Jon Klein’s Kiss Of Death?

We’ve seen this before. Twelve months ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein paired Anderson Cooper with NewsNight anchor Aaron Brown and created a two-hour edition of the signature broadcast. It lasted a few weeks before Brown was ousted.

This week, Klein has paired Wolf Blitzer with Paula Zahn and created a two-hour edition of The Situation Room (strangely enough, not in the DC SitRoom studio but in NYC). He pre-empted Paula’s show straight through Election Day.

“This is Klein’s signature finishing move — the fish-out-of-water pairing before the dumping,” an e-mailer says. “After the ‘fire and ice’ pairing of Cooper and Brown, only Cooper came back from vacation.”

So is the two-hour Situation Room Klein’s kiss of death?

> Update: 10:05am: “We are teaming up Wolf and Paula because they are two of our election night anchors and we want to showcase the strength of our election lineup as we lead into the midterms,” a CNN spokesperson responds. “This is positive all around.”

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