Former CNN Anchor Aaron Brown

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Do you miss former CNN anchor Aaron Brown? ::) I used to joke that no one benefitted more from 9/11 that Aaron Brown (turns out Rudy has), since he happened to be on the scene and did a serviceable job of leading CNN's coverage that day, and managed to parlay that into his own show for a while before he got ****canned.

I thought he was pretty annoying and I haven't thought of this guy in years, but some dude on "America's Got Talent" (It's on mute, I'm listening to the radio and working on the computer) looked just like him -- I don't think on purpose. Anyway, here's a story I googled about him that says he's not a fan of today's cotton candy cartoon cable news. I'm glad to hear it.

http://ddunleavy.typepad.com/the_big_picture/2006/03/form_cnn_anchor.html
 
For the most part, I enjoyed him, the same way I enjoyed Jack Edwards on the Sunday morning SportsCenters. I know, here come the Jack Edwards jokes about the World Cup ...
 
He's a nice change of pace guy to the hyper-activity required for a regular news slot. I think he made Anderson Cooper look good and without him, Cooper looks a little more like a lightweight.
I never got the impression he had an axe to grind on the air, and that's what it takes in TV news these days.

and I also like Bill Patrick, Al Trautwig and Jim Kelly, but what do I know.
 
I kind of liked him. His lack of commitment guaranteed his main anchor gig wouldn't last long, though. He refused to leave the golf course when the space shuttle disintegrated on re-entry. That pretty much ended his national network anchoring career.
 
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He kind of grew on me on CNN. Don't think I could watch him every night, but he was a good change of pace.
 
huntsie said:
I always liked the segment where he showed front pages from around the country at the end of his show. He was a noisy windbag, but I did like that small segment of his show

Agreed. As someone in the newspaper business, I always thought it was cool of him to show what newspapers across the country were leading with the next day.
 
Brown exuded a certain dignity and decency that compensated for his sometimes, uh, unorthodox style. And he's got the right philosophy when it comes to journalism.
 
I liked him at first, because he seemed to be interested in good writing -- or, at least, writing that was different than the crap you usually hear on television. (The other day, CNN said the police were "literally scouring" the streets after the car bomb was detected in London.)

I think Brown got compliments from too many people because he ran with it and started sounding like a pompous windbag. He was insufferable. I just wonder if there's a happy medium -- a literate person who can speak to the masses. I can't think of a person like that on TV.
 
I also enjoyed the segments with the newspaper fronts, which I first noticed when Brown was with ABC. He seemed more tolerable then too. But, as Ike said, he began sounding like a pompous windbag. It was like a good skill set -- literate, thoughtful, the care not to over-hype or jump to conclusions -- became too much of a good thing. In some ways he reminded me of Pat Robertson squinting so you could be sure he was really praying hard. It just made it look like he was constipated. Brown began to look like he was trying really hard to make sure we knew he was being literate, thoughtful and careful. Maybe it's just impossible to strike that medium Ike talked about. I don't know.

Apparently Brown is teaching at Arizona State now.
 
Unfortunately, he got compared too much to Anderson Cooper.
And guess what, Cooper's ratings aren't even close to what Brown's were.
Yet, Cooper's rewarded with a huge contract.
 
He was the only CNN newsguy I actually made a point of watching. His thoughtfullness outweighed his pomposity for me.
 
About 10 years or so ago, Brown anchored ABC's overnight news program. It aired in the wee hours on the East Coast. It was very loosey-goosey, off-the-cuff. I liked his performance there.

When he showed up at CNN, he seemed to be a lot more stuffed-shirt, and it just didn't work. Even when he tried to add a little levity to things, as he did with the headlines segment, it went flat.
 
I can't say I was a fan, but he's infinitely better than the idiot that CNN had filling in for Wolf Blitzer today. Jeff Toobin or something? What a colossal ignoramus who asked ridiculous ass questions, and too often seemed more interested in getting the answer he wanted. And during a debate, rather than let someone respond to a great point that dumbass glossed over it so he could ask his more important question. What a ****ing douche. Luckily, the panelist went back to the point after answering the stupid question.
 

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