Bohrman, one of the most innovative producers in news, moved to the West Coast this spring after taking on the role of Chief Innovation Officer at CNN.  Best known for his creative eye and his ability to make risks pay off – he was the driving force behind the first CNN/YouTube debate, hologram correspondents and John King’s “magic wall.”

Read the NY Times article by Brian Stetler who first predicted the news via Twitter here and the entire announcement from Current TV here.

Katie Thomson with Nicholas Kristof at Goldman Sachs Reception in NYC, September 2010

Katie Thomson, one of ABC News‘ top producers is named Senior Broadcast Producer for “Piers Morgan Tonight.” Here is an excerpt from the CNN press release:

Thomson joins CNN from ABC News where she spent 15 years working primarily with legendary journalist Barbara Walters, delivering and producing award-winning interviews for 20/20 and The Barbara Walters Specials.  She has produced interviews with the last four presidents, celebrities, and top newsmakers of the day including Barbara Walters’ interview with Monica Lewinsky which was seen by more than 70 million viewers and was the highest-rated news event ever broadcast by a single network.

“I’m thrilled Katie Thomson is joining the Piers Morgan Tonight team. She brings unmatched experience and leadership in the booking and producing of big-name interviews and she will be instrumental in helping lead a talented team of bookers and producers,” said Jonathan Wald, executive producer of Piers Morgan Tonight.

To read the full press release go here.

Piers Morgan with Sarah Brown (wife of former UK PM Gordon Brown) and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of the World Bank

WHC Insider’s Tammy Haddad for the Huffington Post:

Dear Piers,

Don’t listen to the critics. If Larry King had given a thought to the naysayers back in 1985, he would have returned to radio after the first week. When we launched the show 25 years ago, no one liked the idea of an hour-long interview program.

Ted Turner figured out the advantage of television for long-form interviews. I remember the night Ted was our guest on the Larry King Radio Show, broadcast from the bowels of Mutual Radio headquarters in Crystal City, Virginia.

It was such a thrill to finally score the bigger-than-life media mogul and winner of America’s Cup. At the time, Larry King was an established radio host, but Turner saw the primetime potential.

The producers’ biggest fear switching to TV? How to go from three-hour interviews (one hour interview, two hours questions from listeners) to just one. Imagine that concept now? Good interviews don’t happen by accident, but are a complicated dance between interviewer and subject. The best interviews are ones where the audience doesn’t see the individual dance steps, but a sweeping verbal theater. You are the lead, the director and choreographer. You get people talking from their head and their heart.

People don’t just want to hear what their favorite stars have to say; they want to watch them squirm, fidget, freeze… and yes, sometimes cry. In your first week, you have shown your star guests to be real and relatable, abrupt and self satisfied, and sometimes fragile. I learned something about each one.

Ignore the critics who are stuck on the fact that you’re taping the interviews. The additional research, the ability to pluck out the most interesting bits, to weave together the complete package, is invaluable. You’re right to put your viewer’s interests first.

And for those that think the interviews should be shorter: Ross Perot didn’t announce he was running for president on Larry King Live until about 35 minutes into the show — and he changed an election.

Piers, thanks for crossing “the pond” to get some really big stars and headline newsmakers back on TV with all their foibles and follies. We are watching, tweeting and laughing along with you and the critics.

Tammy Haddad is President of Haddad Media and was one of the creators and executive producer of Larry King Live, and MSNBC’s former Washington VP.

Howard Kurtz sheds the print skin at the Washington Post and joins up with Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast.

According to TV Newser, the long-time media columnist for the Post will become the Washingotn bureau chief for the online magazine built by the house of Brown and Barry Diller’s IAC. Kurtz will keep his show on CNN.

Kurtz has been the media reporter for the Post since 1990. He also famously updates on Facebook.

The clock started clicking the minute Rick Sanchez said “I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot.”

