CNN anchor Piers Morgan has inked a book deal with Gallery books for a new memoir, to be released in October. The book, Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney, will focus on Morgan’s tenure at CNN.

The AP has details:

Morgan, in a statement issued by Gallery, promised a “warts and all” account of life at CNN and said the book would be like “‘The Newsroom’ on steroids,” referring to the HBO series.

The book will be centered around real-world news events, written in a diary format a la his last memoir, The Insider. The announcement comes the same day it was announced that ABC’s Robin Roberts is writing a memoir.

Former GOP VP candidate and Fox News contributor Sarah Palin has some kind words for CNN anchor Jake Tapper. Palin tweeted:

There’s something different, certainly refreshing, about Jake Tapper. I call it integrity and professionalism…. fb.me/Kjg5B3MR

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) May 21, 2013

Palin linked to an interview with Tapper from Zap2It. Tapper talks about the Boston bombing coverage, as well as coverage of the Gosnell trial:
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CNN has named Indra Petersons as its new weather anchor and correspondent. Petersons will primarily contribute to “New Day” with Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan and Michaela Pereira which begins June 17, but will also appear across all CNN shows and platforms. With the devastating tornado in Oklahoma, Petersons is starting her field work early for CNN, and will be reporting from Moore this week.

Petersons joins CNN from KABC Los Angeles, where she was a meteorologist and general assignment reporter. Before KABC she worked at KEYT Santa Barbara and KVIA El Paso, also as a meteorologist.

She is effectively replacing Rob Marciano, who left as CNN’s weather anchor in November of 2012 to become the co-anchor of “Entertainment Tonight.”

CNN is hard at work constructing a brand-new set for “New Day,” the channel’s new morning show, which will debut June 17.  CNN senior producer John Griffin tweeted a few photos of the set under construction. So far there isn’t much to see, except for one big design choice: exposed brick. Lots and lots of exposed brick. There will also be an open green room.

While “Today,” “Good Morning America” and “Fox & Friends” rely on glossy studios with large open windows, and “Morning Joe” goes for the contemporary look,  there is another morning show that loves itself some exposed brick and an open green room: “CBS This Morning.” For what its worth, CNN president Jeff Zucker had nothing but praise for “CTM” at the press conference for “New Day” not long ago.

(h/t @Greg_Hanna)

In order to say you’ve really “made it” in the world, you should really have a cameo on Fox’s “The Simpsons” on your résumé. Now is looks like CNN’s Anderson Cooper is getting his chance.

“Simpsons” star Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) tweeted a photo of herself and Cooper, adding “3 lines never sounded so good.”

TVLine has the scoop on Cooper’s role:

The story finds Lisa befriending a girl who is her match in every way, except one: she’s a conservative Republican. “They end up running against each other in the second-grade election,” explains exec producer Al Jean. “And then we flash to the future where they’re [engaged] in an actual presidential debate — and Anderson is the moderator.”

Turner Broadcasting channels TBS and TNT pitched their new lineup to advertisers and the press this morning in New York. The big story is that TBS and TNT will be streaming their linear channels online and on new iPhone and iPad apps, becoming the first national entertainment channels to do so (sister channel CNN started testing it out last year).

You can read more from the upfront at Lost Remote, but we also had to share a clip presented by Conan O’Brien at the upfront. O’Brien joked to the crowd that he pitched TBS on a new morning show “shot entirely from the rear-view camera of a Toyota Sienna.” The result is “Wake Up and Back up.”

“I think CNN should really consider this, ” O’Brien joked at a luncheon following the presentation.

WATCH:

CNN’s anchor Zoraida Sambolin delivered some very personal news on CNN’s “Early Start” this morning. Following Angelina Jolie‘s op-ed in the New York Times about her decision to have a double mastectomy, Sambolin announced she will undergo the same procedure later this month.

“I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer,” Sambolin said. “I’m having a double mastectomy.”

