Brianna Keilar: Last News

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN anchor Laura Coates has moved to CAA for representation, a move that could signal a new era of influence for the talent-agency giant at the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed news outlet. In a broad overhaul of CNN’s schedule, Coates was recently named to anchor a new 11 p.m.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Kate Bolduan’s next shift on CNN hasn’t started quite yet, but she’s acting as If it has. A group of cameras is flocking around the news anchor in a New York studio that has recently been updated, and she presses producers to let her rehearse a story she needs to have mastered by the time she gets on air. “We don’t want to get this half right,” she tells those listening to her. Neither does the news network. Bolduan and five of her on-air colleagues, along with dozens of crew members and producers working in New York, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, are taking part in a major TV-news experiment that is going to play out each weekday for the foreseeable future at CNN. The question the Warner Bros. Discovery network is trying to solve: How to keep viewers watching TV news when they have video alternatives that are often faster paced, less formal and fueled by social media?

CNN News Central, the network’s new daytime programming blocks, will begin its roll out next week.

CNN will launch its new dayside lineup in April as CNN News Central, an effort to highlight its newsgathering and coverage of breaking stories and events.

CNN unveiled an overhaul of its dayside lineup on Wednesday, with plans for morning and afternoon blocks of programming that will each pair anchor trios.

Jake Tapper will interview Joe Biden on CNN Tonight on Tuesday, which marks the start of Tapper’s stint as anchor of the show through the midterms.

revealed the network’s programming overhaul on Thursday that will see the left-leaning primetime host yanked from his plum solo slot and moved to a newly-created morning show that he will co-host with Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow.“I was presented with an opportunity that I can’t pass up at this network.” Lemon insisted on his ratings-challenged 10 p.m. show “Don Lemon Tonight.” He continued: “And we have a new boss who is a morning show impresario, and he wants a morning show that will kick off the editorial direction of the network every single day, and I am honored that he would ask me to do it.”Licht has been tasked with lifting the ratings at the third-place CNN, which includes remaking the cable news network’s primetime lineup, as well as reinventing its flailing morning show, “New Day.” Part of that reinvention includes moving away from punditry and towards centrist, fact-based reporting.

Chris Licht announced Thursday.Lemon will join Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow to replace current “New Day” hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar.Lemon’s long-anticipated demotion comes after Licht was tasked by new corporate overlord Warner Bros. Discovery to shift CNN away from opinion-based shows to more centrist reporting of the news.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN is hoping to wake up its morning schedule. The Warner Bros. Discovery-backed news outlet unveiled a new lineup for its morning block, installing Don Lemon, Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow in place of the current hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar. Chris Licht, CNN’s chairman and chief executive, has had some of his greatest success in morning news, having launched MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and retooled the program once known as “CBS This Morning.” The new program, retitled and with a new set, is expected to debut later this year. Lemon, who has notably held forth for CNN in primetime for the past several years, will end his run there, giving CNN a second slot to fill in the most-watched part of its schedule, Berman and Keilar are expected to find other assignments that will be announced at a later date.

CNN anchor Don Lemon has praised Meghan Markle for her recent comments about race during her “Archetypes” podcast interview with Mariah Carey.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCNN sure likes to keep ’em guessing.After canceling media-affairs show “Reliable Sources,” which often tilted at the content of Fox News Channel, CNN plans to air a previously-announced documentary mini-series about that network’s owners.“The Murdochs: Empire of Influence,” a seven-part documentary series previously planned for the now-scuttled streaming site CNN+, will debut on CNN”s flagship cable outlet in the fall. The original series will debut with a two-episode premiere on Sunday, September 25.The series was produced with The New York Times and Left/Right and is based on the New York Times Magazine article “How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World,” by journalists Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg. They serve as consulting producers on the series. The program aims to examine the rise of Rupert Murdoch, his global influence and the battle for succession among his children. In an announcement about the series in February, CNN said the series “charts the high-stakes deal making, political maneuvering and dynastic betrayals — and how the ambitions of one family birthed one of the largest media empires in history.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThe CNN image for the past few years has been embodied by passionate on-air personalities like Don Lemon or Brianna Keilar. These days, it might best be symbolized by beat reporters like Jamie Gangel or Kaitlan Collins.Gone in recent weeks (for the most part) are what had become the network’s signature red-versus-blue showdowns between hot-talking contributors or segments that hinge on an anchor scolding an interviewee.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorLet’s get after it: Even as CNN puts much of its energy into launching a new streaming-video hub, it’s also trying to figure out how to replace Chris Cuomo in its pivotal 9 p.m. time slot.Some staffers at the WarnerMedia network believe CNN has been holding the equivalent of on-air tryouts in recent weeks, turning over the 9 p.m. hour to hosts like Michael Smerconish, Laura Coates and Brianna Keilar.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCNN viewers are going to have to get used to waking up with someone new in the morning.The WarnerMedia cable-news outlet on Monday launches its “New Day” a.m. franchise into a new era, with Brianna Keilar, who has gained notice over the past year with a take-no-prisoners demeanor on CNN’s afternoon schedule, joining the versatile anchor John Berman.

Roughly one year after COVID-19 was first reported in America, the U.S. is about to record its 500,000th death from the coronavirus pandemic. This grim reality struck Brianna Keilar hard, and the CNN anchor couldn’t maintain her composure during a live broadcast on Monday (Feb. 22). After showing stories of Americans who lost loved ones to the disease, Brianna, 40, urged viewers to not give up hope, but even she wasn’t unaffected by what she just saw. “Even as a nation, when many have become numb [at] this astronomical loss,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes, “I know that these stories of our fellow Americans puncture that armor that is natural to have accumulated over the past year. And that’s okay.”

Melania Trump‘s former friend and adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is calling out the First Lady’s response to the attempted coup at Capitol Hill.