Campbell Brown Out at CNN; Spitzer as Replacement?

CNN has released Campbell Brown from her contract, allowing her to step down from her gig hosting the network's 8pm show. Brown requested her release months ago, a source tells Mediaite, after the network denied her request to move to 7pm. She plans to stay on until CNN chooses a replacement. There's speculation that'll be a Crossfire-type program; the Washington Examiner says CNN is courting Eliot Spitzer for the gig.

In an unusually frank statement, Brown said she was quitting for one reason: ratings. “The simple fact is that not enough people want to watch my program,” she writes. Her ratings are better than the last show CNN had at 8pm, but nowhere near Bill O'Reilly's or Keith Olbermann's. “Shedding my own journalistic skin to try to inhabit the kind of persona that might co-exist in that line up is simply impossible for me,” she says.