Soledad Confirms She's Out at CNN Mornings
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A while ago, FTVLive we told you that Soledad O'Brien's days were on the morning shift at CNN.
Today, O'Brien confirmed that news.
The NY Times writes that O’Brien will leave CNN’s morning show in the spring, but she won’t be leaving the cable news channel altogether.
Ms. O’Brien, who is well-known for CNN documentaries like “Black in America,” said Thursday that she would form a production company and continue to supply documentaries to CNN on a nonexclusive basis. She’ll also make them for other television channels and for the Web.
“There’s so many great stories to tell,” said Ms. O’Brien, who is preparing two new installments of the “Black in America” franchise for CNN.
The deal is an unusual one for CNN. In effect, Ms. O’Brien will go from being an anchor to an outside producer. She may have had little choice in the matter: the new head of CNN Worldwide, Jeff Zucker, decided even before he started the job in January that he wanted to replace Ms. O’Brien’s morning show, “Starting Point,” with a brand new one.
The hosts of the new, as-yet-untitled show have not been named, but Mr. Zucker hired Chris Cuomo from ABC last month with the intention of pairing him with Erin Burnett, who presently hosts the 7 p.m. hour on CNN.
After Mr. Zucker took over, “we had conversations in general about my role at CNN,” Ms. O’Brien said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “What we ended up with was, they wanted to partner with me, and I wanted to partner with them.”
