CNN

How CNN Max could be as sticky for SVOD as it’s been for pay TV.

CNN anchor Sara Sidner was confronted by an angry pro-Palestinian protestor while reporting Friday from the West Bank. As Sidner and her team were walking through the streets of Ramallah, where demonstrators have erupted in protest over what they say is Israel’s continued oppression and targeting of their people, a man ran up to the news anchor and began shouting at her. “You are genocide supporters,” the man shouted in her face. “You are not welcome here! Genocide supporters!” “F‑‑‑ CNN! F‑‑‑ CNN!” the man continued to scream, pointing his finger in Sidner’s face as a crowd of demonstrators gathered around her.

Paula Reid, has been named CNN‘s chief legal affairs correspondent, a vote of confidence in the reporter who joined the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet in 2021. Reid has been highly visible on CNN in recent months, covering federal and state investigations into former President Trump as well as a special counsel probe into President Biden’s handling of classified documents during his time as vice president. Reid was part of a team that broke the news that Trump had been captured on audio tape discussing a classified document he kept after leaving the White House.

CNN Chief Executive Mark Thompson told staff that the network needs to step up its digital game, saying conventional TV “can no longer define us,” and said its journalists shouldn’t be distracted by debates about balance or false equivalency. Speaking to employees in a video message on Monday, his first official day at CNN, Thompson said he would draw on his earlier experience as CEO of the New York Times to modernize the network.

Who’s doing it better — Kristen Welker or Jake Tapper? The two journalists, one the new moderator of NBC News’ Meet The Press, the other the anchor of the weekday The Lead and a co-anchor of State of the Union at CNN, aren’t typically pitted against one another. But there they were on a recent Thursday afternoon around 4:30 p.m., duking it out for the future of their medium.

When former CNN Chief Executive Officer Chris Licht started running the news organization last year, he was given a mission by his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav: change the network’s programming and tone to emphasize news rather than “advocacy” journalism. With Licht now fired, CNN’s incoming CEO, Mark Thompson, has a new mission: everything else.

In replacing Chris Licht with Mark Thompson, David Zaslav lost an opportunity to move the channel back towards straight news. The loss of reasoned debate among people who disagree, yet still respect each other, is the great tragedy of the 21^st century. CNN had a chance to build a small bridge over that chasm of partisanship, but the opportunity now seems to be gone.

“I like big challenges, that should be fairly apparent. That might come in the shape of another big executive job,” Thompson once said. “I’m interested in the puzzle of how you help organizations confront the present and the future.”

Live-streamed news content “will make Max more valuable,” one analyst told The Wrap, but it could come at the expense of the linear network.

Thompson, who oversaw a period of growth at The New York Times and the BBC, will lead the network during a pivotal period.

Ex-New York Times CEO and BBC Director General Mark Thompson’s appointment as CNN’s new CEO offers some much-needed good news as the troubled network seeks to turn its ratings declines around and reinvent itself for the digital age, sources say.

The former director-general of the BBC and president and CEO of the New York Times Co. to take the helm of the global news organization.

Mark Thompson, the former chief executive of The New York Times, is expected to take over Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable news business, a person familiar with the matter confirms. WBD is expected to make his hire official this week.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s search for an outsider to run CNN has taken it to two high-profile veterans of the BBC. The news broke last week that a leading contender for the job is Mark Thompson, the former New York Times and BBC chief. But the company has also spoken to another prominent British journalist, James Harding, who led BBC News from 2013 to 2017 and then founded the British digital media outlet Tortoise.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has reportedly made up his mind about who will replace Chris Licht as the next chairman of CNN. Zaslav has been trying to convince former New York Times boss Mark Thompson to take the reins at Hudson Yards, according to the news site Puck.

Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to launch new original programs from CNN that will stream on its Max streaming service, according to three people familiar with the matter. Jim Sciutto, Bianna Golodryga, Rahel Solomon and Christiane Amanpour are among the CNN journalists who have been tapped to take part in the effort, according to two of these people.

The former New York Times and BBC chief Mark Thompson is a leading candidate to lead CNN, according to people familiar with the conversations on both sides of the Atlantic. Thompson, who left the Times in 2020 after eight years, is among a group of candidates in the mix for the job, according to three people familiar with the recruiting process.

As the news cycle focus continued to be on Donald Trump’s latest indictment, MSNBC notched another win in primetime. The network averaged 1.99 million viewers on Tuesday evening, with All in with Chris Hayes and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell winning their time periods. Fox News averaged 1.92 million and CNN posted 779,000.

Selina Wang, who served as CNN’s only reporter on the ground during the coronavirus-challenged Beijing Winter Olympics, will soon become one of ABC News’ key personnel in a very different arena: The White House. (Image: ABC/Pawel Kaminski)

The former CNN journalist has won the right to take the news network to an employment tribunal in the UK with her claim of unfair dismissal and discrimination after she was injured on assignment in Israel.

Abby Phillips will be 10 p.m.’s new anchor in a dramatic overhaul of the network’s morning and evening schedules.

The Situation Room supervising producer Tim Carter has been named executive producer of CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta, which airs Saturdays and Sundays on CNN. Carter, who has worked on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer team for the past five years, will remain based in CNN’s Washington, D.C., bureau in his new role, which he steps into next month.