The evening hosts for the cable news network are now Anderson Cooper at 8 p.m. EDT, Kaitlan Collins at 9 p.m., Abby Phillips at 10 p.m., and Laura Coates at 11 p.m.
The new lineup is the first change since Chris Licht's brief tenure at the helm ended. He had promised to take the network to the middle and focus on news, but he was fired in June after serving as CNN's chairman for only 13 months.
Regarding the changes, Nicholas Fondacaro of the Media Research Center (MRC) notices some subtle hypocrisy.
"That's exactly what Chris Licht was doing. They hated all the changes he was doing with the lineup — different show names, different people coming up, bringing things on like new people from different networks," Fondacaro notes. "And suddenly, it's this great thing."
But at the end of the day, he says no number of changes will rescue the floundering news outlet.
"It is, a lot of it, just moving deck chairs around the Titanic," the MRC spokesman submits.
In his view, what the network needs is someone who will follow through with Chris Licht's plan.
"They've been steadily stuck in third place. I don't think that they really are going to fix their problems; they need to get back to news," Fondacaro says.
Meanwhile, if the former president gains the Republican nomination for 2024, hope may be on the horizon for the anti-Trump network to return to its glory days.
"Even during the Biden years, the biggest thing that they like to talk about is Trump — Trump all the time," Fondacaro observes. "That's why they're loving these indictments so much. It gives them something to talk about besides Joe Biden."
