While Joy Behar’s new program won’t debut until the fall, the Lou Dobbs repeat airing on HLN at 9pmET will end later this month. In the interim, Jane Velez-Mitchell’s “Issues” will re-air in that hour.
“This is not about Lou Dobbs,” EVP of CNN Worldwide and HLN head Ken Jautz tells TVNewser regarding the programming switch. “Lou Dobbs is first and foremost a mainstay at CNN and has had long-standing success at CNN. Frankly, Lou and I discussed all along that this was a repeat of the show, and he was aware that at some point that was going to change.”
So once Behar takes over, what if she overtakes CNN’s Larry King in the ratings? “Larry does great,” says Jautz. “This is about HLN and an HLN line-up. I don’t think there is much overlap between these networks. Last year CNN had a brilliant year and HLN had its best year ever.”
Of his new host, Jautz says, “Joy’s been a star of daytime television for a long time and she’s quite opinionated and I thought she’d fit wonderfully into the HLN lineup.”