CNN’s Interactive ‘Office Hours’ Has John Berman Testing New Skills

John Berman has done almost everything an anchor can do at CNN. He guides viewers through breaking news during hours of “CNN News Central.” He’s filled in for Anderson Cooper, co-hosted a morning show and is trained to handle CNN’s “Magic Wall” on primary and election nights.

Now he has a new assignment – but you won’t find it on the traditional CNN schedule

Berman has been hosting a new CNN program called “Office Hours” that runs periodically on the news giant’s nascent subscription product “CNN All Access.” During “Office Hours,” Berman interacts with subscribers and helps to answer their questions about elections, politics and more. On Wednesday evening, Berman will host a new edition of the program alongside Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner, his “News Central” co-hosts.

“This doesn’t feel like television,” Berman says during a recent interview. “Even though there are cameras rolling.”

Berman is one of a growing number of traditional news anchors being assigned to new interactive formats that give viewers and subscribers more say over what gets discussed. Across the TV-news sector, there is an emerging focus on letting the people who are tuning in have more say or on hiring people with deep expertise in a certain topic who can help guide news aficionados in a more personal, unvarnished way.

“You have this great tribe of people” coming to CNN’s digital venues, says Ryan Kadro, senior vice president of content strategy at the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed news unit. “People are watching video, reading all of the articles and want to keep going further.” He adds: “The baseline premise we’ve had for a long time is that we need to engage more directly with people that are coming to us and make talent available.”

CNN also faces competitive pressures. MS NOW has put significant emphasis on giving more access to its anchors and correspondents via interactive video sessions on its new “Membership” subscription product. Even Rachel Maddow and members of “Morning Joe” have committed to weekly hangouts with subscribers. And of course, there are many other digital corners where headline-seekers can talk to one another.

“So many of these conversations were done on platforms in other places — in comments, on X,” says Kadro. CNN’s goal was “to take the conversations happening around us and bring it to our ecosystem and make our subscriptions stickier.” CNN has introduced new on-screen elements to some of its TV programs — like a “rail” for text chats from correspondents — in a bid to keep conversations from moving elsewhere.

Even so, executives have been methodical, not rushed, about crafting CNN’s new interactive format. CNN did three or four early sessions via Zoom, Kadro says, then sought feedback from attendees. Participation on the first “Office Hours” with Berman was three times what had been expected, Kadro says. From there, the company set about crafting something that would work on its new app.

The new show puts Berman into situations he might not typically encounter on TV. During one recent “Office Hours” ostensibly focused on the coming midterm elections, the anchor found he kept getting questions and comments about President Trump’s proposal to hand out $5,000 checks to Americans if Republicans emerged victorious. “On TV, we talked about it and it went away,” he says, but “not for the people we were talking to.” With that in mind, Berman knew he could turn the interactions into a conversation the next time he was anchoring on TV. “I was getting direct feedback at night and turning it around in the morning.”

Now that Paramount Skydance has prevailed in its bid to take over CNN’s parent, there is certain to be new scrutiny on what elements of CNN’s current business plan new managers wish to keep. For a TV veteran like Berman, there is, for now, a chance to pivot when it comes to facilitating new kinds of interactions with news viewers. “I’m trying to respond to the people who are viewing it,” Berman notes. “I don’t have control, and I don’t mind that.”