We have news now to report involving our own network.
News to us here at CNN and you at home.
CNN's Chairman and CEO Chris Licht is leaving the network.
>> Chris Licht is out just a few weeks after the major brouhaha in
the media over the Donald Trump Town Hall.
Now was it that that caused this?
We can't say for sure.
All I can say is yeah, probably.
I can say, don't know.
I honestly don't know.
I don't have any insider stories inside of CNN, but I don't know,
it seems pretty suspect.
Now it's not to say that there weren't already issues.
You could say that it's less that one caused the other than that both were
caused by the fact that there were some systemic problems at CNN, and
that specifically the Donald Trump Town Hall trying to get Republicans to love CNN
when they've been told for years and years that it's the deep state and
it's run by lizard people, which seems like a bad strategy.
By cowtowing to Donald Trump is a bad strategy cuz you're not gonna get
the Republicans and you're just gonna a bunch of the libs that like your content,
your anti-Trump content.
That seems like a bad call.
You combine that with the fact that he apparently,
in some of these decisions had really shaken morale at CNN,
there was a bit of an insurrection going on inside of there.
It didn't seem good for him and now he is going to be transitioning out.
Jayar, what do you think?
>> It seems pretty quick.
Everyone was getting their on him, then he had to go home and lick his wounds.
But still, [LAUGH] if you wanna be serious about the whole thing,
which I promise I will be now, I actually didn't realize how quick this really was.
I was like, has it been just about a year this has gone down?
In this much of a quick turnaround, I think it illustrate.
When you're looking to do something now different, or try something different,
I think he really thought it would work.
I'm not sure how much his political leanings are with this stuff but
he really dove into the idea that, let's just go for all this bottom feeder stuff.
We'll invite in all the craziness because more eyes, more viewership, more money.
But you're working with a network that people, I think,
had an idea that it's still this middle ground network.
It still had the Fox is the right, MSNBC is the left and CNN is in the middle.
They still held that for, I think, a large majority of Americans.
All this political walks that talk about it, including us, we know the nuances and
differences because we sit here and we're crazy.
But CNN then it was a pretty obvious shift to try and be something different and
it felt a little artificial.
So even folks that maybe they thought they would be attracting, and they were like,
look what he's trying to get us coming cuz we're these right wingers, and
the lefties and libs and mid ground folks were thinking, this feels artificial.
Why is he trying to add something that honestly we don't really care about?
We see and hear that stuff in other networks.
It just kind of annoyed everyone to a degree and
probably worse off much of the staff.
That's when the stuff was turning around on him.
>> Yeah, we talked about the big Atlantic profile about him.
There were seemingly a lot of issues, not just about the Town Hall, but
about some of the choices that were made for who was going to be on panels,
the content of Chirons, a lot of stuff.
There was such specific criticisms that they were saying that he had apparently
over the last, I don't know, a year or whatever, he lost a lot of weight and
apparently had been using, there was that new super rich person weight loss drug or
whatever that famous people use.
But then he kept claiming that it was just a result of exercise.
So that was angering people, that he was pretending that it was super easy when he
was using the super expensive drug.
I don't know, none of that matters.
But it's representative of this is a person that a lot of people there have
a problem with.
And you might be able to get away with being that person if your strategy works,
if it brings in viewers.
But outside of a raise for the actual town hall, it doesn't seem like it's doing
that, and so that becomes a dangerous situation for you.
We do not know who is going to be the long term replacement for Chris Licht.
As of right now, the new interim CEO is going to be Amy Entelis,
the current executive vice president for talent and content development that,
according to write ups I've seen today, say she has a really good reputation,
has backed a lot of their movies and documentary series that have done well.
I don't know, that could just be PR as they launch her into the position.
Maybe she'll be much better, maybe.
It's always possible.
I mean, David Zaslav chose the last guy choosing this person, so
there's still some of that top down control.
I wouldn't expect that we're gonna see a massive shift in CNN strategy, but
maybe at the very least, attempts to court MAGA voters,
which are probably a waste of time.
In the first place, they might be turning from that.
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