CNN's “Less News” Strategy Kicks Off With Hour-Long Glenn Beck Interview

This coming Friday, CNN will once again turn over its airwaves to everyone's favorite caliphate-spotting, end-times-prophesying, gold-huckstering bad novelist: Glenn Beck. He will be the special guest for the entirety of the December 6 edition of Piers Morgan Live, which will be guest-hosted by S.E. Cupp, the co-host of CNN's Crossfire who pulls double duty as a contributor to Beck's news venture, The Blaze. Beck's return to CNN (he decamped from the network in 2008, describing the newsroom environment as a “pit of despair”) will “likely” feature, according to The Blaze, a discussion of “Beck's latest book, 'Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America,' the creation of TheBlaze and current events.”

So CNN will have a conservative pundit interview her own boss about his various business ventures for an entire hour, which should allow plenty of time for all the various conflicts of interest this presents to come to the fore.

But if CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker is to be believed, this is the sort of programming we should come to expect from CNN going forward. “We're all regurgitating the same information. I want people to say, 'You know what? That was interesting. I hadn't thought of that,'” Zucker told Capital New York during a recent interview. “The goal for the next six months, is that we need more shows and less newscasts.”

If you're looking to send a message that you're prioritizing “attitude” (Zucker's word) and showmanship over actual useful information, an hour-long primetime interview with Glenn Beck is an excellent way to do that.

UPDATE:

According to a tweet from Cupp, her CNN interview with Beck has been rescheduled due to the ice storm in Texas.