CNN Pressroom - Best Political Team to Provide Round-Up of Campaign News for 8 p.m. Hour

CNN starting today will dedicate the 8 p.m. hour each weekday to the latest election news coverage from the campaign trail in a new program, CNN Election Center. Building on CNN’s successes and ratings wins from both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, CNN Election Center will be anchored by members of the “Best Political Team on Television” from the New York-based CNN Election Center and on the trail by CNN anchor John Roberts.

The program combines CNN’s unrivaled field reporting and analysis with all of the technology that CNN demonstrated on recent primary election nights. Each evening, CNN will report on substantive issues of concern to the American people with policy-oriented questions that will go beyond the minutia of the horse race and Beltway conventions.

For CNN Election Center, Roberts will anchor live from the field as candidates circulate through Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina, Florida and California as the Super Tuesday primaries approach. In New York, a rotating slate of anchors, including Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Lou Dobbs, John King and Soledad O’Brien, will anchor from the CNN Election Center. Cooper and Roberts will co-anchor the program’s debut edition.

“CNN will offer the electricity of Election Night every night at 8,” said Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. “The Best Political Team on Television will provide unmatched insight and inside information and will give viewers what they want the most: less horse race coverage and more of the candidates talking about what they would do as president.”

CNN Election Center will air each weekday from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. through the week of Super Tuesday. All times Eastern. The program also serves as a television companion to CNN.com’s Election Center available at http://www.CNN.com/ELECTION/

Joining the program from the trail will be CNN’s Emmy Award-winning political team with Dana Bash, John King and Mary Snow covering the Republican candidates, and Candy Crowley, Suzanne Malveaux and Jessica Yellin reporting on the Democrats. Also out on the campaign trail will be CNN correspondents Jim Acosta, Tom Foreman, Joe Johns, Chris Lawrence and Dan Lothian. Gloria Borger; senior political analyst; Jack Cafferty, commentator; David Gergen, senior political analyst; Bill Schneider, senior political analyst; and Jeff Toobin, legal analyst; will also contribute to the program along with CNN’s nationally known contributors Bill Bennett, Carl Bernstein, Donna Brazile and Roland Martin.

Jeff Kepnes serves as executive producer for CNN Election Center.

Through 2007 and continuing this year, CNN’s election programming has resonated with viewers who have made the network and CNN.com their source for politics. Two of CNN’s primary debates – the CNN/YouTube Republican debate and the Democratic debate in Las Vegas – stand as the two highest-rated primary debates in cable news history. CNN’s coverage of the Iowa caucuses topped the competition in the youngest demographics, while its New Hampshire primary coverage won across all demographics including total viewers.

An extra hour of Lou Dobbs Tonight will preempt CNN Election Center on Tuesday, Jan. 15, the day of the Michigan primary, with Lou Dobbs Tonight airing from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., followed by a Lou Dobbs Tonight Special Report, “Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit,’ airing from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. For the special report, Dobbs and guest contributors offer expert reporting and analysis on the politics of today as they tear down traditional thinking about politics by approaching the issues from neither the left or the right but independently.

CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is the most trusted source 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; CNN Digital Network, the No. 1 network of news Web sites in the United States; CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service; and strategic international partnerships within both television and the digital media.