USA Today launching two-hour morning newscast with CNN, Philly vets

Gannett is launching a morning newscast on its free, ad-supported streaming television channel — with three industry veterans anchoring.

The show, titled “Connecting America,” will stream on the USA Today FAST channel from 7 to 9 a.m. eastern, putting it head-to-head with the big three network morning shows on the East Coast.

Former CNN anchors Alisyn Camerota and Dave Briggs will co-anchor alongside former Philadelphia local news anchor Jim Rosenfield. 

“Connecting America” will debut Aug. 18, 2025, from a set designed to look like a traditional diner, according to USA Today.

“What other place serves up a mix of opinions, ideas, and human connection like a diner? If America is the melting pot, then the diner is the flavorful stew,” said Dianne Doctor, the show’s showrunner, in a statement.

Cross Country Media is producing the show for Gannett, which is expected to include a mix of fact-based journalism and a collection of voices from across America, though it was not clear how that will be accomplished.

Plans also call for various USA Today journalists to contribute to the show, along with psychologist Dr. Jeff Gardere, FNC’s former foreign affairs correspondent Amy Kellogg from her post in Milan, Italy, along with political analyst Jim McQueeny.

The launch will mark Camerota and Briggs’ return to morning TV news. She had been anchor “New Day” on CNN, but departed the network altogether in December 2024. Briggs had appeared on “Early Start” and “New Day” before leaving the network in 2017. Both also had stints at FNC.

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Rosenfield was most recently an anchor at WCAU in Philadelphia, but left in late 2023 after taking a buyout from NBCUniversal. He also worked at stations in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

As its name suggests, “Connecting America” uses a red, white and blue color scheme along with a stacked “C” and “A” icon, all of which are set in a sans serif (at first glance the font appears to be close to Proxima, but there are some significant details that don’t match).

The two letters are joined at the lower “hook” of the “C” and the left side of the top of the “A,” with the negative space in the middle of the “A” replaced by a star. 

On Aug. 11, 2025, the @ConnectingAmTV X account posted what appears to be a preview of the show open. The clip is presented in vertical format but it appears that may not be its original orientation because the show’s name, when spelled out below near the end of the sequence, gets cut off on the sides. It’s possible that the the clip may also have been purposefully cut off to avoid showing the entire look.

Most of USA Today’s FAST content is in 16:9 landscape orientation. 

The rest of the “CA” look appears to use a mix of a sort of segmented, angular look, waving stars and dot matrices.