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Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley is rumored to be the host of a new primetime show on CNN along with anchor Gayle King.
According to reports, the Inside The NBA host and analyst is close to a deal to join the CBS This Morning host to lead a new primetime show on CNN. One source states that there is some risk that the deal won’t be finalized. “No one expects a deal to be finalized right away,” a source close to the negotiations says. However, CNN head Chris Licht is reportedly “optimistic” that the deal is done.
While Barkley has not responded to press requests for comment, he has gone on record before about such a move to the New York Post. “They are trying to pair Gayle King and me,” Barkley said in February. “We don’t have anything set in stone. I’m only considering it because of my respect for Gayle. It would be an honor and a privilege to work with Gayle.” King has not offered any comment, and CNN did not respond to press inquiries.
Reportedly the issue before anything is finalized is CBS News “dragging its feet,” according to a source. The same source says King has been spending the past few weeks in negotiations to rework her current deal to take the job. CBS This Morning is a major generator of ratings and ad profits for the news division, whose parent company is Paramount Global. She and Licht worked together during the 2010s when Licht served as a producer for the company’s news division.
If completed, the new show would be a big opportunity for CNN to boost its sluggish ratings before a pivotal point – the “upfront” sales season where media companies in the U.S. work to sell billions of dollars in advertising before the new slate of programming is aired. Barkley has already signed a new 10-year deal with TNT to remain as a host on Inside The NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery is the parent network for TNT and CNN. The 9 p.m. slot is where the new show would be expected to air – but sources say it would run only Tuesday through Friday, as to avoid competing directly with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow which airs only on Mondays and dominates that primetime slot.
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Source: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty
As Don Lemon returns to the air, word has it that he does so under a “final warning” from CNN over his recent comments concerning presidential hopeful Nikki Haley.
According to reports, the network announced that Lemon would return to the air late Monday night (February 20th). CNN’s chairman, Chris Licht, said in the brief statement that the anchor “has agreed to participate in formal training” regarding his recent comments. He added: “It is important to me that CNN balances accountability with fostering a culture in which people can own, learn and grow from their mistakes.”
Insiders have stated that the 56-year-old’s comments about the Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s age caused a great uproar among CNN’s brass, which reportedly warned Lemon that this situation was the “final warning” to him and that one more incident would result in his being dismissed from the network.
The CNN This Morning co-host had been off the air since last Thursday (February 16th), when in a discussion about politicians and mandatory mental competency testing suggested by Haley he ventured that the subject made him “uncomfortable”. “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry,” he said. Co-host Poppy Harlow pushed back and asked Lemon to clarify, and he responded “Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just saying what the facts are” before concluding, “Google it.”
Lemon would soon apologize publicly on Twitter. “The reference I made to a woman’s “prime” this morning was inartful and irrelevant, as colleagues and loved ones have pointed out, and I regret it. A woman’s age doesn’t define her either personally or professionally. I have countless women in my life who prove that every day,” he wrote. He would then appear on an editorial call on Friday with Licht and other staffers to apologize profusely.
The situation comes at a fraught time for CNN and the new morning show. Ratings haven’t been as favorable as CNN had hoped, with MSNBC and Fox News still dominating viewers’ attention. Eric Hall, who served as producer on the show, departed last month to handle programming at the 11 P.M. hour amid growing rumors of tension between Lemon, Harlow, and fellow co-host Kaitlan Collins. Lemon has come under fire for previous age-related comments regarding President Joe Biden and was also entangled in the controversy concerning his former co-host Chris Cuomo last year.
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Dionne Warwick is currently best known as a hilarious public figure on Twitter but before that, she dominated the charts dating back to the 1950s and just before the turn of the century. In a new documentary, fans learn that the “Walk On By” star checked Snoop Dogg and his Death Row crew for their language back in the 1990s.
As reported by CNN, a new documentary, Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over, features clips from some of the many stars and celebrities who’ve encountered the legendary Ms. Warwick along her musical journey, her influential vocal style, and other tidbits. Snoop Dogg appears in the documentary and shared a tale of how Warwick gathered him, Death Row Records president Suge Knight, and others at her home for an early morning discussion.
“We were kind of like scared and shook up,” Snoop Dogg said. “We’re powerful right now, but she’s been powerful forever. Thirty-some years in the game, in the big home with a lot of money and success.”
Snoop says Warwick wasn’t trying to get them to change their creative energy but did warn against the use of derogatory language against women and decrying violence. It was, as expected, a superstar trying to impart wisdom to rising stars in their own right.
“She was checking me at a time when I thought we couldn’t be checked,” Snoop shared. “We were the most gangsta as you could be but that day at Dionne Warwick’s house, I believe we got out-gangstered that day.”
Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over was developed by CNN and premiered on Jan. 1 via the network.
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Photo: Getty
A new lawsuit claims that CNN used more than 100 different songs in international segments without paying for them, constituting copyright infringement on a “breathtaking scale.”
Freeplay Music, a company that sells so-called production music for use in web videos, television segments and other content – and hasn’t been afraid to sue over it – claims the cable news giant used the company’s library of music as “their own personal cookie jar” for segments on CNN Philippines, CNN Indonesia, CNN Chile.
“As high-profile news media companies which strive to provide the best news product all across the world, CNN and the international parties know they must obtain a license to use other’s intellectual property,” Freeplay’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Despite this, they willfully and consciously did not do so here on a breathtaking scale.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in California federal court, claimed that CNN used 115 songs across 283 segments. And Freeplay’s lawyers say they were “not minor uses” but rather “essential to each of the segment” – allegedly often used throughout entire segments.
Discovering the illicit use of their music in foreign media segments was like “finding a needle in a haystack,” Freeplay’s lawyers say, but that CNN knew that when it allegedly stole the music: “CNN apparently counted on the difficulty of being caught in deciding to engage in this massive willful copyright infringement.”
Freeplay is seeking at least $17 million in damages, saying anything less “would not get the attention of these media goliaths that continue to commit widespread infringement of FPM’s intellectual property.”
A spokesperson for CNN did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
The case is hardly Freeplay’s first. Court records show that the company has filed dozens of similar copyright lawsuits over alleged unauthorized uses of its music, including cases against online retail giant Alibaba and guitar maker Gibson. Most recently, Freeplay sued Ford Motor Co. in 2020 over accusations that the car company had used 54 different songs in online promotional videos but was was “too cheap” to pay for them.
Ford later countersued in that case, accusing Freeplay of actively seeking out litigation with “bait-and-switch” practices. The carmaker said Freeplay falsely advertises that its music is free to lure companies and individuals to the platform, only to later sue them “to extort vast amounts of money” when they used the music.
“Freeplay has asserted copyright infringement claims in dozens of lawsuits, extracting settlements in these litigations and … in an untold number of other instances where the simple threat of litigation was enough to shake down Internet users who mistakenly thought they were getting exactly what Freeplay advertises – music that was “free” to use,” Ford’s lawyers wrote at the time.
The case between Freeplay and Ford ended in a settlement last year.