CNN Cancels Beleaguered Morning Show, Revamps AM Line-Up

CNN is retooling its morning schedule as the cable news network continues to struggle in the wake of Don Lemon’s exit last year.

According to our sister site Variety, current CNN This Morning co-anchors Poppy Harlow and Phil Mattingly will be leaving the line-up, as Kasie Hunt’s early-morning program, Early Start, airs for an extra hour. That show will run from 5-7 am, and will take on the CNN This Morning title. The news outlet will then move CNN News Central, anchored by John Berman, Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner, to a 7-10 am time slot, with Jim Acosta and Pamela Brown following at 10 am and 11 am.

The network says it will find new roles for Harlow and Mattingly.

The shake-up appears to halt CNN’s efforts to run a New York-based morning program that can adequately compete against morning staples Today and Good Morning America, in addition to Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends and MSNBC’s Morning Joe. CNN CEO Mark Thompson wrote in a note to staffers Monday, that “we will no longer produce morning programming in New York and will be disbanding the team that currently produces CNN This Morning in that city. Our New York-based primetime and weekend programming will continue.”

When Warner Bros. Discovery came into the picture, then-CNN chief Chris Licht attempted to launch Harlow, Lemon and Katilan Collins as a new trio. Lemon was eventually fired from CNN after more than a dozen of his former colleagues outlined a pattern of allegedly misogynistic, inappropriate and “diva-like” behavior at the cable news network. Collins was then dispatched to primetime, leaving Harlow to carry on without them.

Will you be watching CNN’s new morning line-up? Let us know in the comments.