Soon-to-be CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker and his new boss, Turner Broadcasting chairman Phil Kent, held a conference call with reporters this morning to talk about Zucker’s hire. There were plenty of talking points, but reading between the lines, it was clear that Zucker had a vision–at least a general one–of what he thought CNN has to do to remain relevant in a competitive, multi-platform news environment.

“I think our competition today is anybody that competes for eyeballs and attention and produces non-fiction programming,” Zucker said. “News is about more than politics and war, we need to broaden that definition of what news is, while maintaining the standards of CNN’s journalistic excellence.”

“We have had shows about sports, fashion and technology, and some of that is going to be revisited,” Kent said. “It is all news that people need and are interested about. There is a lot of subject matter that we probably don’t give enough attention to.”

CNN is beginning to expand to other forms of non-fiction programming on the weekends with new shows next year hosted by Anthony Bourdain and Morgan Spurlock. Zucker said that “it wouldn’t be fair” to any current hosts or shows to discuss what he had planned for them.

That said, it seemed clear that two areas Zucker wanted to focus on are CNN’s primetime lineup and its morning program, where he has real-world experience having taken NBC’s “Today” show to #1 in the ’90s, where it stayed for 16 years.

Read more

Soon-to-be CNN host Anthony Bourdain did a Q&A with commenters at Gawker, and revealed a number of tidbits about his upcoming CNN program, “Parts Unknown.”

He wants to go to places the show has not visited, like Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, Congo, and, um, Detroit.

When CNN called and said they were interested, he responded with something of a test: “We then sent them three of our most fucked up shows and asked: ‘ Are you sure you want to do a show with US?”

There will be music. Great music: “Yes. The new title music is going to be AMAZING.”

Bourdain also talks about the recent Travel Channel incident, and cooking food. It is all worth a read.

Anthony Bourdain will be a guest on Piers Morgan‘s CNN program tonight, his first appearance on the network since the news about his new CNN show, which now has a name: “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.”

Bourdain’s Travel Channel exit has not been without drama. Last week, during the series finale of “No Reservations,” he took to Twitter to trash the network for using his name and image in a Cadillac promotional spot without his knowledge. Bourdain expanded on his frustration in a blog post headlined “Fighting Mad” yesterday:

If I make an agreement—especially about something as personal as the use of my name and image, I expect that agreement will be honored. So it came as a shock and a disappointment to turn on the TV for the last two episodes of my show, and see that someone had taken footage that me and my creative team  had shot for my show, cut it up and edited it together with scenes of a new Cadillac driving through the forest. Scenes of me, my face, and with my voice, were edited in such a way as to suggest that I might be driving that Cadillac. That, at least, I was very likely IN that Cadillac—and that if nothing else, I sure as shit was endorsing Cadillac as the vehicle of choice for my show. All this following seamlessly from the actual show so you were halfway through the damn thing before you even realized it was a commercial. Read more

Soon-to-be CNN host Anthony Bourdain talks to The Hollywood Reporter about leaving Travel Channel for the cable news network.

On how CNN wooed him and what he expects to do there:

“They wanted us to just keep doing what we’ve been doing, keep doing what they’ve appreciated us for and … help us move up and on to bigger and better.”

He adds: “I mean, I’m not gonna barbeque in The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and (talk) about the election results. I’m gonna stay within my area of presumed expertise or experience.”

CNN is adding director Morgan Spurlock to the family. The “Super Size Me” star and director will host and produce a new unscripted series called “Inside Man” for CNN starting in early 2013. “Inside Man” will air alongside the new travel program hosted by Anthony Bourdain, which will also debut around that time.

As with Bourdain’s show, “Inside Man” will not be produced by CNN, but will be licensed to the network by Spurlock’s production company Warrior Poets. The logline for the new show:

“Each week Spurlock will provide an insider’s view into rarely-seen sectors of American life that include gun lovers, marijuana growers, migrant farm workers, and end-of-life caregivers.”

It will be a return to TV for Spurlock, who previously hosted and produced “30 Days” for FX.

“Morgan Spurlock’s name has become synonymous with creative and thought-provoking documentary story-telling,” said CNN executive VP Mark Whitaker in a statement. “Like Anthony Bourdain’s new CNN series, Inside Man will carry the distinctive stamp of its host while taking viewers on colorful and informative journeys into fascinating corners of American society.”

More information below. And check out Spurluck’s video and filmmaking tips for journalists, which he shared with MediabistroTV in a Media Beat interview, also after the jump.

