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Christiane Amanpour takes the old 'Charlie Rose' slot on PBS

Hosted by Christiane Amanpour, the new program, “Amanpour & Company,” will share the conversational spirit of the old one — but nothing else.

Hosted by Christiane Amanpour, the new program, “Amanpour & Company,” will share the conversational spirit of the old one — but nothing else.

“I think this will be quite different from the previous show,” Amanpour said. “We’re more focused on what’s happening right now and conscious of the news. So while we will do cultural and nonpolitical work, we also very much have got our finger on the pulse of what’s going on.”

Amanpour, 60, made her name as a CNN war correspondent in the early 1990s, covering conflicts in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Haiti and Rwanda. Since 2012, she has been the host on CNN International of “Amanpour,” the show that served as a fill-in for PBS as it made plans for something more permanent.

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Rose’s show, with its procession of establishment guests and clubby atmosphere, remained unchanged through its more-than-two-decade run. In its place will be a program, led by a formidable woman, that promises to be brighter, livelier and more of the moment.

“It maintains the tradition,” Amanpour said, “but it certainly expands on it and brings it into the 21st century, in terms of certainly its gender parity and its look around the world.”

She got the job thanks, in part, to good timing. Neal Shapiro, chief executive of WNET, the flagship station of PBS, said there was no backup plan to put into effect in the event of a sudden end to “Charlie Rose.” A day or two after the allegations that the host was a serial sexual harasser came to light, Shapiro received a call from Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, who passed along a programming idea.

“The PBS audience is very specific, very intelligent, very globally focused,” Zucker said in an interview. “When you think about it that way, someone who came to my mind immediately was Christiane Amanpour.”

While Amanpour will host mainly from London, her home city, the four regular contributors who make up the “Company” of “Amanpour & Company” will work largely out of New York.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

John Koblin © 2018 The New York Times

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