Anderson Cooper has signed a deal with CNN that will keep him at the network through the 2016 presidential election. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, this keeps the fairly successful Anderson Cooper 360 anchoring CNN’s primetime lineup. If the deal hadn’t gone through, network executives would have had a gap to fill, and they almost certainly would have filled it with another hour or three of Wolf “Time-Slot Spackle” Blitzer.
But the most important upshot of this new contract is that we’ll presumably get at least three more New Year’s Eve broadcasts featuring Cooper and his sidekick/antagonist Kathy Griffin. The New Year’s shows are a fun anomaly for the typically staid CNN, as Griffin’s frenetic style and Cooper’s giggly bemusement give “The Most Trusted Name In News” an air of public-access lunacy for one night. The festivities are usually good for a handful of bizarre, un-CNN moments—like the exchange last Dec. 31 when Griffin suggested to Psy that he was printing money out his ass in the wake of “Gangnam Style,” and Psy replied with heartbreaking earnestness, “That means a lot to me, thank you.”