A Ready-for-Prime-Time Player Anderson Cooper has big plans for his newly expanded show.

After earning high praise for his passionate reporting during Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in south Asia, CNN has decided that prime time is the right time for Anderson Cooper. This week his nightly newscast, Anderson Cooper 360, was moved to 10 pm/ET and expanded to two hours (bumping Aaron Brown's NewsNight off the channel). The Biz caught up with Cooper last week after he had just received news of his promotion while on vacation in Oaxaca, Mexico. He spent his Halloween night there, sitting in a cemetery. Really.

TVGuide.com: Was it kind of a surprise how fast this new show happened?
Anderson Cooper: Yeah. This is not something I anticipated, certainly. It's not the kind of thing I focus on. I've been so focused on Katrina and the aftermath. It surprised me.

TVGuide.com: How do you feel about the response to your Hurricane Katrina coverage?
Cooper: I haven't seen much of the response. I don't read about myself. I try not to get caught up in people's reactions because people's reactions change — sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. I can tell anecdotally there's been a response because people who are staying here at the hotel are coming up to me and talking about Katrina.

TVGuide.com: Do you feel Katrina coverage made it acceptable for reporters to have more of a point of view in their stories?
Cooper: I don't think I was editorializing.... I'm a big believer in facts and in trying to get answers to questions. When you're seeing one thing and being told something else, I think there is no problem in pointing out that discrepancy. Clearly, I felt we were being told things that were just not what I was seeing every day. I was also trying to get answers for people who were standing around me all the time and asking me these questions, like "Where is the National Guard?" and "Why isn't there more help here now?" There was a level of emotion that was entirely fitting. It's not something I planned. It's not something I thought about. It just was.

TVGuide.com: You're going to have two hours to fill every night. What are we going to see?
Cooper: I think it's going to be a work in progress. I think Aaron did a great job of having a really serious program. I will continue looking at issues very closely. I think there is an opportunity to step back and look at things with some perspective. [There will be] more focus during the 10 [pm time slot] on going in depth on some issues, and I think we'll experiment with the 11 [pm segment]. We haven't had a [live] 11 o'clock show on CNN before, except for the last month or two. It's an interesting time slot. Both Aaron and I came from World News Now at ABC, where it was a late-night newscast from 2 to 4 am, and I think I liked the freedom of that. It's an opportunity to focus on more issues. At 7 we were trying to get everything in and do a summary. At 10 there is a chance to dissect issues more.

TVGuide.com: There has been so much talk about how to get younger viewers to watch the news, and you're someone who is seen as connecting with that group. But it seems one issue with 360 was that it was on too early. Do you think a larger young audience will find you when it's on later?
Cooper: I try not focus on that. It's antithetical to what I'm more interested in spending my time doing.

TVGuide.com: But you have friends; you lead an urban life....
Cooper: I know what the kids are doing. At 7 most people I know are at the gym or thinking of reasons not to be at the gym. Or still at work or commuting back and forth. At 10 o'clock there's more potential for an audience, so we'll see.

TVGuide.com: So you don't think about being a youth-oriented newsman?
Cooper: The end result of thinking like that is you start to do the stuff that you think young people want to see. I just think that's a mistake. Frankly, in the news business, anyone who's got a pulse is considered young. I think it's a mistake to think about how to attract young people. It's going to be artificial. You have to be yourself. I happen to be interested in a variety of things. I'm probably the oldest 38-year-old I know. I'm sort of a grumpy old man. It's funny: There's a group of retirees from Sedona, Ariz., here who are quite familiar with me. I'm having a great time talking to them.

TVGuide.com: How often will you be doing the show from the field?
Cooper: As often as possible. Some stories warrant it more than others. I think there is a danger in just going someplace for the sake of being someplace. I have no problem being on the road. I'd like to go to Baghdad soon. I'd like to go back to Sri Lanka. I'm a great believer in being where a story is. There is great value in being on the ground — getting dirty and being with people you're reporting on and seeing it for yourself.

TVGuide.com: It seems like disasters such as Katrina make careers and create opportunities for journalists. Is that a strange thing for you to deal with?
Cooper: I can't even think of it in those terms. For me what happened with Katrina has nothing to do with me or what I did in my job or anything. When I think back to that experience, I think about people I saw and what I saw. Some of the spots that I saw are sacred places where people died — I can't think in terms of what came out of it. It's almost like saying there is some good that came out of it. And there's none.

TVGuide.com: So what are you doing in Oaxaca, Mexico?
Cooper: On Halloween the cemeteries are filled with people who believe the spirits of the dead come back for a few hours. First the children of their children and the spirits of older dead people. Families and friends go to the cemeteries, light candles, and sing and give offerings for the spirits, like alcohol and food. There is this huge festive party in the cemetery. I thought it was something I should see. Sort of a welcoming of the dead and showing them the world they were once part of.

TVGuide.com: Does being there have anything to do with all the death you've witnessed in the stories you've covered this past year?
Cooper: It definitely had a role, to be honest. I was just reading in the United States that the average person visits the grave of their loved one once after the funeral. My track record isn't even that good. There's been a lot of death this year — this is just something that I wanted to see.