CNN to start weekend comedy show with D.L. Hughley

NEW YORK – The latest entrant into the TV comedy business is … CNN?
The news network announced Wednesday that it’s starting a show with comedian D.L. Hughley. Tentatively titled “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News,” it will air live at 10 p.m. Saturdays and replay 24 hours later.
The show will debut Oct. 25.
Hughley describes it as a news-oriented talk show – more like David Letterman’s and Jay Leno’s program than Jon Stewart’s. It will air before a live audience from CNN’s New York studio.
Jon Klein, CNN U.S. president, said he took note of Hughley when the comic made an appearance on Glenn Beck’s CNN Headline News show last year. Hughley, one of the four “Original Kings of Comedy,” had a four-year run as the star of his own ABC sitcom and his own late-night show for Comedy Central.
Hughley was shopping his prospective one-hour show to two other networks when Klein called his agent to express interest.
“My agent called to say, ‘What do you think about CNN?’ and I said I’m not a newscaster,” Hughley said.
But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense.
Comedy on news networks – planned comedy, that is – is unusual but not unprecedented. Fox News Channel aired the “Half Hour News Hour,” but production stopped in 2007. CNN International, seen outside of the United States, airs reruns of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”
“The audience that gets so much of its news from comedians these days clearly has no problem with that,” Klein said.
Klein said CNN drew a record high audience for cable television among the youthful 18-to-49-year-old audience during the second presidential debate, so the network wants to keep those young viewers engaged. News viewership tends to skew old, an audience less valuable to advertisers.
As for setting limits on Hughley, Klein said, “Anything goes.”
“It’s as if we’re shutting off the lights at the end of the day and letting him run amok,” he said.
TV veteran Mitch Semel is the executive producer. Semel was the first head of programming at Comedy Central, started “Politically Incorrect” with Bill Maher and was a CBS late-night programming executive.
Hughley already has a road trip planned, to interview participants at a Sarah Palin rally in North Carolina.
“It’s a black guy and a Jewish producer, so we will stand out like ‘Mississippi Burning,'” he said.