CNN offers ‘New Day’ to morning viewers
McClatchy Newspapers
NEW YORK
A new morning show on CNN — “New Day” — began at 6 a.m. Monday, and there already are some skeptics out there, maybe even you. Here’s your need-to-know on CNN’s latest.
The anchors are former ABC correspondent Chris Cuomo, CNN correspondent Kate Bolduan and news anchor Michaela Pereira (formerly of L.A.’s KTLA) who are based in a sprawling faux-brick studio space. They plan to offer a higher story count and more live “remotes.”
“New Day” is up against pretty much everything. Morning TV is balkanized, and viewer habits are largely entrenched. For most viewers, CNN first thing in the morning hasn’t been an afterthought but no thought — about 250,000 to 275,000 viewers. (No. 1 “Good Morning America’s” average viewership for the week of June 3 was 5.33 million.)
A recent Washington Post profile on Bolduan (pronounced “Baldwin”) hints at “a sunny, older brother-younger sister act, a newsy Donny and Marie,” which sounds off-putting, but the hosts are decidedly younger than competitors (at 29, Bolduan’s a relative TV child), and youth could be an advantage here.
What does Cuomo, 42 — kid brother of New York’s governor, Andrew — have to say about the challenge? In a recent interview, this: “The hard truth is that we need CNN’s audience. One of the first challenges is to stop the bleeding and to get [traditional CNN viewers to see the network] as a morning-to-night proposition and give the network a bulwark and a flagship in the morning. ... We need to get our own viewers to embrace what we have, and then we grow from there. We have very reasonable expectations because of the history here. I’m convinced that there’s so much going on in morning TV that everything is up for grabs.”
“Today’s” recent string of mistakes has indeed stirred the migratory habits of some morning viewers. If the anchor chemistry is decent, not cloying or forced, or predicated on babble, and if the real news story count is high, “New Day” has a fighting chance.