Former NBC News star Linda Ellerbee made famous the inside TV phrase, “and now for something new and different.”
That’s what we are being promised by CNN president and Connecticut native Chris Licht with the announcement of a new morning team at CNN. Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow(recent Yale student) and Kaitlan Collins will take over, possibly by late October, and try to make CNN’s mornings more like Morning Joe or CBS Mornings, where Licht has also worked.
Current hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar will get new roles at the network and continue hosting mornings until their replacements are ready. A test of their show business pluckiness.
As with many scientific experiments, this one raises more questions than it answers:
- The new owners and leadership of CNN have been promising more news and less personality. So how do you honestly explain this move?
- It was thought Don Lemon might be headed for the door, because his night time show was seen as too partisan.
- Now that Lemon is moving to mornings, CNN must find replacements for Lemon and the apparently still irreplaceable Chris Cuomo.
- Could the open two hour block in the evenings lead to a new show in prime time spanning both hours?
- Does it ever work out when someone throws a team together and says, “Now have chemistry.” There is little evidence of this, but The Laurel research department is working on it.
