CNN’s Primetime Plans Hit Snag As Jake Tapper Plans to Return to Afternoon Show

CNN’s primetime plans won’t involve Jake Tapper.

The CNN veteran plans to return to his 4 p.m. program, “The Lead,” following the completion of a run at 9 p.m. after next week’s midterm elections, according to a network spokesman. The move raises complications for CNN CEO Chris Licht as he continues to seek a new programming strategy for a TV-news outlet that has been in flux for months.

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CNN said it “will announce post-election plans” for 9 p.m. “in the coming days.”

By several accounts, Licht had settled on Tapper as the new anchor for CNN’s 9 p.m. hour, still one of the most-watched time slots in cable news. But the anchor has cautioned he was concerned about what the move might mean for his personal life and family, according to two people familiar with the matter. Tapper has long anchored the late-afternoon program, “The Lead” and moderates the Sunday-news show “State of the Union,” with Dana Bash. He had not committed to stay in primetime beyond next week.

But Tapper had been the most heavily promoted element of an “experimental” CNN primetime schedule put in place in the run-up to Election Night. Viewers have gotten a few familiar elements in the form of Erin Burnett at 7 p.m. and Anderson Cooper at 8. At 9, Tapper led a show that had him deliver a few riffs on the news as well as some newsmaker interviews with people ranging from government officials to sportscaster Rich Eisen and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. He was followed by two hours of a roundtable program led by Laura Coates and Alisyn Camerota that relied less on direct interviews and more on a shifting roundtable of commentators talking about the most prominent issues in the news cycle.

CNN’s new entries have helped the network spar with MSNBC in terms of attracting viewers between 25 and 54 — the demographic most attractive to advertisers — they have not outmaneuvered either rival in terms of overall viewership. On Tuesday night, CNN’s 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. hours drew fewer than 100,000 viewers among the advertiser demo.

Keeping Tapper at 9 would have allowed CNN to potentially move anchors John Berman and Brianna Keilar into his slots in the afternoon. That pair is now without a regular assignment after CNN retooled its morning program with the new trio of Don Lemon, Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow. Lemon’s new A.M. assignment, which took him out of primetime, leaves CNN with three hours to fill without a figure more familiar to evening viewers.

Now CNN is left to rework its primetime schedule just as it seeks to build new viewership. In the typical cable-news cycle, ratings hit a peak around each presidential election, then fall off afterwards. The midterms signal the start of a new run toward the White House. But CNN will likely have to rely on a rotating group of anchors, though it could separate Coates and Camerota across primetime, and even rely on Berman, who is the regular substitute when Anderson Cooper is off or away.

In a different era, 9 p.m. was the big moment in cable news, the hour that lured the most eyeballs and boasted the medium’s most popular and often passionate anchors. Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow, and, in more recent years, Chris Cuomo, found themselves turned into the avatars of their respective networks. In 2022, however, with primetime ratings sagging in the aftermath of the last presidential election and the absence of President Trump in the White House, things are changing.

The most-watched show on cable news these days doesn’t even air during primetime. It’s “The Five,” a roundtable program on Fox News Channel that relies on four conservative regulars and a rotating cadre of liberals. On Tuesday night, Chris Hayes’ 8 p.m. program was MSNBC’s most watched. And on some nights on CNN, Erin Burnett’s 7 p.m. hour snags the most eyeballs of any show on the network.

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