Clobbered By FOX, CNN Makes Primetime Move

Don Lemon is getting his name above the title on his late-night program on CNN, reports Variety.

The WarnerMedia cable-news outlet will rename the two late-evening hours he has hosted for the past several years “Don Lemon Tonight,” replacing “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon.”

In a schedule posted online, CNN bills the revamped show as “Don Lemon brings you the biggest stories, newsmakers and spirited conversations of the day.” 

That’s not much different from the job he has been doing since he took the reins at 10 p.m. in April of 2014. Since that time, however, Lemon has steadily injected more of his personal take on issues into the program. 

The anchor recently appeared to scold colleague Chris Cuomo, for example, for giving air time to former Republican Senator Rick Santorum on his 9 p.m. show, who has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for remarks he made about Native Americans. In 2018, in the midst of a heavy news cycle dominated by former President Donald Trump, Lemon once opened a broadcast by saying. “This is ‘CNN Tonight.’ I’m Don Lemon. The president of the United States is racist. A lot of us already knew that.”

Lemon has long harbored ambitions of bringing a program to CNN that isn’t as bound by traditional news norms. “I would like it to be a little bit looser. I would love it to be like HBO. I would love to be able to say those things you never say on basic cable. I would love to be able to have those conversations the way Bill Maher does,” Lemon said during an interview with Variety in 2016.  He even wondered at the time if putting a mature-audiences label on his program might give him more leeway to spur more freewheeling discussion.