Chris Licht
Dear Commons Community,
CNN CEO Chris Licht will leave his post after a little more than a year at the helm after losing the support of staff and enacting a series of chaotic editorial changes under the direction of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. As reported by Variety.
David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, told staffers yesterday of the decision during CNN’s regular editorial call, according to three people familiar with the matter. These people said Zaslav and his team informed Licht as early as Tuesday that he could no longer stay in the role, which he assumed in May of last year. Licht was the subject of a disastrous profile in The Atlantic last week that depicted him as being aloof from staff, thin skinned in regards to press coverage, and annoyed by comparisons to his predecessor, Jeff Zucker.
In his place, a team of three executives will run CNN’s editorial operations for an interim period: Amy Entelis, a longtime CNN executive who worked with Zucker and helps manage talent relations; Virginia Moseley, recently named to oversee editorial operations; and Eric Sherling, recently appointed head of U.S. programming. David Leavy, a longtime Zaslav lieutenant who was named chief operating officer at CNN last week, will oversee business activities. Kris Coratti Kelly, who was named to oversee CNN’s communications in July, is leaving, according to two people familiar with the matter.
How long the trio is in place remains uncertain. Zaslav told staffers he was in no rush to name a new chief executive at CNN. Entelis is seen as an internal frontrunner to take on the top news job, according to one person familiar with the network, but may not mesh with Zaslav, because she is likely to push back harder on his directions if she does not think they are the best for CNN’s business.
“I have great respect for Chris, personally and professionally,” Zaslav said in a statement. “The job of leading CNN was never going to be easy, especially at a time of huge disruption and transformation, and he has poured his heart and soul into it. While we know we have work to do as we look to identify a new leader, we have absolute confidence in the team we have in place and will continue to fight for CNN and its world class journalism.”
Licht presided over a disorderly era at CNN, one that shifted anchors around in a bid to follow a new mission installed by the parent company: tamp down on the crusading tone the network took on during its coverage of the Trump administration under Zucker. But Warner Bros. Discovery did so in combative fashion, demanding more from staff even as it squeezed costs, scuttled new operations like the streaming hub CNN+ and gutted the ranks of the journalists working at the operation. Licht never meshed well with his staff, who had close ties to Zucker, and ran into trouble after holding a live town hall with former President Trump and moving provocative primetime anchor Don Lemon to a morning program where he clashed with his co-anchors. Lemon was ousted in April.
The results? Viewership has plummeted and projections for CNN’s business performance in 2023 are not robust. CNN is estimated to see 2023 ad revenue fall about 5%, to $562.6 million, according to Kagan, a market-research unit of S&P Global Intelligence, largely to declines in ratings. And a significant number of talented CNN anchors and producers have made their way to rivals like MSNBC, CBS News and ABC News.
Warner Bros. Discovery has only so much time to find a working plan for CNN. The 2024 presidential election looms, an event which gives rise to a news cycle that typically draws bigger audiences, generates higher ratings, and wins new sponsorships from advertisers. Its arrival comes as cable networks face an era of diminishing returns, when viewers are more prone to zap over to their favorite streaming hub and create their own primetime schedule. What’s more, advertisers have grown increasingly nervous about supporting news programming in a time when a fracturing audience has grown increasingly polarized and more prone to take sponsors to task on social media
Inside CNN, staffers are tired of the drama that came during Licht’s tenure, according to one person familiar with the network, but some have empathy for the executive. These staffers believe Licht was relentlessly micromanaged by Zaslav, and lay many of CNN’s problems — poor ratings, staffing decisions and programming gaffes — at his feet and those of Warner Bros. Discovery. The company has treated its makeover of CNN as if it were trying to revamp one of its unscripted holdings, like DIY or Travel Channel, this person says, rather than understanding how journalism is made and valued.
A lengthy profile of Licht in Atlantic magazine that came out last week, titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” proved embarrassing and likely sealed his fate. Author Tim Alberta discussed how Licht’s effort to reach viewers turned off by CNN’s hostility to Trump had failed and damaged his standing with CNN journalists.
“Licht’s theory of CNN — what had gone wrong, how to fix it, and why doing so could lift the entire industry — made a lot of sense,” Alberta wrote. “The execution of that theory? Another story. Every move he made, big programming decisions and small tactical maneuvers alike, seemed to backfire.”
In the piece, Licht talked about how some of CNN’s COVID coverage had been high-strung and lost touch with the country, a criticism that angered many in the newsroom.
Ultimately, Alberta could not get Zaslav to agree to an on-the-record assessment of Licht’s tenure, an ominous sign.
Some of CNN’s chief anchors — Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper and Erin Burnett — had privately expressed their reservations about Licht’s leadership, according to a Wall Street Journal article that was posted Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, viewers were disappearing, a decline exacerbated by the quickening trend of consumers cutting the cord from traditional cable. CNN’s prime-time viewership of 494,000 in May was down 16% from April and was less than half of its closest news rival, MSNBC. It was down 25% from the average of 660,000 in May 2022.
CNN’s profits have also been sinking. The network generated $892 million in profit in 2022, down from $1.08 billion in 2020, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
We wish Licht well in his next venture!
Tony
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