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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• Greta Van Susteren will anchor “On the Record” from Cleveland tonight covering the rescue of three women missing for a decade. Van Susteren covered Gina DeJesus’ disappearance back in April 2004.

• Amanda Knox tells CNN’s Chris Cuomo she has panic attacks about the possibility of returning to Italy for a retrial and going back to jail. “Amanda Knox: The Unanswered Questions,” a 90-minute special, airs tonight at 10:30pmET/PT on CNN.

• Sam Champion‘s “Sea Rescue,” the weekly syndicated show produced in part by SeaWorld Parks, is a Bronze winner in the 34th Annual Telly Awards. The show features heartfelt stories of wildlife rescued, rehabilitated and returned to the ocean by SeaWorld’s rescue team.

• With the ABC News interview in the rear-view mirror, Amanda Knox is making wider TV rounds. Her next stop will be CNN, where she will be interviewed by Chris Cuomo at 10 PM next Tuesday, May 7.

• Fusion, the new cable news channel from ABC news and Univision, continues to staff up. The latest addition is Michael Berkman, who joins as VP and creative director. Berkman has worked with AMC Networks, MLB and Discovery.

• “Good Morning America” scored the first post-arrest interview with actress Reese Witherspoon. She was apologetic. You can see the interview here.

CNN’s new morning show will be called “New Day.”

It will air from 6-9 AM, starting an hour earlier than the network morning shows, but up directly against “Morning Joe’ on MSNBC and “Fox & Friends” on Fox News Channel. “New Day” debuts Monday, June 10th.

The new show will be anchored by Chris Cuomo, who left ABC News for CNN in January, and Kate Bolduan, who’s been a DC correspondent for CNN and Michaela Pereira, who joins CNN from KTLA.

The show replaces ”Starting Point” which had been hosted by Soledad O’Brien. O’Brien left CNN at the end of March to start her own production company. ”Early Start,” anchored by John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin, will remain on the air from 5-6 AM.

The new logo for the program is a stark departure from CNN’s past morning programs. It looks like a network morning logo with its big  bright color (CNN Red), and referring to the anchors as  ”Chris and Kate.” CNN hasn’t revealed any details on programming just yet, but if the logo is any indication, expect a show more in line with “Good Morning America” or “Today” than “Morning Joe.”

As it happens, former “Good Morning America” and “CBS Evening News” executive producer Jim Murphy will be the Senior EP of the program, with Matt Frucci serving as EP.

Update: Internal email from Jeff Zucker, after the jump.
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A month after signing off from CNN’s “Starting Point,” Soledad O’Brien has announced her next steps. Politico reports that she will be joining the Harvard Graduate School of Education as a visiting fellow for the 2013-14 academic year.

According to a Harvard press release, O’Brien will “explore a wide variety of topics related to public education in America” during her fellowship. In a statement, the former CNN anchor and Harvard graduate called the appointment an “honor and opportunity.”

O’Brien said goodbye to CNN in March as the network announced the launch of a new morning show anchored by Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan. She will continue to host documentaries produced by her new production company, Starfish Media Group, for the network.

• Brian Williams will anchor “NBC Nightly News” from Boston tonight.
• “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” will be expanded to an hour tonight. Terry Moran will anchor “Nightline” from Boston.
• Scott Pelley will anchor “CBS Evening News” from Boston.
• Shepard Smith will anchor his two Fox News Channel programs, “Studio B” and “The Fox Report,” from Boston tonight. He will be joined by Bill Hemmer, who arrived in Boston last night and anchored “America’s Newsroom” from the crime scene this morning. Rick Leventhal will also report from Boston during the network’s normal primetime programming. Molly Line and Mike Tobin are also in Boston for the network.
• On CNN, Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer will host their afternoon shows from Boston. Anderson Cooper is also there and will anchor “AC360″ live at 8pmET and 10pmET. In place of re-airs, Erin Burnett will be live at 11pmET and Piers Morgan live at 12amET, both from New York. Chris Cuomo, John Berman, Sanjay Gupta, Don Lemon, Brooke Baldwin, Poppy Harlow, Brian Todd, Jason Carroll, Peter Hamby, Zain Asher, Gary Tuchman, Drew Griffin, Pamela Brown and Maria Santana are also in Boston for CNN.
• Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto will host his 8pmET show live for the rest of the week.

