Speaker 1: emember from when I was a kid, it was the assumption from Licht that CNN lost
viewers because it had become too liberal and anti-Trump. And the solution, I guess, that
Chris Licht thought was appropriate was let's show both sides, let's court Republicans. Let's bring
on more Republican strategists and former Trump staffers and others and do this Trump town hall,
which was I mean, arguably, there was no way that was going to go well. And Licht did that.
Ignoring that CNN's core audience wasn't aching for right wing Nutter. It just that there was not
actually a demand for right wing nutter from the audience. Licht also underestimated the
competition from Fox and MSNBC in the sense of the more ideologically based cable news networks. Fox
News carving out a right wing editorial position. MSNBC carving out a center left sort of Democratic
Party establishment position. And so the idea that CNN is just going to bring in some Trump
people and then all of a sudden we're going to have an ideological platform that will attract
viewers. It simply wasn't happening. And this led to a whole bunch of different fiascoes that
damaged CNN's credibility and its integrity. Yes, the Trump town hall widely criticized
as a softball platform for Trump, even though in her defense, anchor Caitlin Collins did do
some of what was possible to do. But it's such a firehose of misinformation from Trump,
and the environment was not right. With a crowd full of Trump sycophants titillated in
the audience, it just didn't go well. And in one sense, it was a ratings flop. In another sense,
it was journalistically problematic. And immediately people started calling for its
resignation. So I do think this was necessary and it was obvious only to stop the bleeding. There
is no guarantee it's not enough. CNN still has to figure out how do we deal with the
challenges and the uncertainties. The post-Trump era, although it might again become a Trump era.
What's the vision that CNN might articulate? I don't know what the answer is. If I were CNN
and I know nothing about cable news programing or any of it, I would invest in quality journalism,
diverse voices. And I don't mean diversity in the sense of make sure you've got an Asian woman and
a black guy. I'm not talking about that type of diversity. I mean, diversity in terms of
types of journalism and innovative formats. One of the best things CNN ever did, quite frankly,
and this is very much a departure from what CNN used to be known for, was bringing Anthony
Bourdain's program to CNN and Anthony Bourdain's life tragically ending, of course. But figure out
what's the unique value proposition just being like. Well, we've become known as an anti-Trump
voice. Let's bring on some right wingers. It's just it's vapid. It's not going to work.
No desire to see CNN fail. And in fact, although I'm critical of the entire apparatus of for
profit, 24 hour cable news, for all the reasons many of you know, when you have to fill 24 hours,
you do low effort stuff and then the quality degrades. I've talked about all of these things,
but I don't want there to only be two major cable news networks. I think more
is better as a general rule. So shambles at CNN. Let's now talk about Mike Pence,