Primetime and Daytime

Anderson Cooper: from prime time to daytime

By Alex Strachan, Postmedia News | August 25, 2011 -- 3:05 PM


Anderson Cooper poses for a portrait following a June 2011 CTV press conference in downtown Toronto.
Anderson debuts on CTV and CTV 2 Sept. 12.
Photograph by: Aaron Lynett, Postmedia News

Anderson Cooper is not a beach kind of guy. He's restless by nature, frequently anxious and feels a constant need to know what's happening halfway around the world. Vacations grate on him. After two or three days of soaking up the rays and chilling out on a tropical beach somewhere, he finds himself scanning the local news headlines and wondering if he should be jumping onto a plane somewhere. He laughs easily -- it's a quiet, gentle laugh, more a silly giggle than a guffaw -- but he's serious by nature. He's quick to anger at perceived injustices. He was a witness to the Rwanda genocide when he was a young reporter embarking on a career in news, and he has seen the evil people can do. He's passionate about journalism and journalists, especially war correspondents. His weeknight CNN news program, Anderson Cooper 360, demands a lot of his time, but he'll tell you straight-up that he'd be lying if he said it is all-consuming.

On the face of it, hosting and producing a syndicated, hour-long daytime talk show might seem the least of his priorities, but Cooper -- or Anderson, as he insists he be called -- wants to reach as many people as possible. The audience that watches Anderson, his daytime talk show that bows Sept. 12 on CTV and the newly rebranded CTV Two, is unlikely to be the same audience that watches AC360 on CNN.

And forget any concerns about his workload -- even if, technically, he's doubling down on his daily routine.

"How does this cut into my news time?" Cooper asked, rhetorically. "I don't think it will. I have the nighttime show on CNN, and I think I'll still be able to do that -- in fact, I know I will."

He'll still find time to do the occasional news feature for CBS' 60 Minutes. "I only do about six a year," he told Postmedia News with a wry laugh.

"I've already shot two this summer for this next year."

He's energized by 60 Minutes' self-imposed discipline and rigorous demands, in which correspondents are allowed just 12 minutes to tell an important and meaningful story, and it's not hard to imagine that, as he nears retirement -- next century, perhaps -- he'll consider 60 Minutes as a full-time gig.

For now, though, he has Anderson on his mind. And while he would be the last person to be tempted to slow down or slack off, a new daytime talk show will afford him the opportunity to kick back and show a different side of himself than his CNN viewers are used to seeing.

"You will see a lot more of me than you do on the newscast," Cooper said. "I don't think you can plan these things. I think it's most compelling and most interesting when things happen organically and authentically. One of the interesting things in this program, I think, will be the surprise of seeing different sides of myself, me learning about the viewers and the viewers learning about me more. Where that goes, I don't really know, but we'll see.

"In everything I've done, I've always tried to just be authentic and real. If I know something, I'll say I know it. And if I don't know it, I'll say I don't know it and try to learn about it. I want to bring that to daytime. I want to grow with the viewers and just see where it goes from there."

Anderson will be taped daily in front of a live studio audience at New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center Allen Room, with its views through a 15- by 27-metre (50- by 90-foot) floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking Columbus Circle in Central Park.

"We're shooting and taping in the same building where I work at CNN in New York, so I think it's all very doable," Cooper said. "I manage my time really well. It's going to be a lot of work, but I like working hard. I've been working hard for a long time now. And as long as I'm learning new things and trying new things and kind of using different parts of my brain, I find it energizing, as opposed to tiring.

"Besides, it's TV. It's not like it's real work, you know."

Topics will range from the provocative to the personal, his producers say, and will touch on societal trends, social issues, pop culture and human-interest stories. Like Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey before him, Cooper will encourage his studio audience to become involved in the discussion of the day. As with Donahue and Winfrey, Cooper will invite experts in various fields to provide information that will help daytime viewers through their own day-to-day lives, and help real people overcome actual life challenges.

Also like Donahue and The Oprah Winfrey Show before it, Anderson will be directed primarily toward a female audience -- Cooper says his aim is to provide a fresh, unique perspective on issues that affect women's lives -- but that doesn't mean men aren't welcome.

"There are plenty of (daytime hosts) I've watched over the years whom I have huge respect for, and there are things I love about what they did. I will say, though, that I'm not trying to emulate anybody. You don't really want to follow in somebody else's footsteps. You want to try to create your own path. And if this show works -- and I assume it will, and I will work very hard to make sure it will -- it will work because what we're doing is authentic to who I am and what I'm interested in. I have a wide variety of interests, you know, from serious social issues to ridiculous pop culture, which I have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of, for some reason. We want to cover the full spectrum, from the serious and important to the silly and fun. We want it to be entertaining, but also informative and compelling."

Anderson premieres Sept. 12 on CTV Two at 3 p.m. ET/PT and CTV at 5 p.m. ET/PT.