On the set of CNN’s “NewsNight,” guests may be unsure whether to shake hands or clench their fists.
When the cameras are turned off on the set of host Abby Phillip’s program, the atmosphere resembles that of a nice dinner party.
Before the 10 p.m. show even aired one night last week, producers offer panelist Ana Navarro a cushion to sit on so that it looks like the little commentator is matching – at least visually – with her neighboring guests Olivia Nuzzi and Bryan Lanza. And in the middle of a commercial break, conservative analyst Scott Jennings is heard noting that he has found a new friend — progressive figure Nina Turner — in a statement that surprises the producers working on the program.
However, when the cameras start broadcasting to viewers at home, it’s time to get serious.
Navarro doesn’t soften her disdain for former President Donald Trump’s recent comments about immigrants eating dogs and cats — just one of the hot topics that Phillip and a rotating ensemble of pundits, reporters and pundits cover every weeknight. Jennings, one of CNN’s most vocal analysts, is atypically silent after Navarro asks him if the comments are racist. Finally, he looks straight at Navarro and responds, “I’m not going to sit here and answer to anyone. “I don’t talk to Donald Trump about what the motivations are,” he says, adding, “And I’m not answering you either.”
Let’s catch our breath for a moment. “It’s one of those shows where you have to calm down after you do it because it’s intense,” says Bakari Sellers, the former South Carolina politician and veteran CNN contributor.
No one would blame Phillip, a mild-mannered announcer whose primary expertise is politics, not professional wrestling, if she decided to ring a bell to mark the end of one of the sparring sessions. On “NewsNight,” CNN producers appear to have set the network’s signature “Crossfire” on a date with Fox News Channel’s “The Five” — and sent them off for bottomless glasses of Red Bull.
“I feel like I need a degree in psychology,” Phillip confides in a recent interview, “because so much of the show is about understanding our guests at the table, understanding where they come from and what they might say and how they can communicate with each other.” If her guests get loud, she says, so do people at home as they have their own conversations about politics and headlines.
Launched in the wake of the terrorist attack on Israel last October, “NewsNight” initially looked like most other programs on CNN and its main rivals, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. Phillip sat alone on set, always speaking directly to the audience and interviewing experts, analysts and newsmakers about the day’s top headlines. Earlier this summer, CNN remade the program — which shares its title with a primetime show anchored by Aaron Brown on the network in the early 2000s — and it has quickly become the loudest program on the schedule. The program runs at a volume that has become almost unrecognizable in this age of ownership under the risk-averse Warner Bros. Discovery.
Since Discovery snapped up the former WarnerMedia from AT&T in April 2022, CNN’s tone has been muted. Gone are shows like “New Day,” which relied on morning co-hosts like Alisyn Camerota or Chris Cuomo to put newsmakers on the morning grill, and gone are hosts like Don Lemon, who rounded out the CNN program with hot talk on topics like racism. Under the new parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN has frowned on anchors who show passion, offer a personal take on the news or raise the sacred cause of journalism against those who might thwart it. New corporate overlords feared that such things would give CNN the impression of having a liberal bias — and make it unappealing to viewers with conservative leanings.
In recent weeks, however, the network seemed on the verge of channeling its inner Zucker. CNN has rehired Brian Stelter, who anchored the long-running but now defunct media criticism program “Reliable Sources” and became a CNN fixture under former President Jeff Zucker, who managed the network with considerably more flair during the Trump administration. CNN launched a satirical comedy show last weekend that analyzes the week’s headlines, giving comedians Roy Wood Jr., Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black permission to drop a few f-bombs during a Friday night taping — and they the fitting to survive chamber.
Could the strategy work? The number of viewers for the renewed ‘NewsNight’ is increasing. To be fair, the overall audience for the program is small compared to its rivals, which is part of a broader decline in CNN’s ratings in recent years. “NewsNight’s” audience remains under 1 million on most nights, while both Fox News’ “Gutfeld” and MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” handily break the mark. However, since its launch in late July, the new format has led to an 82% increase among viewers aged 25 to 54 – the demographic most coveted by advertisers in news programming – compared to June’s performance. More striking perhaps: in September to 11e“NewsNight” had the second-highest viewership among CNN’s 25-to-54 audience — only Anderson Cooper’s 8 p.m. hour gained more.
