CNN’s Roberts & Collins: A Dynamic Duo

Have you been watching Anderson Cooper 360 this week? I have, and I’ve loved it, partially because Cooper is on vacation. John Roberts and Heidi Collins are filling in, and several e-mailers have speculated that this week’s 360 was a try-out for a permanent 7 p.m. duo.

A regular viewer offers this assessment: “The show has been a pleasure to watch, a real throwback to the days when CNN was still CNN.”

She writes: “Roberts doesn’t have a particularly likable screen persona, but jeepers, creepers, he’s the most thoroughly informed interviewer I’ve seen in a long while, has facts and information and background right at his fingertips, and a first-rate, hard-hitting but not hostile interviewing style. I think you know you’re being interviewed when you’re talking to Roberts. He and Collins go well together, since she’s got a warmer personality but is still essentially no-nonsense.”

> “The word coming down from brass is that the 7 p.m. hour is going to continue to originate from Washington, but that it will soon be anchored by a John Roberts/Heidi Collins team,” a tipster who says he works at CNN D.C. writes…