Goodbye, Aaron Brown - Hello, Anderson Cooper

CNN has shown Aaron Brown the door. Anderson Cooper, who has been co-hosting Brown's NewsNight for a little while, will take over the show. CNN's statement about this development was coldly philosophical:

Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., said today that he and Mr. Brown had mutually agreed that Mr. Brown would leave the cable news network because the new CNN lineup left "no options" for a program that would include Mr. Brown. "It is, unfortunately, a zero-sum game," Mr. Klein said.

The first time I saw Brown and Cooper on set together, I thought it looked odd. It reminded me of the time NBC put Deborah Norville on the set with Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel on "Today." This was just before they booted Pauley off the show.

Certainly, the stakes are different in this case, but the dynamic is the same. There is room for only one star (of each gender). If they had put Paula Zahn on with Aaron, he could have survived. But, only one rooster per hen house. Them's the rules, and apparently, Anderson Cooper is the cock of this particular walk.