During the remainder of his September 30th interview on Stand Up! with Pete Dominick went downhill. From there the accusations became how Jon Stewart’s targets (“Everybody else who’s not like him”) represent bigotry to the control of Jews running major media organizations like CNN.

[TheWrap provides a full transcript here.]

By Friday night, Sanchez was let go from the company with the briefest response possible:

Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.

No apology or word of the interview remained on Sanchez’ Twitter, which now is likely abandoned as the 145+ thousand followers will forget they ever followed the anchor who made new media his entire shtick. In fact, CNN’s only discussion of the event came during Howard Kurtz’ Reliable Sources yesterday according to TVNewser.

Of course far be it from Kurtz to not dig the knife in deeper by leading into his segment first with The Daily Show’s Sanchez reel and then asking whether Sanchez should’ve been “suspended…or tazed?”

Smooth, Howie. Smooth.

But now it’s Monday, no word about what will happen to Rick’s Twitter, which commands 140+ thousand followers who don’t seem to be dropping off–even after Friday’s announcement. So what happens when an influential Twitter personality just stops? Does it make a sound?

In his first interview since being taken out from CNN with New York Magazine’s Daily Intel, the former CNN/U.S. president reveals the meeting couldn’t have been more brief:

On Wednesday afternoon, CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton, who was in New York visiting from Atlanta, called a meeting with Klein, but ominously didn’t tell him what it was about. When Klein arrived, Walton cursorily told him he was being removed, to be replaced by HLN chief Ken Jautz. It was a brief conversation.

“People get shot in our business. I got shot,” Klein said in a phone interview.

Going further, Klein seems just as shocked that he was let go before his Piers Morgan-Spitzer gambit could even start:

“I’m a big proponent of accountability. But I thought a judgment would come on three levels: one, quality; two, ratings; three, profitability.”
As for now, Klein’s taking it in stride and, as Intel informs us, will take in the Yankees game since he’s got a whole lot of nothing to do.

The memo, via Fishbowl, below.

To: CNN Staff

From:     Jim Walton

=======================================================

I have some news to share with you about our executive leadership and how our programming teams are going to work together to ensure we’re prominently featuring CNN’s quality journalism across our multiple platforms.  Two accomplished CNN executives whom most of you know and have worked with are stepping up to new roles, effective immediately.  A third senior leader will be brought on in the role of managing editor to help leverage our newsgathering resources across multiple platforms in a more collaborative way.

Ken Jautz is moving from HLN to CNN/U.S. to run the network as its executive vice president.  Ken is a rarity—a working journalist who is an even better news executive.  The reinvention of HLN is the latest in a string of successes he has led at CNN.  Ken has launched, made profitable and turned around businesses for our news organization, Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner literally around the world.  To his new assignment he brings deep experience as a reporter, both overseas and in the US; a CNN-wide perspective; and relationships from multiple positions within Turner.  Most importantly, he has a demonstrated ability to collaborate and lead strong teams, and a track-record of programming successes.

Scot Safon assumes the executive vice president role at HLN and will run the network. Scot and HLN are in my view an inspired combination.  He is an innovator; HLN is an ideal news and information laboratory.  He is an expert in audience targeting and development; HLN’s audience is young, engaged and growing. And he is a charismatic leader who is passionate about journalism, storytelling and our brand.  As Chief Marketing Officer of CNN Worldwide, Scot has led a dynamic team that has done award-winning marketing, advertising and promotion for CNN, HLN, CNN International and CNN.com.

Additionally, to put our multi-platform advantages more fully to work, we will be naming an executive vice president and managing editor of CNN Worldwide to lead collaboration across all platforms and elevate CNN’s unique journalism and analysis.  A managing editor, with full access to our journalism resources and my mandate to shape and connect our newsgathering across networks, shows, and websites, is a new role for the organization.  Ultimately, the goal is that the kind of front-page reporting and analysis that captures a news event, translates its meaning and shapes the dialogue about the story will continue to emerge in even more prominent and more accessible ways to CNN’s audiences.  The search for this person is currently underway.

