CNN Names Third New CEO in 18 Months as Ratings Continue to Decline

CNN named former BBC and New York Times chief executive Mark Thompson as its next CEO. Thompson will be the third person to serve as CEO of CNN in less than two years.

Summary

CNN named former BBC and New York Times chief executive Mark Thompson as its next CEO. Thompson will be the third person to serve as CEO of CNN in less than two years.

• Although CNN’s left turn in the latter half of the 2010s temporarily juiced viewership numbers, CNN’s ratings have utterly collapsed since the end of Donald Trump’s presidency. The network averaged just 534,000 primetime viewers in July 2023, about one-third as many as tuned in to rival Fox (1.57 million viewers) and barely half of MSNBC’s average (1.12 million).
• Thompson was president and CEO of the New York Times from 2012 to 2020 and presided over the Times’ transition from a paper-based newspaper dependent on advertising to a primarily digital news operation built on paid subscribers.
• Thompson previously worked as the director general of the BBC from 2004 to 2012. Thompson will take over on Oct. 9 from the “quad” of COO David Leavy and executive vice presidents Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley, and Eric Sherling that has run the network since June.
• Sir Mark Thompson, a UK native, was knighted by King Charles III in June as part of the monarch’s “birthday honours.” “I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and get down to work with my new colleagues to build a successful future for CNN,” Thompson told the BBC.
• Thompson’s experience as a high-level media executive contrasts with his immediate predecessor Chris Licht, who had worked as a TV producer for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “Morning Joe” before his tumultuous 13-month tenure as CEO.
• Licht resigned in June, barely a year after Warner Brothers Discovery chief David Zaslav appointed him CEO in May 2022 to revive the ailing cable network. Licht presided over a year of bottom-basement ratings and struggled to reset the network’s public perception after years as the nexus of left-wing “resistance” reporting on the Trump administration.
• During Licht’s tenure, he championed the idea of a CNN town hall with Donald Trump, which was widely perceived as a victory for the former president and a black eye for the network. Licht also canned some of the network’s most vocal left-wing activists including Brian Stelter.
• The coup de grâce that finally doomed Licht was his decision to sit down for a wide-ranging 16,000-word profile in the Atlantic that included bizarre moments like Licht’s decision to allow reporter Tim Alberta to interview him on-the-record while he worked out at the gym and the profile’s clear (and prophetic) implication that Zaslav was getting ready to fire his handpicked CEO – which he did days after the article was published.
• Licht’s appointment in May 2022 came shortly after Zaslav cancelled CNN’s $300 million streaming service CNN+, a project championed by then-CEO Jeff Zucker before he resigned in February 2022 for having an inappropriate workplace relationship with a subordinate.
• Zucker’s workplace misconduct was revealed during Chris Cuomo’s lawsuit against the network over his December 2021 firing. Cuomo was fired for his own workplace misconduct scandal and for inappropriately advising his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, during the sexual harassment scandal that ended his governorship.
• In August, the network’s four-person interim leadership shook up the broadcast schedule. CNN correspondents Abby Phillip and Laura Coates were given weeknight news shows in the latest revision of the network’s primetime lineup, which has seen frequent changes since Cuomo’s ouster.

• The New York Times credited Thompson for “revitalized the company financially by greatly expanding its digital subscription business.” At the end of his tenure at the Times, it could boast having nearly 10 million subscribers, with more than 9 million of them digital-only.
• CNN’s Oliver Darcy argued his new boss “faces a crucial test on several fronts.” Darcy called the appointment a risk for both Thompson and Zaslav and described the challenges Thompson would face running “a 4,000-employee strong global company that has suffered several seismic blows in the last 20 months.”
• Politico reported CNN is highlighting Thompson’s four decades of experience and his tenure at the New York Times to other outlets. “Where others see disruption, I see opportunity. I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and get down to work with my new colleagues to build a successful future for CNN,” Thompson said in a statement provided by the network.

• The Wall Street Journal observed, “For parent Warner Bros. Discovery, developing a new business model for CNN is critical. Its primary sources of revenue—advertising and subscription fees—are in peril. Consumers are cutting the cord to traditional pay-TV distributors, which means lower revenue from subscribers.”
• The New York Post covered a new plan from CNN’s parent company to launch “CNN Max,” a streaming-only version of CNN, on the Max streaming platform. CNN Max, which bears surface similarities to the doomed CNN+ project, is designed to boost the network’s historically low ratings.
• A CNN insider told Fox News Digital that some network employees “expressed optimism” about Thompson while other employees “just shrug” as he’ll be operating in the same management structure that helped doom Chris Licht.

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© Dominic Moore, 2023