Ashleigh Banfield Moves to Newsroom, Kyra Philips to HLN

TVNewser posted CNN's memos announcing staffing changes at both networks:


Memo from Scot Safon, EVP of CNN Worldwide and director of HLN:

I am very excited to officially welcome Kyra Phillips to the HLN family. The HLN team has long been fans of Kyra’s work, and many of us have also had the tremendous pleasure of working directly with Kyra on projects at CNN and recently at HLN.

Kyra will join HLN to lead a new daytime program that will kick off late this summer. Her new program will highlight her strengths as a journalist as well as her insights and observations on the news and the people at the center of the stories. The show will be built around Kyra’s personality and passions, which include looking at the state of parenting and the modern family, civil rights and discrimination, children with disabilities and military families. The HLN audience will get the chance to see many aspects of Kyra’s talents and interests, and her show will help HLN expand its viewer promise during the day.

Among the many things Kyra brings to the HLN line-up is her acclaimed track record in reporting on major news events. Her award-winning work includes extensive reporting on Iraq, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and CNN’s Election coverage. She became the first female journalist to fly in an F-14 air-to-air combat training mission over the Persian Gulf, and has extensive police, SWAT and weapons training.

Kyra’s compassionate style, incisive questions and intrepid search for answers, coupled with her passion for telling the human side of news, are perfect for the HLN audience. We are so excited to add her talents and voice to our line-up.

CNN EVP Ken Jautz wrote:

I wanted to share with you some changes we are making to our morning programming. John Berman has started at CNN and beginning next month he will co-anchor Early Start with Zoraida Sambolin as well as contribute to other CNN programs and to CNN.com. Also this summer, Ashleigh Banfield will move to CNN Newsroom to anchor her own program from 11 am- noon.

Kyra Phillips will move to HLN to lead a new daytime program later this summer. I’d like to take a moment to thank Kyra for her years of anchoring on CNN. We are delighted that her next step will be on HLN.

John, Zoraida and Ashleigh are all accomplished journalists and I know they will enhance our commitment to quality journalism and to reporting a broad range of stories without picking sides.

All content, unless otherwise cited, is © All Things CNN and may not be used without consent of the blog administrator.