation Room,” is also an attempt to jump-start CNN’s evening ratings. According to Nielsen, “The Situation Room” averaged 621,000 viewers, compared with 2.1 million viewers for “Special Report with Brett Baier” on Fox News and 565,000 for “PoliticsNation” on MSNBC. CNN did proportionately better among the prized demographic, viewers aged 25 to 54 in the same hour. The numbers were 205,000 for CNN, 329,000 for Fox News and 132,000 for MSNBC. Before he entered the 2012 race, Mr. Gingrich was a paid contributor to Fox News, which chose not to bring him back after the election. “I think they were shocked by the results,” he said of Fox News, which was widely seen as openly cheerleading for Mr. Romney last year. “I think their audience was shocked. I think they’ve been trying to reassess how they’re going to rebuild their programs.”
As a candidate who peddled his books at stump speeches, Mr. Gingrich was accused of running primarily to polish his brand for future book and television deals.
“If people want to think about that as a business decision, it would have been utterly irrational,” he said in an interview at Gingrich Productions, in an office building in Arlington, Va.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/business/media/gingrich-will-be-back-in-the-crossfire-on-cnn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