The new format is one of the first tangible things to hit the screen since CNN named producer Charlie Moore, a veteran of Cooper’s program, as its new vice president of primetime programming. The move was a sign that the network, which has focused intensively on developing a new digital strategy under CEO Mark Thompson, understands that it can no longer cede the battle for TV viewers. The fees and advertising revenue that Warner Bros. Discovery from traditional CNN has decreased, but remains significant. Running primetime programs that can’t bring in a million viewers per night is like letting termites continue to nibble on the forest that underlies a stately home.
News networks often use moments of critical importance – such as an election cycle – to test new concepts. ABC News’ “Nightline” was created in the middle of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis as a means to keep American viewers up to date on developments. MSNBC’s ‘The 11e Hour” initially launched in the fall of 2016 as what founder Brian Williams called a “pop-up show” that would air every night “from now until Election Day, when we will cancel ourselves.” It remained on the schedule well past his departure in 2021, with programmers seeing an opportunity to give viewers a look at stories breaking at night that could impact the sunrise news cycle.
Each weeknight on “NewsNight,” a rotating panel including Kara Swisher, Gretchen Carlson, Cari Champion, Jemele Hill and Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina weigh in on issues, largely because each group includes people from different groups. of backgrounds. A former Trump adviser may be in attendance alongside a protege of Senator Bernie Sanders. People can come from the world of sports, culture or politics. And the panels often look nothing like the typical cable news coterie, which has long been filled with white men concerned about policy in Washington.
Phillip says that on some nights she has had to use the commercial breaks to warn attendees that viewers won’t be able to understand the discussion if everyone is talking at the same time.
There have been some, well, moments. Producers make them even more exciting by setting up a split-screen image in which one speaker appears to be facing the other. A July broadcast featuring Mace, professor Michael Eric Dyson and Democratic strategist Keith Boykin became dissonant, with the three failing to find common ground and Mace refusing to pronounce Vice President Kamala Harris’ first name, as the two other panelists insisted. In August, columnist LZ Granderson and political analyst Tara Setmayer became increasingly offended by statements made by conservative commentator Reihan Salam – and vice versa.
Still, guests are instructed to express their opinions. “I knew the tone of the round table before I appeared as a guest, so I knew it was free and conversational,” says Hill, who recently appeared on the program. “But a few minutes before we got on set, a producer told me that I didn’t have to wait for Abby to ask me a question, that I could just jump in when I had a point and just have it as a regular conversation. That’s it. There are no guardrails placed against me.”
Such things are essential. “I just encourage people not to leave their authenticity at the door,” says Phillip. “We need that to make this work.”
If “NewsNight” strikes people as unusual for CNN, that means it’s a success, said Eric Hall, the show’s executive producer. “We’ve done our very best to make this show stand out from everything else you see,” he notes.
He thinks viewers will want to see these types of conversations later in the evening. They’ve been following the headlines all day, and now they just want to blow off some steam. Sometimes they even find a solution on ‘NewsNight’. “If you have an open dialogue and an open debate, and the host manages it and everyone feels like a safe space to put it out there, we agree more than we disagree,” he says.
No matter how excited the panel members get, Phillip never lets her spirits soar. “I’d be lying if I told you there weren’t moments when I wanted to,” she says, but “I don’t think it’s helpful for an audience to add to the cacophony of sound.” Her refusal to raise her voice seems to have given her more authority. Panelists generally don’t challenge her when she counters an argument with facts reported by CNN. “People need to know that I always try to make sure that if I hear something that’s not right and I know something is wrong, I’m going to say something about it,” she says.
“NewsNight” offers contributors something they might not get elsewhere: a chance to speak beyond sound bites (if they can push through the other guests). Jennings says that most shows have guests lined up in the studio next to a flat table, as if they were in Leonardo DaVinci’s panting of the Last Supper. “It’s a little difficult to make it feel like you’re having a normal, fast back and forth movement,” he says. On “NewsNight,” the panelists face each other, not the camera, and must address a different occasion. “You have to be prepared to talk for the better part of an hour, and you can’t – really – show up with just talking points that someone gave you.” Moreover, he says, “you have to listen” to the other guests.
The only question now is whether CNN will keep “NewsNight” on the boil. According to both Phillip and Hall, the network has committed to maintaining the panel format through the 2024 election. “Basically it exists because we’re trying to respond to what’s happening in the news and create space for that,” says Phillip. “We’re going to see what the news is and go from there.” And yet it’s hard not to keep an eye on the ratings.