Will Gayle King save CNN's Chris Licht?

Licht has indeed been eyeing big talent beyond cable news. In recent weeks, he has approached Gayle King, the star of CBS Mornings, to pitch her on hosting or co-hosting a weekly show on CNN, sources familiar with the discussions told me. Licht brought King to the CBS morning show a decade ago, when he was its executive producer, and the two remain close. The proposal currently under discussion would allow King to continue anchoring CBS Mornings while also hosting the new weekly show for CNN—a situation not unlike the one Anderson Cooper has with the two networks, where he hosts a nightly show on CNN and also serves as a correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes. …

Of course, it’s very possible that the King deal will never come to fruition—either because Warner Bros. Discovery will decide it doesn’t want to spend millions of dollars to hire a new weekly host at a time of aggressive cost cutting, or because King will decide that there’s no upside in hitching her bright star to a metamorphosing cable news network. In either event, it would force Licht to once again return to the drawing board.

[I don’t think Warner Discovery would balk at paying for prime-time talent, but it seems less than obvious that King would want to cross over and take a risk on prime time at CNN at the moment. The challenge might make it interesting for her, but does she want to risk testing her morning-show persona in a prime-time environment? Megyn Kelly tried it in reverse and her prime-time persona didn’t work in the mornings. Maybe King can tailor her approach to succeed, but maybe CBS pays her well enough now to make the prospect not all that attractive. — Ed]