Top CNN Stars: Welcome to Our Humble Podcast Studio

Jake Tapper anchored CNN's 'The Lead' from his office, complete with a podcast-style mic setup, on March 20 CNN

On an otherwise normal hour of CNN last week, viewers may have been greeted by the title card “Global Report: War With Iran” and an array of correspondents fanned out across the Middle East — from Tel Aviv to Doha — speaking with Anderson Cooper on AC360. Or they saw Jake Tapper multitasking as usual on The Lead, grilling interview subjects, ticking through breaking news like the dearth of TSA workers at airports due to a government shutdown. The substance was the same. The style was not.

Out were the crisp, buttoned-down trappings of a stereotypical Cable News studio set. In were podcast-style audio setups and messy, center-of-the-newsroom production vibes more line with the aesthetic of indie influencers. The ties were gone (or loosened) and the map of Iran was printed out for a table top that included a studiously messy arrangement of New York Times sections (that, perhaps, is more Morning Joe than TikTok).

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“Here we are, giving it a shot,” Tapper told viewers, a dry welcome to his office with a note explaining that this is where his team plots out journalism daily, so may as well let everyone in with a bit of transparency. (His office is decorated with presidential campaign trinkets, specifically of the losing candidates.) Cooper, meanwhile, was camped out in the middle of the newsroom at a table that was used frequently by data whiz Harry Enten, that was now repurposed with an arrangement of podcast mics for the anchor and analyst guests.

The AC360 podcast set up in the CNN newsroom.

The stylistic changes are a small cosmetic tweak — but an interesting one given that seemingly every video is becoming “a tile on YouTube” in digital media right now. (Tapper himself may on the fence about the change-up: “Will we do it again?” the anchor asked on Friday. “Stay tuned.”)

Does it work? Two Hollywood Reporter editors have diverging views:

No, It Doesn’t

ALEX WEPRIN: Retro, low-fi and reminiscent of Larry King … who was of course channeling the old-school late night radio shows that he once hosted before jumping to TV.

Clearly there is a push to be more “authentic” in the same way that a lot of podcast stars are, and Tapper at least shows off his personality. In the case of Cooper, they just took a table in the middle of the 18th floor newsroom (I assume Harry Enten found somewhere else to do his data analysis in the office).

I don’t like it, it strikes me as phony. These are millionaire celebrities, with a small army of producers, crew and support staff trying to look low-fi. A lot of the people who found success in the podcast space genuinely started from scratch, and even some of the most successful (like Piers Morgan and Megyn Kelly) have staff that number in the single digits.

While I think CNN (and all news channels) should be endeavoring to help viewers how they “get” the news in the name of transparency, we weren’t watching Tapper work the phones or Cooper pull up an Excel spreadsheet, these looked like their normal shows in a more casual setting. Surely there is a way to actually get some reporting into the show? That might require bringing in the producers who do a lot of the legwork.

That said, there is clearly something happening here. MS NOW is adding some Crooked Media pods, Fox News has Will Cain emulating the radio and podcast look … I think we are going to see more of these, particularly as actual video podcasts proliferate on TV sets through YouTube and Netflix. Ultimately, 20 years ago someone with access to a TV at, say 10 AM or 2 PM, would probably turn on a news channel. Now they may turn on Netflix or YouTube and watch a talk show there, so that is fresh competition. It isn’t really CNN vs Fox News vs MS NOW anymore, the universe is bigger.

Yes, It Does

ERIK HAYDEN: I’ll say that I thought “Summer Fridays,” in which Newsnight With Abby Phillip films from the Food Network kitchen while having its typical panelists get into arguments about bread-and-butter CNN topics, to be an interesting experiment, too. It’s too easy for reporters typing on keyboards to take potshots. Stylistically, there’s got to be some way to shake up the Cable News Studio feel that all of a sudden feels less real — and perhaps less trustworthy? — to viewers right now. And for all of the headlines during the short-lived Chris Licht era about how the veteran Late Show producer was shaking things up — remember King Charles? — programmingwise and visually (remember the tweaked chyron design?). The Mark Thompson-led CNN has yet to make as many wild swings. But in small ways like this it’s been more experimental around the edges of what CNN programming can, and should, look like.

To Alex’s point, yes, these are “millionaire celebrities, with a small army of producers, crew and support staff” but I’d say it’s increasingly difficult to tell that there’s a small army of producers, crew and support staff in a lot of TV programming, which can sometimes look just as cheap as one dedicated journalist who knows how to web produce their own videos. But what does differentiate CNN from a lot of these indies is its vast support network. So I’m all in favor of roaming the halls of CNN’s New York and Atlanta studios, taking a tour of Jake Tapper’s office (maybe when he’s interviewing Trump on the phone, next time), heading to the podcast studio with Anderson Cooper or going to the control room to check out which feed from a far-flung location matters for viewership.

By all means pile on the print newspapers — wave around the New York Post or Times as a prop, print out some maps, and head over to the actual newsroom cubicles where CNN digital journalists or producers are sitting, normally blurred in the background, to check out sourcing or when there’s breaking news. No one’s asking for CNN to be TMZ on TV, with Anderson Cooper as a Harvey Levin-esque ringleader in the newsroom. But it’s also a reminder of where all the breaking news updates come from (Or how about a “day in the life” of a CNN chyron writer?). The podcast mics themselves may be an easy target for a joke, but take away those mics and roll around the cameras and viewers may see how much work goes in to maintaining a live feed for hours during the day. It might be more interesting and unpredictable too. It is TV, after all.