CNN Early Start anchor and chief business correspondent Christine Romans has decided to leave the cable news channel. Romans announced her decision Friday morning, in conjunction with an on-air sendoff on CNN This Morning. Her last day at the channel is today.
Variety faces fierce backlash over Tatiana Siegel’s article that claimed Zucker has been gearing up to acquire CNN.
The Hollywood trade publication is being confronted with serious questions about its journalism from top industry figures over a feature story it published Tuesday that aimed to offer a fresh look into the behind-the-scenes drama and power struggles that beset CNN over the last 18 months.
Not even Fox’s $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems can compare to the drama that’s enveloped CNN during and after the one-year reign of Chris Licht, who some insiders have described as a Julius Caesar figure surrounded by backstabbers.
Exclusives
The former White House communications director will be based in D.C.
For CEOs, A High Failure Rate
Between one-third to one-half of new CEOs fail within the first 18 months, and CNN’s debacle with recently ousted chief Chris Licht is only media’s most recent dramatic example. Here’s a guide to the most common C-suite pitfalls and how to avoid them.
A former CNN reporter is suing the news channel for unfair dismissal and racial discrimination after she was severely injured while on assignment in Israel. Saima Mohsin was left disabled after an accident while reporting from Jerusalem on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her cameraman ran over her foot in a car, causing severe tissue damage that has left the British-Pakistani journalist struggling to sit, stand and walk or return to work full-time.
The Source, which will be based in New York and is slated to debut Monday, July 10, at 9 p.m. ET, is a new hour built around up-and-coming anchor Kaitlan Collins, who has, in the space of just a few years, vaulted from White House correspondent to morning co-anchor to primetime personality. Collins has been leading CNN’s 9 p.m. hour over the past few weeks, but under a catch-all rubric of CNN Primetime, which also encompassed town-hall specials and deep-dive interviews with newsmakers led by others.
Fox had its post-Tucker nosedive, CNN had the disastrous Trump town hall — and MSNBC has been reaping the benefits.
After spending months keeping CNN from expanding into streaming, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery appears to have changed its mind. Warner Bros. Discovery is exploring ways to get more CNN programing on to its Max streaming service, according to a person familiar with the matter, looking at the news outlet’s broader portfolio to see what content might work. Executives will have to navigate agreements with CNN’s traditional distributors that often require cable and satellite companies get first access to CNN’s live broadcasts.
It’s not just Trump’s legal problems that are turning courtroom veterans into sought-after pundits. But, well, it has a lot to do with that.
David Bohrman, a longtime producer and news executive who was responsible for innovations in live and special events and breaking news, including at CNN and other networks, died on Sunday. He was 69. “He was the creator of more news programming than almost any other producer working in television news today,” CNN’s leadership team wrote in a memo to employees on Sunday evening.
Speculation is growing that Warner Bros. Discovery will sell CNN in the coming year — and the struggling cable network’s former CEO Jeff Zucker has emerged as a possible suitor, sources tell the New York Post. They say Zucker sees a big opportunity at CNN ahead of the 2024 presidential election after ex-CEO Chris Licht’s strategy to revamp the network’s programming to appeal to a more centrist audience flopped, sending ratings and ad revenue tumbling.
With CNN head Chris Licht ousted, other Warner Bros. Discovery executives turn their attention to his very hands-on overlord, with one source wondering: “Who wants to have to manage him?”
Chris Licht is gone, but what remains is the network’s tricky shift to digital and away from a decaying TV business.
CNN Needs A New Leader. Will Anyone Want The Job?
Even beyond fired CEO Chris Licht’s programming blunders, the cable-news giant is facing industry-wide challenges and corporate hurdles that could make it a hard role to fill.
Jeffrey M. McCall: “Licht’s failure is bad not only for CNN, which is now likely to remain saddled with historically bad ratings, but for the journalism industry as a whole. He was run out of town by the various forces that no longer see a value in information-based, serious, nonpartisan journalism, including the social media mobs who decried Licht’s strategy to reach a wider range of viewers than just the left-of-center audience CNN had catered to for years. Joining the war on Licht were CNN employees themselves, who savaged their boss in a recent magazine report.”
The Dana Bash-moderated event was up 4.5% from the network’s town hall with Nikki Haley. (NBC photo)
The CNN Chief Messed Up In Many Ways. Only One Was Fatal
It’s possible – likely, even – that Chris Licht would have survived all of this if it weren’t for the one thing that really mattered: the numbers.
CNN’s ad revenue fell nearly 40% year over year during Chris Licht’s tenure as CEO of the cable news network, which came to an abrupt end Wednesday. For the first four months of 2022 — immediately before Licht’s appointment as CEO became effective — advertisers spent $513 million on CNN’s TV and digital outlets. From January through April 2023, advertisers spent $313 million, marking a 39% year-over-year decrease in ad revenue, according to data collected by MediaRadar.
The network will be managed on an interim basis by a group of executives.
Can CNN Be Saved?
In the ousted Chris Licht, CNN had a leader who was not introspective enough to understand why he was failing. He leaves behind an organization in worse shape than when he arrived.
The change was announced at CNN’s editorial meeting Wednesday morning and came just two days after Licht said he would “fight like hell” to earn the trust of those around him. David Zaslav, CEO of CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, appointed a four-person interim leadership team, and said at the editorial meeting that he would conduct a thorough search for Licht’s replacement.
Chris Licht, whose brief run as CNN’s chairman was marked by chaos, controversy and layoffs, was ousted at the network Tuesday. “For a number of reasons things didn’t work out, and that’s unfortunate,” said David Zaslav, CEO of CNN’s Parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, of the move.
CEO Chris Licht apologized to CNN staffers during the network’s 9 a.m. editorial call on Monday after the Atlantic ran a devastating profile of the chief executive on Friday. “I know these past few days have been very hard for this group. I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role in it overshadowed the incredible week of reporting that we just had, and distracted from the work of every single journalist in this org. And for that, I am sorry,” Licht said, according to a Twitter thread by the network’s former chief media correspondent Brian Stelter.
It’s been more than a year since he was forced from the top job at the network. Since then, he has made no secret of his frustrations with his exit — or his low regard for the man who replaced him, Chris Licht.
CEO Chris Licht felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism. How did it all go wrong?
