CNN CEO Chris Licht in New York on May 17, 2023 (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/Archives/Dimitrios Kambouris)
CNN CEO Chris Licht will leave the management of the American news channel, the group announced on Wednesday, after several weeks of turmoil within the editorial staff, which is facing an identity crisis and a fall in its audiences.
This departure comes at a crucial time for CNN, as the 2024 US presidential campaign has started, with elections traditionally providing a major boost to audiences and news channel revenues.
Officials at Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, have yet to name a successor, according to a statement.
Chris Licht had taken the reins of the oldest continuous news channel in the United States in May 2022, after the sudden departure of the emblematic boss Jeff Zucker, who had not told his leaders of his romantic relationship with a CNN executive.
Since then, the 50-year-old has tried to revive the old lady of continuous news, whose audiences are suffering from competition with its conservative rival Fox News, but also with MSNBC, with a more left-wing editorial line.
He has made several changes to the program schedule, without success so far, and attempted a few media stunts, first of all the live broadcast in public with Donald Trump as a guest, in mid-May.
Jeff Zucker, the former CEO of CNN, on April 5, 2019 in New York (AFP/Archives/Angela Weiss)
This program was poorly received by part of the public but also within the editorial staff, who saw in it a platform offered without reservation to the former president, in front of an audience of Republican sympathizers for the most part committed to his cause.
Moreover, the show’s effect on audiences was short-lived, as a few days later, CNN slipped behind the small, conservative channel Newsmax in the day’s rankings.
Chris Licht’s position was further weakened by the publication last week of a very long article in The Atlantic magazine, which underlined the clear break between the leader and his teams.
– “Head in the center” –
“The task was not easy, especially at a time of great upheaval and transformation and Chris put his heart into it,” CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a note. internal obtained by AFP. “Unfortunately things didn’t go as we had hoped and in the end I take responsibility for that,” he added.
The arrival of Chris Licht at CNN corresponded to a change of era within the channel, now part of the new unit Warner Bros Discovery, merger of the Discovery television group with its competitor Warner Bros, which also includes the HBO channel and the recently rebranded HBO Max streaming platform.
The CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, parent company of CNN in Cannes, May 23, 2023 (AFP/Archives/Patricia DE MELO MOREIRA)
Discovery boss David Zaslav, who became the merged group’s boss, imposed cost cuts and more restraint on content spending, a break for Warner Bros.
“It is clear that he (Chris Licht) was not well regarded by the editorial staff, but the question is whether it was for his management or because he was trying to push her in a direction in which she did not didn’t want to go,” said DePauw University professor Jeffrey McCall.
“Chris Licht tried to bring CNN back to the field of direct journalism”, in a less subjective tone, continues the academic, for whom the channel “had become ideologically oriented”, which “had limited their audience to the left”, field already occupied by MSNBC.
“Licht and his bosses are wrong to think that people want information that is right in the center” on the editorial level, estimated, she, the editorialist Cynthia Tucker, whose tickets are taken up in several newspapers. “If that were the case, (the public broadcaster) PBS”, with a very moderate tone, “would be at the top of the ratings.”
News of Chris Licht’s departure was welcomed by Wall Street. The Warner Bros Discovery action took 4.50% around 4:00 p.m. GMT on the New York Stock Exchange.
© 2023 AFP
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