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CNN/U.S. Announces New Anchor Teams for Daytime News Programs


WEBWIRE

August 15, 2006, CNN has tapped four of its anchors – Heidi Collins, Tony Harris, Kyra Phillips and Don Lemon – as the main anchors for the morning and afternoon editions of its rebranded daytime news program CNN Newsroom, it was announced today by Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. All four of the journalists will be based in the network’s world headquarters in Atlanta.

Starting Monday, Sept. 4, Collins and Harris will anchor the morning edition of CNN Newsroom, which will air from 10 a.m. to noon each weekday. The morning edition will expand to 9 a.m. to noon later in the fall.

Before this new assignment, Collins served a regular contributor to Anderson Cooper 360° and as an anchor on CNN/U.S, where she substituted for American Morning, Paula Zahn Now and Anderson Cooper 360°. She played an integral role in CNN’s coverage of the capture of Saddam Hussein, the Southeast Asia tsunami and the space shuttle Columbia disaster. A winner of three Edward R. Murrow awards with experience covering aviation and the military, Collins was selected in 1997 by the Secretary of the Air Force as one of 100 citizens to attend the 44th National Security Forum and offer input on the national defense system. She joined CNN/U.S. as an anchor in January 2003 after working as a news anchor for Headline News. She previously anchored newscasts for KUSA-TV in Denver and other stations in Colorado and Texas.

Harris joined CNN/U.S. as a weekend news anchor in September 2004. Before CNN, he was an anchor for WGCL-46 in Atlanta where he anchored the station’s evening newscasts. During his career, Harris has covered numerous stories, including the return of democracy in Haiti, a human smuggling business stretching from Hong Kong to San Francisco’s Chinatown and the effects of Gulf War Syndrome on American soldiers. Harris has anchored several major breaking news stories for CNN, including the Atlanta courthouse shootings, the Southeast Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and last week’s foiled terrorist plot in London.

To replace Harris for weekend anchor duties, CNN has hired T.J. Holmes, an anchor and reporter with NBC11 in San Francisco. For NBC11, Holmes served as a go-to correspondent for live reports across the Bay Area and California and traveled to Greece to cover last year’s summer Olympics.

For the afternoon edition of CNN Newsroom from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. each weekday, Lemon joins Phillips, who currently anchors Live From in that time slot.

Phillips has served as an anchor at CNN since joining the network in 1999 and has covered a wide range of breaking news including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. In 2003, Phillips reported as an embedded journalist aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln for CNN during the war in Iraq. Over the past year, Phillips wrote and reported for two CNN Presents documentaries, the first about the Atlanta courthouse shootings and the second about Billy Graham’s last revival in New York City.

Lemon came to CNN this summer from Chicago where he was a co-anchor for the 5 p.m. newscast for NBC5 News. During his career, Lemon won numerous accolades for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, D.C. sniper, a special report on real estate in Chicagoland and Hurricane Katrina. Most notably, Lemon traveled to Africa with his own camera to report extensively on the AIDS epidemic which culminated with an award-winning series.

CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is one of the world’s most respected and trusted sources for news and information. Its reach extends to nine cable and satellite television networks; one private place-based network; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; four Web sites, including CNN.com, the first major news and information Web site; CNN Pipeline, an on-demand broadband video service; CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service; and partnerships for four television networks and one Web site.



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