Jolie had the surgery because she carried a gene that increases her risk for breast and ovarian cancers. The surgery has cut her breast cancer risk from 87% to under 5%. Sambolin was diagnosed about three weeks ago, and she will also have genetic testing as part of her mastectomy.

Sambolin got emotional talking about her decision. “As a woman your sexuality and your breasts and how attached you are to them, right, as a woman. So at the end of the day, it’s really difficult to say that I’m thinking about this, that this is something that affects me when I have two kids I want to live for. At the end of day I’m going to cut off my arms if it means that I am going to live to see them and to see them grow up.”

Video after the jump…

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CNN has secured one of the big “gets” to come out of the shocking kidnapping story in Cleveland. Pedro and Onil Castro, the brothers of kidnapping suspect Ariel Castro, broke their silence to correspondent Martin Savidge.

The interview was conducted over the weekend, and aired this morning on CNN. The Castro brothers say that in light of the kidnapping news, Ariel is a “monster.”

WATCH:

CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker has been mostly quiet on his plans for CNN. Save for a few public appearances, and a press call when he was first announced, he has not given any interviews to the media that covers the media.

“This is the only time I have talked,” Zucker said to a handful of reporters gathered around him at the Landmarc restaurant in Time Warner Center including the AP’s David Bauder, Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple, The NY Post’s Claire Atkinson, THR’s Marisa Guthrie, the Los Angeles Times’ Joe Flint and us. The back room at Landmarc had been the setting for the formal reveal of CNN’s new morning show “New Day,” (a clip of which you can see here on Vine) with the anchors and producers answering our questions.

The CNN president was asked how quickly he thinks CNN can become the number one cable news channel.

“Come back to me in three years,” Zucker says. “We have been here for four months, there is no way that anyone would have thought that we would be in the position that we are in, and we have miles and miles to go.

“We have to maintain where we are today. Fox is number one, they are incredibly strong and incredibly dominant,” he added.

Zucker’s vision for CNN is right in line with what he said it would be on that first conference call, where he said he wanted the channel to cover more than just politics and war.

“What I want CNN to be is to be aggressive in news, coupled with programming like Anthony Bourdain, ” Zucker said, noting that when you broaden the definition of “news,” there will always be something to cover, but that doesn’t mean ordinary people will tune in. “We need a number of programs that you would not normally find on cable news networks but on places like Discovery, A&E, Nat Geo, we want to compete in that arena as well as the traditional cable news arena that CNN has traditionally been grouped into.”

This is not to say the traditional anchor-led programs will be going away. Zucker cited “New Day,” “The Lead,” “The Situation Room” and “AC360″ as some of CNN’s signature programs, although that doesn’t mean they can’t change. “AC360″ tested out a new panel format a few weeks ago, which Zucker champions.

“We were very pleased with that program, very pleased,” Zucker said, adding that the 8 PM edition of “AC360″ won’t be changing.

Then there is “Reliable Sources,” the long-running media criticism show hosted by Howard Kurtz.

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It was a long few months work to get to “New Day,” CNN’s new morning show, which will launch on June 17th.

In the mornings, chemistry between the hosts plays an enormous role in a show’s success. If viewers don’t like the hosts, they won’t turn them on when they roll out of bed.

“You can’t fake chemistry, you can’t impose it,” CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker said this morning, speaking over breakfast with a gaggle of reporters in the back room at the Landmarc restaurant at Time Warner Center. “When I put Kate next to Chris, I just knew.”

Kate is Kate Bolduan, the erstwhile CNN Congressional correspondent, and Chris is Chris Cuomo, a high-profile poach from ABC News. Zucker says they did screen tests with Cuomo and five other people (including Erin Burnett) before deciding that Bolduan was the right co-anchor. The pair will be joined by Michaela Pereira, who joins CNN from KTLA’s morning news show.

“The first time I met Michaela, I said ‘holy shit, where have you been,’” Zucker recalled. “It is a unique personality and she is incredibly special. ”
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