Acosta at a Midnight Crossroads

Early Wednesday evening, shortly before I published news of CNN's looming lineup changes, Jim Acosta received a peculiar telephone call from CNN chief Mark Thompson. Thompson, I'm told, delivered the veteran journalist a sudden and strange proposal: Move your show to midnight and anchor it until 2am ET.

The offer caught Acosta off guard. He had no reason to believe that his current show would be on the chopping block. In fact, his ratings have historically been some of the network's strongest, both when he was anchoring on the weekends and now at 10am during the weekdays. On some days, Acosta even out-rates some of CNN’s prime time programs. So why force him to move his show to the 12am hour, a time slot occupied by virtually zero other hosts in the cable news business? The move would effectively exile Acosta to the Siberia of television news. He'd be manning down a shift when much of the country is fast asleep and viewership is at its lowest.

The proposal from Thompson comes as the CNN boss works to reshape the network’s entire dayside lineup. Most notably, Thompson is moving Wolf Blitzer to the mornings, as we first reported. Since Blitzer will now host an additional hour of television with Pamela Brown, Thompson needs to find 60 minutes in the morning lineup to saw off for the new anchoring duo. Relocating Acosta to the wee hours of the morning would conveniently do just that.

Of course, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: Sidelining Acosta would also work to curry favor with Donald Trump, who very much despises the CNN anchor. As one media executive I spoke to Thursday night candidly assessed to me, "They want to get rid of Acosta to throw a bone to Trump. Midnight is not a serious offer when his ratings are among the best on the network."

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