LOS ANGELES: Comedian Dennis Miller will become a TV talking head again in January, this time hosting an hour long show five nights a week on CNBC.
Miller, an Emmy award winner, will also serve as executive producer of the prime-time talk show, which will be taped in Burbank and produced by NBC Studios.
Miller began his career 18 years ago at NBC as a regular on Saturday Night Live. In 1994, he launched a weekly series on Time Warner Inc.'s HBO cable channel called Dennis Miller Live. Later he was a Monday Night Football commentator for two seasons on Walt Disney Co.'s ABC network.
"We are thrilled that he has chosen CNBC as his new prime-time home," said CNBC President Pamela Thomas-Graham.
Hiring Miller is an aggressive programming move by CNBC, whose nighttime audience is generally smaller than those of its cable competitors.
Miller will be the first broadly known personality to appear on 
the network's prime-time lineup since Geraldo Rivera left CNBC for Fox News Channel in 2001. CNBC has been focusing mostly on business-oriented talk programs at night, like Kudlow & Cramer and Capital Report. Miller's new program will not necessarily focus on business but on whatever is the most compelling topic of the day, CNBC executives said.
In an unusual arrangement for cable news, it will be produced by CNBC's entertainment corporate sibling, NBC Studios, which also makes shows like Will & Grace. This is not CNBC's first nighttime programming experiment. It has also announced that a quarterly show that features the former magazine editor Tina Brown interviewing leaders of finance, media and politics, will become a weekly.