Former The Daily gossip guru Richard Johnson returns to his old stomping ground at the New York Post to report that incoming CNN president Jeff Zucker is considering moving Erin Burnett from 7 PM to the morning shift.
“Zucker thinks she’s a real talent,” a source said. “He’ll team her up with a guy, and they’ll go after the audience watching ‘Today’ and ‘Good Morning America.’ One thing Zucker knows how to do is a morning show.”
Of course, Zucker cannot actually make any moves until he starts at CNN in January. That said, any such potential move would not be a simple one. Soledad O’Brien currently anchors CNN’s morning program, and seemed excited about the addition of Zucker when asked about it by TVNewser’s Gail Shister. Both O’Brien and Burnett have contracts that would almost certainly need to be changed in order to make that shift.
As for the comments about taking viewers from “Today?” No cable news morning show comes close to NBC or ABC in the morning. The highest-rated morning program on cable news, “Fox & Friends,” averages a bit over two million viewers, far behind NBC and ABC, though closer to CBS. CNN has to catch up to MSNBC, Fox News and even (sometimes) HLN in the mornings before it can take on ABC or NBC.