Regis Philbin guest hosted Piers Morgan Tonight on Tuesday (5/29/12) and, in our opinion, did a wonderful job. He devoted the entire hour to interviewing David Letterman, who rarely makes these types of appearances. Letterman suggested twice that Regis would be a good fit with CNN. He also comically forgot Anderson Cooper's name. Here's the clip:
The big CNN talk this week were firings and hirings. But we also noticed some of our commenters reacting to an article on Broadcast & Cable.com:
Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent admitted to being "very unhappy" with CNN's primetime ratings, but said it won't resort to tricks to increase viewership.CNN ratings hit a 20-year low in May and speaking at the Nomura U.S. Media & Telecom Summit Thursday, Kent said the company had plans to improve the quality of its broadcasts and increase viewership.
Kent said the ratings problems had two causes, some he called environmental and the others "self-inflicted."
Over the years, CNN has benefited from breaking news and in the first five months of this year, there have been few big stories, especially compared to last year's rush of unrest in the Middle East, tsunamis, reactor meltdowns and earthquakes.
Even the election has been "pretty boring to people," said Kent, who expects interest in politics to heat up.
"This is not an excuse. It's just a fact," said Kent, calling those factors about half the problem.
The self-inflected problems stems from the fact that "we haven't put the best shows on the air," he said.
