Erin Burnett CNBC Anchorwoman

CNN said Friday that it had hired the anchor Erin Burnett away from CNBC and was planning to develop a daily show for her that would start in the summer.
Craig Blankenhorn CNN has hired Erin Burnett away from CNBC and will develop a daily show for her.
Ken Jautz, the executive in charge of CNN/U.S., said he had not determined a time slot for Ms. Burnett’s show. But the deal to bring her to CNN was a sign of the direction Mr. Jautz, who has been on the job for six months, wants to take the channel.
He wants to emphasize “substance and depth” and make its programs more clearly delineated during the day and night, he said in an interview on Friday. “We are going to develop a show with her and for her,” Mr. Jautz said, indicating that she would not be placed into any existing program, like “American Morning” or “CNN Newsroom,” which runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays with various anchors throughout the day. He would not rule out any time slot. “I’m going to keep my options open,” he said.
Ms. Burnett’s move, which was first reported on Wednesday, represents a shift for her from niche business news to general news anchoring and reporting. As one of the most prominent weekday anchors on CNBC, she currently co-anchors two morning hours and anchors one afternoon hour.
She made no secret of her interest in broadening her work beyond business news. Through an expanded deal with CNBC and NBC three years ago, she was able to substitute as a host on the “Today” show and also turned up regularly on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. “I had a lot of opportunities that made me realize, ‘Hey, I like doing more than markets,’” she said in an interview.
Ms. Burnett, 34, had once been talked about as a future candidate for one of the coveted host chairs on “Today.” Asked if she had been offered a new contract that would have included a bigger role on that show, she said NBC had presented her “with some really exciting opportunities” but said she did not know if she was allowed to comment further.
CNBC did not specify on Friday how the channel would replace Ms. Burnett, whom it hired in 2005. “We wish Erin the best and thank her for all of her quality contributions, of which there have been many,” a CNBC spokesman said after CNN’s announcement.
Reflecting her interest in breaking out of pure business news, Ms. Burnett spoke fondly about her reporting for CNBC in countries like Nigeria, India and Iran. She spent more than a week in Cairo during the recent protests against the government of Hosni Mubarak. Among attributes of CNN that appealed to her, she said, was its “incredible global platform in covering news.”
Along with her anchor role, Ms. Burnett will be the channel’s chief business and economics correspondent. “We see her role as being broader,” Mr. Jautz said, than that of another CNN anchor, Ali Velshi, who is currently its chief business correspondent but may be getting groomed for a new position with CNN.
Mr. Velshi had been anchoring CNN from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern, but he has lately been on a tryout of sorts on “American Morning,” the channel’s program from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., which is undergoing a reinvention. There has been speculation inside CNN that Ms. Burnett could slide into Mr. Velshi’s time slot if he were to be named a permanent anchor on “American Morning.”
Another time slot that has been speculated about for Ms. Burnett is 7 p.m. weekdays, when “John King, USA” is televised. The show, a politically oriented program, has had low ratings since its debut about a year ago.
Ms. Burnett said she did not yet have a sense of what time slot would be best. Sounding a bit like Piers Morgan, CNN’s competitive 9 p.m. host who talks about wanting to beat his higher-rated rivals on MSNBC and Fox, she said, “I really want to do something that’s going to be exciting and is going to be No. 1.”

Erin Burnett