CNN's Chairman and CEO, Chris Licht, is leaving the network.
Licht took over the network a little over a year ago.
David Zaslav, the chairman of CNN's parent company, Warner Bros.
Discovery, he just made the announcement at the network editorial meeting.
For now, a leadership team will take Lick's place.
>> Chris Lick's time as the CEO of CNN was a short one,
as the cable network announced this morning that he's stepping down.
Now, the decision was made following backlash from hosts and
staffers at the network.
The firing of Don Lemon and the lengthy profile in The Atlantic shedding light on
some of Lick's terrible decisions, all of that kind of played a role here.
Now, those decisions included hosting a town hall
with Donald Trump as an olive branch to Republican voters.
Which ended up being perceived as anything but by the right because it was moderated
by Caitlin Collins, who didn't have a really great history with Donald Trump.
Now, Warner Bros.
Discovery CEO, David Zaslav, confirmed the news during the network's morning call,
saying, quote, I met with Chris and he will be leaving CNN.
Zaslav apparently took responsibility for Licht's failure,
telling the 800 staffers who joined that morning call that for
a number of reasons, it didn't work out, and that's on me.
Now, Zaslav also noted that he feels no rush to find a new CEO.
And for now, Licht will be succeeded by a team of three people who are already
executives at the network.
And that includes Amy and Telus,
who is the executive vice president for talent and content over at CNN.
We also have Virginia Mosely, the executive vice president of editorial at
CNN US, and Eric Shirling, executive vice president of US programming.
I know nothing about any one of them, but they've been at CNN,
and it doesn't seem like much is likely to change with
this new move of having a three person leadership team take charge.
But nonetheless, back to Licht, who we covered earlier this week after
The Atlantic published a stunning profile on him.
After the piece was published, Licht told CNN staffers on Monday of this week that
he vowed to earn their trust back, but apparently it was too late.
CNN's own media reporter, Oliver Darcy, had reported that many people
within the organization shared the consensus that Licht had lost the room.
Even top talent, including Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper and Erin Burnett,
reportedly expressed concerns about Licht's leadership,
according to The Wall Street Journal.
But that's not surprising considering the way Licht would basically treat people
within the network.
For instance,
that Atlantic piece profiling him detailed the way he would talk about Don Lemon.
In fact, during a rehearsal for
the new morning show that Don Lemon was supposed to host with Poppy Harlow and
Caitlin Collins, Licht freaked out over what Lemon was wearing.
And remember, this was during a rehearsal, he wasn't even on air.
Let me read from the piece, Lemon had changed into a white jacket,
the collar made of fur with a turtleneck underneath, what the f is he wearing?
Licked, blurted out.
A little while later, the younger producer spoke into Lemon's earpiece, Don,
we're not too crazy about the jacket in here, Lemon looked miffed.
Licht fought back a smirk, saying, why are you guys so mean to Don?
Yeah, look, we have some inside sources that indicate that he did not have fur on
the collar of that jacket, but nonetheless,
neither here nor there [LAUGH].
But weird cattiness aside, Licht seemed to want to balance out the network's
coverage, which had become ideologically slanted against Trump.
He felt that CNN had been alienating half the country with its anti-Trump coverage.
But he never had a strategy or a well-thought-out-vision for
how reporters would accurately cover stories about wrongdoing by
the right without alienating their base.
Even more concerning and this is a larger issue with most corporate and legacy media
is that there is never any discussion shifting away from the culture wars for
just a few minutes to focus on corporate greed or economic inequalities in America.
CNN became synonymous with financially comfortable resistance liberals who
were expectedly outraged over the cable news
channel pivoting toward friendlier Trump coverage.
Not only did Licht fail in attracting a Republican audience, he turned off
their moderate liberal audience too, and it was reflected in the ratings.
During Licht's leadership, the network saw poor ratings and lower profits.
Last year the network brought in $750 million in profits,
which was down from 1.25 billion in 2021, according to The New York Times.
Now sit back and imagine if the news decided to cover stories that just
naturally organically speak to the majority of Americans.
While on the surface, American voters appear to be super divided, and
they are divided when it comes to cultural issues,
those divisions tend to center on the culture war.
But when it comes to actual policy preferences that impact people's
pocketbooks, there's a lot of similarities, okay?
Whether it's money in politics, corporate greed, low taxes for
the rich, the majority of Americans agree and they want to do something about it.
I would venture to say they would want to see some coverage on those issues.
But those are the very issues that CNN and
the rest of the corporate media stay away from, for obvious reasons.
If the thinking over at CNN is as shallow as should we be nice to Trump or
not, the network's doomed.
In order to draw a broad audience,
you have to address issues that have broad appeal.
CNN should try that out, but I doubt that they will.