The First Day

Dates to Remember:

June 3, 1967 = Anderson was born (he's 42 now)
Sept. 8, 2003 = Anderson Cooper 360º was born (it's 6 now)

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With an hour to kill, CNN attempts a '360'

By Eric Deggans
Published September 8, 2003

He knows it's an odd proposition: that you can somehow "relaunch" a show to viewers when you've been on the air for months.

Still, salt and pepper-haired CNN anchor Anderson Cooper is every bit the trouper when discussing today's debut of his "new" hourlong show, Anderson Cooper 360, half of a much-anticipated reconfiguring of the cable news network's early evening programming, starring the same two anchors who have worked the time slot since June.

"I don't think it's ultimately the way (CNN executives) would have planned it, but it's sort of just the way it happened," said Cooper, 36, his trademark self-deprecation seeping through the telephone lines from his New York office. "After the war, they had a show on, and they weren't sure exactly what they wanted to do . . . and it took them awhile to decide."

Colleague Paula Zahn will probably get more ink for her relaunched 8 p.m. show, Paula Zahn Now. Her press already includes a sprawling New York Times Magazine story Aug. 17 detailing the floundering attempt to develop a prime-time showcase for Zahn after the April cancellation of tabloid news queen Connie Chung's show.

But in many ways, Cooper is closer to the old-school heart of CNN: a sharp, slightly geeky newsie who keeps his wealthy New York roots on the down low (he's the younger son of heiress/fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt) and delights in bringing an impish intellectualism to news coverage.

Handed a chance to join the cable-news front lines when Zahn balked at recreating her American Morning format over two hours each weekday, Cooper imagines his new 7 p.m. program as a high-velocity trip through the day's news, complete with a look at print stories, a regular examination of media issues and a wry commentary closing each show.

"You kind of think there must be some huge team somewhere in the basement of CNN, the idea team, but it ends up being you and one other person in a room saying, "Why don't we do this?' " said Cooper, hardly helping CNN's image as a network flailing for a new focus.

"You may not all have the same vision, but you have a good sense of what you don't want it to be and what you want to get away from. And that's half the battle."

For his part, Cooper just wants to get away from all the insider speculation dogging CNN's latest prime-time makeover: It casts president Jim Walton as the latest guy to try to reconcile CNN's news-first focus with the increasing demand for flash to compete with ratings giant Fox News Channel and its 800-pound gorilla at 8 p.m., The O'Reilly Factor.

Claiming to avoid ratings figures and office gossip, Cooper is far too smart to comment on the issues raised by the New York Times and others ("That's sort of above my pay grade . . . blissfully," he quipped). Still, all the lofty goals in the media world won't dodge the arrows headed his way if 360 fails to compete in his time slot with MSNBC's Hardball or falls further behind Fox Report with Shepard Smith.

A look last week at Live From the Headlines, the two-hour show Cooper shared with Zahn weekdays, revealed that the network had already implemented many of the elements it is touting as part of today's makeover: contrasting Cooper's fast-paced hour of news with Zahn's collection of longer, newsy interviews focused on exclusive "gets" and new information.

Rather than interject opinions or jack up controversy, Cooper interrupted his interview subjects to cut off windy, self-serving answers, and he was always focused on moving the conversation along.

His moxie showed at surprising times, such as when he asked a spiritual adviser and supporter of abortion-doctor killer Paul Hill, "If you truly believe in (Hill's righteousness), why don't you take a gun and shoot somebody?" (The anchor's growing Internet fan base - one unofficial online e-mail list goes by the moniker Gunmetal Grey - must have been swooning.)

"We're learning that the anchor desk doesn't need to be an altar. . . . Some sense of ironic detachment, mixed with context, can resonate with viewers," said Matthew Felling, media director at the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

"I don't think the audience has a well-informed verdict of Anderson Cooper," said Felling, who has appeared on shows Cooper has hosted. "He's been the media equivalent of an interim coach so far. For this show to succeed, CNN just needs to map out the show and leave it alone for a while to let it breathe."

Andrew Tyndall, publisher of a newsletter on the TV news industry, wondered if Cooper wouldn't find more competition from PBS' NewsHour, CNBC's The News with Brian Williams and CNN Headline News than from shows on MSNBC and Fox News.

"Fast-paced news headlines . . . isn't that what CNN Headline News is supposed to be doing?" said Tyndall, laughing. "To me, he's the sort of image MSNBC wanted when it started: cool, hip, urbane . . . the new sort of news. . . . But it doesn't seem to be filling a gap."

Cooper, who until recently was best known as the former ABC News correspondent who hosted two editions of that network's reality TV series The Mole, stood out while anchoring news coverage during the war in Iraq this year, partly because he lucked into an overnight shift.

"It was when all of the embedded correspondents' reports began to come in, because of the time difference," he said. "It was actually the most exciting time to be on the air because you had all this news coming in . . . this incredible sense of riding a wave."

It reminded Cooper of his days in the early '90s as a combat journalist, when he reported from Bosnia, Iran, Somalia, Rwanda and many other hot spots for the Channel One News school television network.

He jumped into the job in 1992 after a few years as a researcher at Channel One, getting a computer-savvy friend to dummy up a fake press pass so he could travel to war zones across the world, videotaping freelance stories shot on a home video camera.

It was a brazen bit of risk-taking inspired by a pointed tragedy: the 1988 suicide of his older brother Carter at his mother's New York apartment, which he writes about in the current issue of Details magazine.

A sample: "Outside, he sat on the ledge of the balcony, his feet dangling over the edge. At some point he tilted his face skyward as an airplane passed high above, a glint of silver in a late summer sky. I still wonder: Was a voice audible only to him urging him forward? Could he even hear my mom a few feet away, begging him to come back? "Like a gymnast.' That's how she would describe my brother's swing over the ledge. He clung on for a moment, then he just let go. "Just like a gymnast,' she'd say, over and over."

"It's something I've been writing in my own head for 15 years," said Cooper (his mother wrote a book about it, A Mother's Story, in 1996). "There's something about suicide . . . no one really talks about it in polite company. But I had all these questions about why he did this and why it happened. It stays with you."

Still, why would such a personal blow inspire a turn to journalism? "I wanted to go places where pain was all around and people understood about pain and loss . . . so I started going to wars," Cooper said. "To me, there's nothing sadder than someone dying who led a good life and whose passing was barely noticed. There's great value in bearing witness to things."

And now, having survived a privileged childhood, his brother's death, combat reporting and a stint hosting The Mole, Cooper is ready to start bearing witness in his highest-profile job.

"With a lot of this stuff, it's very much about just following your gut," Cooper said. "I give the viewer a lot of credit: If you build an interesting show and give them something real, I think they'll watch."

- To reach Eric Deggans, call 727 893-8521, e-mail deggans@sptimes.com or see the St. Petersburg Times Web site at www.sptimes.com

[Last modified September 5, 2003, 14:05:56]