Ashleigh Banfield, who currently anchors CNN’s Noon ET hour Legal View, is joining HLN prime time.

Banfield’s new show will debut Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. ET, filling the timeslot vacated by Nancy Grace. “She will bring her legal experience and views to HLN prime, tackling the day’s most pressing social and legal issues mixed with her own passionate point of view and spirited conversation,” HLN chief Ken Jautz wrote in a note to staff, obtained by TVNewser.

Grace announced in June she would be leaving HLN after anchoring her crime and punishment-focused show for more than 11 years.

“I’m going to leave this timelsot and I’m gonna make the jump and follow my friends over at HLN,” said Banfiled in her announcement on air today. Banfield follows Michaela Pereira who left CNN to anchor a West Coast-anchored HLN morning show. This fall, former NBC and CBS anchor Erica Hill joins HLN’s lineup as well. WATCH:

Banfield joined CNN in 2011. Before that, starting in 2010, she was an anchor/correspondent for ABC News. From 2005-2009 she hosted several programs and anchored trial coverage for truTV’s In Session, and its predecessor CourtTV. From 2000 to 2004 Banfield was an anchor for MSNBC and a correspondent for NBC News. Following the 9/11 attacks and leading up to the war in Iraq, Banfield anchored a prime time MSNBC show called Region in Conflict which took her and her team to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and throughout the Middle East. That work earned Banfield and her team a National Headliner Award.

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