Read more

The New York Post’s Michael Shain reports that CNN is looking to non-news programming, such as reality shows, to help shake up its lineup. That shouldn’t be too surprising, as the addition of Anthony Bourdain to its weekend lineup next year has long been seen as just “step one” in a process to reshape the network’s weekend lineup.

Here’s what Shain reports the network is looking for:

A late-night talk show featuring a panel — an 11 p.m. version of “The View.”

* Five new reality shows to air on Saturday and Sunday nights — to compliment traveling chef Anthony Bourdain, who is set to debut a new Sunday night CNN show starting early next year.

* A hunt for new on-air personalities outside of traditional TV news. Bourdain is the “prototype” for the new star CNN is now looking for, it is telling Hollywood agents.

A producer with his own production company confirmed to me that CNN has been knocking on doors looking for some new (or even old) concepts and talent. Here’s what he told me:

Read more

• Ever wonder how Bloomberg TV’s Adam Johnson got his start in the business? By approaching Dylan Ratigan, who was an anchor on CNBC at the time, while he was jogging in Central Park. “I said, ‘You should have me on your show.’ I told him, ‘I’ll make you look good and make your viewers money,’” Johnson told WAG Magazine.

• Anthony Bourdain talks to AdWeek about his move to CNN, where he will host a weekend show. “There are a lot of places where me and my team have been wanting to make television for a long time and haven’t been able to,” he said. “And CNN has the infrastructure and inclination to make those places doable.”

• CNN is publishing a five-part series on virtual gaming’s impact on society this week. “Gaming Reality” will be featured on Brooke Baldwin‘s 2pmET show on CNN, as well as on CNN International.

HBO’s “Game Change,” the movie that took a dramatic look at the 2008 Presidential campaign, secured 12 Primetime Emmy nominations from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The nominees were announced live during the network morning shows.

Among the nominations: Outstanding Miniseries or Movie, Julianne Moore for her portrayal of Sarah Palin, Ed Harris for his portrayal of John McCain and Woody Harrelson for his portrayal of Steve Schmidt.

The movie attracted tremendous buzz online, and drew 2.1 million viewers when it debuted, making it the most-watched HBO movie in eight years.

Other TV news-related nominees included soon-to-be CNN host Anthony Bourdain, who received a nomination for “No Reservations,” a handful of nods for “Veep,” a political comedy on HBO, and of course a slew of nominations for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report.”

You can see all the nominees here.

In The New York Times this morning, David Carr talks with Anthony Bourdain who is taking his food/travel/world events show to CNN next year. In Carr’s column, we learn why CNN cooked up the idea in the first place:

Mark Whitaker, managing editor of CNN Worldwide, has been working to decrease the network’s reliance on politics, where its middle-of-the-road approach often suffers in comparison to the edgier, more partisan offerings of Fox News and MSNBC. He began talking with Mr. Bourdain back in March in the belief that the chef’s penchant for traveling to far-flung places like Thailand and Saudi Arabia was a fit with CNN’s international credentials. More important, Mr. Whitaker wanted CNN’s first move out of its lane to come with a ready-made audience attached. CNN has no trouble attracting eyeballs, it just has trouble persuading them to stick around when the world is not on fire.

“Tony is appointment viewing and sticky in a way that we need to be,” Whitaker tells Carr. “We are big fans of what he does and what he stands for, which is global and smart, but he goes beyond politics and war coverage. We need to be broader than that and we are looking hard to make that happen. Tony was the first person that came to mind.”

By the way, not long before Carr interviewed Bourdain, we talked with Carr. Look for the mediabistroTV series “My First Big Break” featuring David Carr coming up Thursday.

(Photo: Travel Channel)

Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent spoke at the Nomura U.S. Media & Telecom Summit today, and he spent a good deal of his time answering questions about CNN, according to B&C’s Jon Lafayette.

Kent said that he is “very unhappy” with the network’s ratings situation, and laid some groundwork for changes ahead. As we noted last week, don’t expect Erin Burnett, Piers Morgan or Anderson Cooper to see any major changes to their shows, but there will be changes coming, beyond the recently announced additions of John Berman and Anthony Bourdain.

The self-inflicted problems stems from the fact that “we haven’t put the best shows on the air,” he said.

Kent said CNN’s current primetime lineup still has “very high potential.” He called Anderson Cooper a television news star who “at this moment is not getting a star’s ratings and that’s because of lead-ins.”
…
Of the rest of CNN’s lineup, “we have some other shows that probably need to be replaced. This is an execution issue and to me, this is TV 101.”

Read more