Variety has a story about a new show starting on CNN which is essentially their version of The Daily Show from Comedy Central. It does not have a name yet, but D.L. Hughley is hosting it and it'll be on Saturday's at 10pm ET (conveniently a half-hour before SNL airs).

The comments from CNN and D.L. are rather odd though, because both try to make a distinction between this new show and The Daily Show even though there doesn't appear to be any besides who the host is. The purpose seems to be the same, and the paragraph with D.L.'s comments seems contradictory.

"D.L. is a very thoughtful, well-informed guy with unpredictable views, and I've always admired his comedy," said CNN/U.S. prexy Jon Klein. "The basic premise of the show is, what if a guy like him was let loose in the CNN building for a weekend after the lights went off?" Klein said CNN could not release the name of the show yet. Veteran producer Mitch Semel will be the exec producer and showrunner.

While Comedy Central has two dominant players in the news-laffer genre - "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" - Klein said the new CNN skein will be different. "Daily" and "Colbert" are "fake newscasts, whereas this is really D.L.'s observations and comments on the week's events and his riffs on the news," Klein said.

"I'm a big fan of both of those shows," Hughley said, "but I've got a different skill set. I'm not going to parody a news show or a news anchor. My show will reflect my views on things just as their shows reflect their views."

For instance, as Hughley continued, "There have been six movies with a black man as the president, and in all those movies, the world was coming to an end. If this election isn’t art imitating life, I don’t know what is."

The question for CNN is whether younger auds will find the show.

On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart does exactly that...his views on the news. This will essentially be "The Daily Show with D.L. Hughley" despite the claims that it won't be. At any rate, it'll be interesting to see how it does and if it does manage to be innovative in any areas (I am a fan of D.L.). And at least with it's time slot and frequency, it's not really competing with or stealing the audience of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.