JUST IN: Jake Tapper Will Return to 4 PM Show After Midterms, CNN to Announce Prime Time Plans ‘In The Coming Days’

CNN’s Jake Tapper will return to his 4 p.m. ET time slot after the midterms, ending his temporary run anchoring the network in prime time.

Tapper took over CNN Tonight from 9 to 11 p.m. after Don Lemon was moved to mornings last month. There had been speculation the network might attempt to keep its late afternoon star in prime time.

According to a statement from CNN, Tapper will indeed return to anchor The Lead after the elections with plans for the evening slot to be announced “in the coming days”:

As part of a special lineup, Jake agreed to anchor the 9p hour through the midterm elections. At the completion of that schedule, he’ll be returning to his award-winning program The Lead. We will announce post-election plans for that time slot in the coming days.

Tapper’s ratings in Lemon’s old time slot have been less than impressive. In the second hour of CNN Tonight on Tuesday, Tapper drew in fewer than 400,000 total viewers. The show came in second-to-last only beating the first hour of CNN This Morning as the network has fallen way behind Fox News and MSNBC in both total viewers and in the key 25-54 age demographic.

CNN’s announcement that Tapper will head back to anchor his afternoon show is little more than a formality. The network first announced on Sept. 22 that the change was temporary:

Jake Tapper is moving to primetime as part of a sweeping set of programming changes CNN announced Thursday that will take effect through the midterm elections.

Tapper, the network’s lead Washington anchor, will anchor the 9 p.m. hour starting October 10 and continuing until November 11.