For Current TV, the addition of former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to the primetime lineup was an easy decision.
“When Joel [Hyatt] and I sat down with her and sort of began a conversation, we were blown away at the way she lit up the room and, frankly, took charge,” Current TV President David Bohrman said on a conference call announcing the show Wednesday afternoon.
Granholm’s “The War Room” is the finishing touch, at least for now, on a primetime schedule that includes Cenk Uygur at 7 p.m.ET/PT and Keith Olbermann at 8 p.m.ET/CT. Bohrman called it “the best primetime lineup, starting this January going into the election year, that can be found on television.”
“Our three competitors are about breaking news, and we’re about fixing it,” Current TV CEO Joel Hyatt added. “We believe we’re going to have the intelligent, insightful, experienced commentators who can do that. And all the early signals are that there’s a large audience waiting for it.”
Borhman said “The War Room,” which will debut in January and air at 9 p.m.ET/PT, will look to capitalize on that audience with Granholm’s personal experience as a politician, which he said will provide the show with “a look inside the 2012 campaign from the inside out.”
“It’s not going to be ‘Crossfire’ with people sniping at each other every 30 seconds,” he said. “It’s not going to be a back-and-forth, people battling over their talking points on the air.”
Granholm said she intends to set herself apart from her competition by taking “a deeper dive on solutions to the most pressing problems out there.”
“I think Current TV wants to rival anybody during primetime, including Fox and others,” Granholm said. “So game on.”