Don Lemon may be looking for a new friend to drink.
Brooke Baldwin, a CNN anchor who for a time became the face of the cable news channel’s daytime programming, announced on the air on Monday that she intended to leave the WarnerMedia-supported channel in mid-April.
“The next chapter of my life will focus on what I love most about my job: amplifying the lives of extraordinary Americans,” she said as she opened Monday’s afternoon broadcast. She added: “There is just more I need to do … outside the walls of this place, a place that I have been privileged to call home for 13 years. Yes, we are still in a pandemic. No, I don’t have a job that I’m immediately joining. Yes, I am feeling very vulnerable. ”CNN declined to give details in addition to its comments.
Baldwin has a new book, “Huddle”, scheduled to open in early April. It examines how women come together to solve problems or bring about significant change.
She leaves as many expect CNN to reveal some kind of redesign of its daytime schedule that could make early afternoon anchor Brianna Keilar co-host “New Day,” the network’s morning show, while Alisyn Camerota, currently passing in the morning, it could move into the afternoon. Other movements are also possible.
Baldwin has been on CNN since 2008 and originally lived in Atlanta. But she gained new prominence on the network after moving to New York in 2014, when she started to lead for two hours in the afternoon. She proved popular enough with viewers to challenge the Fox News channel in the ratings and was able to keep up with the latest news or extend herself to lifestyle topics, including music. She was also an early proponent of digital narrative, relaying an account of her climb from Mount Kilimanjaro to viewers and anchoring some streaming series about interesting female figures.
“I really focus on giving viewers attractive television and I hope more and more people watch it,” said Baldwin Variety in 2015.
The anchor was satirized on “Saturday Night Live” and became part of CNN’s annual New Year’s Eve coverage, when she and her anchor colleague, Don Lemon, would host events after midnight, leading viewers to guess if they were drinking too much. And it became an object of national interest when it detailed its fight against the coronavirus last April.
As CNN focused more on 2020 elections and politics, however, Baldwin was less seen on the air. CNN expanded the early afternoon hours in Keilar and even took Baldwin off the air for a while to give more air to anchor Jake Tapper. In recent days, CNN has announced a new lineup led by many of its Washington anchors, including Pam Brown and Jim Acosta.