Fuse has fine-tuned its daily music series Fuse News to focus more on topical and trending news shows.
Former CNN president Rick Kaplan has been tapped to spearhead the venture, which will finally debut in primetime on Feb. 6, five months after it was initially slated to premiere as a daily afternoon show.
Fuse TV president Mike Bair said he pulled the plug on first version of Fuse News – which at the time he described as “SportsCenter meets E! News for music” – after the network’s online music news division began to reveal that viewers wanted strong, well-reported news about the music industry and not short, gossipy items about performers or bands.
“I thought there was a much richer opportunity to do show like this that would be deeper, more thoughtful and mature, and that would have a greater degree of reporting and writing than we had previously planned,” he said.
The show will be hosted by music and fashion personality Alexa Chung and former Entertainment Tonight contributor Matte Babel. The two-man anchor setup replaces the four-host strategy under the show’s previous iteration. Along with Chung, two of those hosts -- reality-series star Jack Osbourne and former Gawker writer Elaine Moran – will remain on as “senior contributing correspondents,” with the remaining original host Ashanti departing the show altogether.
Former NBC Universal talent producer Liz Walaszczyk will round out the senior contributing correspondents lineup.
“Our two anchors [allows us] to keep the show manageable,” Kaplan said.
