• NY Times, Thursday, November 3, 2005 11:18 AM

Four years after joining CNN as its marquee nighttime presence, Aaron Brown has been yanked from his anchor desk. He will leave CNN because its fast-rising star, Anderson Cooper, has been awarded Brown's coveted "NewsNight" time slot, leaving no opportunities for the former ABC newsman at the Time Warner-owned cable network. Cooper, the 38-year-old son of Gloria Vanderbilt, has ascended to the throne with astonishing speed following his reporting from the Gulf States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His passionate, albeit Everyman, POV has seemed to resonante with viewers. And in recent weeks, when he was paired with Brown, "NewsNight"'s ratings rose, which CNN/US president Jonathan Klein attributed to Anderson's on-air magnetism. Although it's been reported in some places that Cooper was on a list to take the still-available anchor chair at "CBS Evening News," his promotion at CNN will likely keep him there for a while. (Wolf Blitzer will now fill the 7:00 p.m. time slot, formerly home of Cooper's "Anderson Cooper 360.") While the timing of the anchor shuffling was a surprise, there have been stirrings for years about Brown's decidedly quirky on-air style. (The Boston Phoenix's influential media critic Mark Jurkowitz yesterday wrote that, frankly, Brown was "too weird to be anchor material.") Where, in all of this, is Paula Zahn, the former CBS News anchor, whose "Paula Zahn Now" has been a CNN evening fixture for a year? The show will remain in its current slot, but it has created disappointingly little buzz, and Zahn is seemingly not the CNN icon she once was. It's Anderson Cooper's crown now. As for Larry King... well, he's eternally Larry, appealing to an older crowd, the Robert Goulet of CNN, if you will. Cooper is its Bono .

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