Our colleague Jon Klein is leaving CNN.  Jon’s six years as head of CNN/U.S. are reflected in the quality of our coverage of signal news events during his tenure: the tsunami in South Asia, Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 election cycle and the Haiti earthquake, as well as shows like Anderson Cooper 360, The Situation Room and Fareed Zakaria GPS, all of which bear his imprint.  Jon has made important contributions to the CNN story, and he leaves with our respect and friendship, and with my sincere thanks.

We are going into a busy fall and winter with November elections and two new prime time shows on CNN.  Ken, Scot and the new managing editor will impact these and all of the other events ahead, as will you.  My expectation is that our leaders and our new operating discipline will put CNN’s advantages to work where they matter most: for our audience.  Our coverage will be relevant and resonant; will have meaning for millions of people around the world; and it will reflect the qualities that CNN is rightfully famous for: commitment to truth, respect for facts, service to no political agenda and passion for journalism and analysis done right and well.

From Jon Klein:

It is with a tinge of regret tempered by great expectations for the future – yours, mine, and that of the information industry in which we make our careers – that I bid all of you goodbye.

The CNN I’m leaving today is demonstrably stronger than the one I inherited almost six years ago – both editorially and financially. That is a tribute to your passion for telling stories that matter, your talent for uncovering the truth without layering on destructive bluster or partisan spin, and your willingness to indulge my appetite for innovation and change.

CNN has always experienced the vertiginous peaks and valleys of the ratings cycle, compounded these past six years by unprecedented change in news consumption habits. In the midst of all that it’s been gratifying to have led CNN/US to its highest viewership levels ever, during the 2008 elections, and I’m convinced the network is now poised to level out the troughs through the hirings of Eliot Spitzer, Kathleen Parker, and Piers Morgan, three intelligent, magnetic personalities who will join with Anderson Cooper to give viewers a reason to watch CNN in prime time no matter what the news of the day brings.

It’s been a pleasure to watch the transformation of some of our reporters into global news superstars during my time here, as we raised expectations and they blew through them. Anderson, who was anchoring the 7pm broadcast in 2004, is now the best-known and most-respected news reporter on the planet, and deservedly so. Soledad O’Brien, our morning co-anchor back then, is now the pre-eminent African-American journalist in the world, and was recently recognized by the NABJ as Journalist of the Year. Sanjay Gupta earned the moniker of “The World’s Surgeon General” through his heartfelt reporting on myriad dangerous and difficult assignments in which he often was the lone voice of Western journalism, most recently dropping everything when I called to send him to Pakistan’s devastating floods.

We’ve significantly enhanced our ability to engage Americans with the world around them through the addition of the incomparable Fareed Zakaria to our Sunday lineup and, subsequently, to the Time Warner family as a whole.

These past six years have witnessed the birth of the Situation Room as a vibrant new way of relating the day’s events, as well as the rise of the Best Political Team on Television, led so ably by Wolf Blitzer to the pinnacle of political coverage during the historic election of 2008. John King’s unsurpassed political acumen came to vivid life through the Magic Wall, and we made Sunday mornings safe for wit, and for women, when Candy Crowley took over State of the Union.

As a documentary maker at heart, I am especially pleased by the resurgence of our longform programming, which won numerous honors during this period including a Peabody Award and a Columbia DuPont Award for “God’s Warriors,” and a special President’s Emmy last year for our entire body of documentary work. No other network airs as many quality documentaries as CNN – we’re premiering four more outstanding docs in the month ahead – and I salute our tireless producers and reporters for taking their already excellent work to the next level.

Together we amped up innovation on a grand scale. It was so rewarding to conspire with Sue Bunda and our colleagues at CNN.com in launching iReport; to support David Bohrman’s brilliantly conceived YouTube debate; to marry Rick Sanchez’s boundless energy to the endless possibilities of Twitter; to collaborate with Facebook and Foursquare and to champion indefatigable in-house innovators like Alex Wellen, Victor Hernandez, Janelle Rodriguez, Eric Kuhn, and Bethany Swain.

