Today is CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s 44th birthday. As it happens, his upcoming syndicated talk show “Anderson” continues to move forward, launching a website and logo. The program is slated to debut September 12, and will be shot in Time Warner Center, just a few hundred feet from the CNN newsroom.
The website features ticket information, photos and a link to the show’s new Twitter feed, as well as a section called “Ask Anderson.” In advance of the show’s debut, Cooper will be answering questions submitted by visitors to the site.
In an interview with Canada’s National Post, Cooper explains his decision to pursue a talk show:
“For some people, the news doesn’t connect with their daily lives, but on daytime television, you can connect with an audience in an emotional way,” says Cooper, the Yale-educated son of Gloria Vanderbilt and writer Wyatt Emory Cooper, who covered the war in Burma with a forged press pass when he couldn’t land a journalism job after school. “If Walter Cronkite was on TV today, I think he’d also have a sailing show on the Travel Network.”
He also says that he would leave the show if breaking news occurs, such as devastating tornadoes in the south.