(Headline USA) CNN announced this week that it will begin airing comedian Bill Maher’s Overtime on Friday nights, likely in an attempt to boost the network’s abysmal ratings.
The first installment of Overtime, which is a post-show segment from HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, will air on Feb. 3 during CNN Tonight. The show will feature “Maher and his guests continuing the discussion and answering viewer questions following each week’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. Topics include news of the day, culture, business, politics, and more,” according to CNN.
“Maher’s OVERTIME joins several other recent partnerships between HBO and CNN,” the network said in a press release.
The news comes amidst another ratings slump for CNN. The network’s primetime viewership is now under 500,000, according to a recent report. In fact, CNN logged the worst week of ratings it’s had in nine years between Jan. 16-22. Only 93,000 viewers in the coveted 25-54 demographic tuned into CNN that week, and only 444,000 total viewers watched its primetime shows.
Its new early program, CNN This Morning, also suffered its worst ratings since its launch in the fall. The show features Don Lemon as a host, who was demoted from prime-time late last year.
CNN has considered introducing its own late-night comedy show to help bring back some viewers. Possible hosts for the late-night show include Maher, Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah and Arsenio Hall.
However, CNN CEO Chris Licht said such a show won’t be coming to the network any time in the near future.
“I worked on a comedy show. And it took over 200 people to produce an actual comedy show,” he said in an interview. “So no, I would not be so foolish as to, in one fell swoop, hurt the brand of comedy and news by trying to do a comedy show on CNN.”