We launched impressive new cross-platform programming initiatives like CNN Heroes (the inspiration of Wendy Walker realized through the perspiration of Kelly Flynn and her team) and Impact Your World, both of which acknowledge that CNN viewers yearn to be part of something larger than themselves. And it was so rewarding to conceive and grow the ambitious Black in America series and its offspring. But even more potentially significant in the long term has been our ability to attract a diverse cadre of talented and energized producers to the In America unit so ably steered by Geraldine Moriba.

To help foster the rise of all these worthwhile new initiatives, while observing firsthand the class with which the legendary Larry King transitioned to the next phase of his remarkable career, has been an experience for which I’m forever grateful.

It has been my privilege to lead the amazing people of CNN/US. I have no doubt that you will continue to play a critical role in explaining, influencing and impacting the world, while having a hell of a lot of fun in the process. My family and I will enjoy watching you do it and rooting for your continued success.

Morgan’s new boss, CNN-US President Jon Klein, quoted on CNN.com: “Piers has made his name posing tough questions to public figures, holding them accountable for their words and deeds…He is able to look at all aspects of the news with style and humor with an occasional good laugh in the process.”

The show will air live on CNN-US at 9 p.m. ET and in more than 200 countries worldwide on CNN-International. While Morgan’s show has yet to be named, CNN revealed what the new 8 o’clock hour will be called: Parker Spitzer.

That would be Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Kathleen Parker and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. The show will premiere Monday, October 4. Check out the video announcement:

The rumored hopeful was confirmed as headed to the cable news network according to The Wrap.  Jeff Gaspin, president of NBC Universal TV, confirmed the former host of America’s Got Talent joining the network during a press tour earlier today.

The rest of the details aren’t publicly available yet;  Gaspin gave a brief answer to Morgan having  dual duty at NBC and CNN (“Yes,” Gaspin  said.)

Piers has long been the favorite for taking Larry King’s slot after the talk show host announced his retirement in June.

Other details seem to be pending, but at least we can rest easy at WHC Insider when it comes to CNN becoming a credible prime-time threat, especially with the announcement of Liza McGuirk as executive producer of the Untitled Spitzer/Parker Show according to Fishbowl DC.

No other information regarding the start date for Piers, an end for King or when CNN will fully unleash its fall muscle is available. But it’s tempting enough to know that this exists and all the network needs now is to flex it.

(photo: Richard Johnson/Entertainment Press)

TVNewser confirms August 1st as the start date for Christiane Amanpour’s premiere at This Week, which sadly ousts Jake Tapper from the temporary position. Meanwhile, Rick Sanchez is being bumped up to 8 pm on July 22nd until the Fall premiere of the Untitled Eliot Spitzer/Kathleen Parker Show.

Meanwhile rumors of “America’s Got Talent” Piers Morgan as the heir to the Larry King chair are incredibly tantilizing according to the New York Times’ Media Decoder: “If completed, the deal would vault Mr. Morgan, a native of Britain, onto the Mount Rushmore of TV’s top interviewers, alongside Oprah, Barbara and Katie.”

As the Times calls it, bringing Piers in would be a huge step in taking back the interview circuit. He would also represent a new push toward an intellectually cool and sophisticated model that, as The Wrap notes, would bring the network’s prime-time dominance back in the Olbermann Era.

Focusing on a hypothetical network line-up is easy to do, but the offer of a Spitzer/Parker discussion show leading into Piers’ interview program is too much to pass up.  Tag onto that the revamped This Week, which is on ABC granted, but it offering an expanded worldview when it comes to the most inside baseball city in the world?

It’s looks like Wonk-Christmas comes early this year.

photo: Tim Whitby/Getty Images