The cable news networks pivoted to breaking news in Massachusetts shortly after 3pmET Monday afternoon as two explosions went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Fox News was the first cable news network to report the news at 3:06:18 p.m., followed just seconds later by CNN at 3:06:53 p.m. MSNBC reported the news at 3:08:45 p.m. All three cable news networks were several minutes minutes behind the first reports of the explosions on Twitter.

Fox News and CNN are relying on live pictures from Boston local stations. MSNBC has video from New England Cable News, which is owned and operated by NBC Universal.

> More: The broadcast networks also broke in with news of the explosions. CBS News was first at 3:10pmET, followed by ABC News and NBC News at 3:13 p.m. Scott Pelley is anchoring on CBS, Brian Williams on NBC and Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos on ABC.

> More: Matt Frucci, the incoming executive producer of CNN’s new morning show, is doing eyewitness reports from the scene for the network. Wolf Blitzer is anchoring. And on Fox News, Shepard Smith is talking with WGBH’s Emily Rooney, former network executive and daughter of Andy Rooney.

> More: Anderson Cooper is on his way to Boston and will anchor at 8pmET and 10pmET.

> More: Here’s affiliate video of one of the explosions, as seen on CNN:

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CNN is getting political day during a two-day special report on firearms background checks. “Guns Under Fire: A CNN Special Report on Background Checks” will kick-off this evening on “AC360″ as Dana Bash interviews former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Piers Morgan and Wolf Blitzer will also discuss the issue on their respective shows.

Wednesday, the channel will present a number of special reports on background checks, including interviews and analysis on the issue (see all the reports after the jump). The reasoning behind the special report? “According to the latest polls, 9 out of 10 Americans support tougher background checks, so how is it that Congress can do nothing?” the channel says in a release.
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CNN is looking to bring back “Crossfire,” TVNewser hears. The long-running political debate show was canceled in 2005.

It isn’t entirely clear what time the program would air, though we hear it would likely be a 30-minute format. During its original run from 1982-2005, “Crossfire” aired in both the afternoons and primetime, in addition to weekend editions. Aside from a brief 60-minute experiment, it was always 30 minutes. CNN declined to comment.

If it moves forward, CNN would rely on its stable of political contributors to fill the “left,” “right” and occasionally “center” roles. The channel recently parted ways with contributors James Carville and Mary Matalin, who were regulars on the original iteration of the show. Paul Begala–also a regular on the show when it was canceled–is still with the channel.

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CNN “Starting Point” anchor Soledad O’Brien signed off from the morning show today. “Starting Point” launched at the beginning of 2012, part of a revamp of CNN’s morning hours. While O’Brien drew praise from critics, the show was unable to catch up to MSNBC or Fox News in the mornings. This also marks O’Brien’s departure from CNN as a staff anchor/reporter. She has entered into a new deal in which her production company will offer specials and documentaries to CNN.

O’Brien has been an anchor and reporter for CNN since 2003. Her most memorable reporting — as it was for many in the business — was the coverage during and after Hurricane Katrina. At the end of today’s show O’Brien recalled the reaction she got at the Baton Rouge airport, returning from one reporting trip, as she and her crew wore CNN baseball caps.

“We walked into the airport and everyone gave us a standing ovation, because we had covered the storm so well,” O’Brien said. “Facts matter, and we shouldn’t be afraid to have tough and honest conversations, and maybe even argue a little bit when there is a lot at stake.”

CNN announced yesterday that it will launch a new morning show anchored by Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan and Michaela Pereira later this Spring. Last evening, Cuomo phoned in to “The Situation Room,” where Bolduan has been co-anchoring recently.