TIME 100 and Anderson Cooper 360° Special ’The World’s Most Influential People’ to air May 1, on CNN

CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 will air a one-hour special in conjunction with the release of the TIME 100 special issue, highlighting TIME’s selection of the most influential people in the world. The CNN program will include interviews of the TIME 100 honorees conducted by other inspiring leaders. These pairings are drawn from the TIME 100 issue, which invites people who are influential in their own right - in arts, science, politics, business - to pen the profiles. Anchored by Anderson Cooper, the special will air on May 1, at 11pm ET on CNN.

U2 singer and activist, Bono will sit down with TIME 100 honoree George Clooney to talk about fame and politics. This marks Clooney’s fourth time on the list. The special will also feature a conversation between moguls Ted Turner and T. Boone Pickens, both TIME 100 honorees. Finance expert and author, Suze Orman, who is featured for the second time on the list, will be interviewed by business journalist Suzy Welch. Select TIME 100 honorees will also be mentioned during the one-hour special, which will be simulcast on CNN International. The special will re-air Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3, at 8pm and 11pm ET on CNN.

The AC360 blog, http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/, will include sneak peeks from the conversations of the iconic personalities interviewed for the special. Additionally, CNN.com Live, the Internet’s only live multi-stream video news service, will stream a different celebrity interview each weekday at 1:30pm leading up to the airing of the special on Friday, May 1 at 10pm ET.

TIME.com will feature essays on all 100 honorees for 2009, each written by other influential people, as well as interactive graphics giving additional information on the honorees’ spheres of influence, hometown and key statistics. The site will also include behind-the-scenes video on how the editors of TIME pick the list and man-on-the-street interviews about other ideas for honorees on this year’s list.

TIME 100 issue hits newsstands on Friday, May 1. TIME is a global multimedia brand that includes TIME magazine, the world’s largest weekly newsmagazine, with a domestic audience of 20 million and a global audience of 25 million; four worldwide editions of TIME magazine, including TIME U.S., TIME Asia, TIME South Pacific, and TIME Europe, Africa & the Middle East; TIME.com, which draws 6 million unique visitors a month; and TIME’s other brand extensions, including TIME Style & Design and TIME For Kids.

CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is the most trusted source for news and information. Its reach extends to nine cable and satellite television networks; one private place-based network; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; CNN Digital Network, the No. 1 network of news Web sites in the United States; CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service; and strategic international partnerships within both television and the digital media.