Questions loom at CNN after difficult year

CNN is facing a turning point in 2023, after a bruising year that brought significant change to the network’s corporate structure, editorial leadership and programming.

People inside and around the network for much of 2022 have described a feeling of unease, which was punctuated by a round of layoffs rolled out in December by new president Chris Licht.

Licht is the new man in charge at the cable news giant, tasked with increasing the network’s dipping profitability amid a bleak economic outlook for all major news organizations.

Licht took over in May, replacing Jeff Zucker following the company’s sale to media conglomerate Discovery. One of Licht’s first tasks was shuttering its heavily promoted paid subscription streaming service, CNN+, less than a month after it launched.

The failure of CNN+ underlined the corporate divisions that have made Licht’s job so difficult. CNN’s previous management was sold on the new streaming service, but its new leaders were against it even as they negotiated to buy the larger TimeWarner from AT&T.

The CNN+ move, which reportedly caused hundreds of employees to lose their jobs, was unsettling to many inside the network and prompted Licht to say at the time he did not anticipate further cuts at the outlet.

But it was an inauspicious start that is haunting the network and Licht heading into 2023.

“I still don’t think there’s any confidence in him, that he can articulate a vision, or that he can take us where he says he wants to go,” one source at the network told The Hill this week. “And no matter how hard he tries, he’s not going to disabuse anyone of the notion of more layoffs coming in 2023.”

Licht has acknowledged the underlying anxiety at the network, telling the journalist Kara Swisher in a November interview such apprehension is “completely understandable,” given what has transpired since he took over.

“Look, that’s the beauty of working with journalists,” Licht said. “They want to know what’s the plan? This is a group of people that will follow me to the end of the earth if they believe I know what the hell I’m doing and that there’s a plan.”

CNN did not comment for this story.

Under Zucker, CNN enjoyed a boon in ratings, but had developed a reputation as being aggressively anti-Trump in its programming and overly combative in its coverage of the former president. Licht has signaled an interest in shifting that perception.

“At a time where extremes are dominating cable news,” Licht told advertisers during CNN’s UpFront session just days after taking over, “we will seek to go a different way, reflecting the real lives of our viewers and elevating the way America and the world views this medium.”

During his first months on the job, Licht has made a series of editorial moves that raised eyebrows inside and outside the network, particularly with progressives who saw CNN as offering too much of an olive branch to GOP or conservative viewers.

Licht has pushed back forcefully on characterizations that he is dragging CNN to the political center.

“The uninformed vitriol, especially from the left, has been stunning,” Licht told The New York Times in comments published this month. “Which proves my point: so much of what passes for news is name-calling, half-truths and desperation.”

John Malone, the cable news magnate who sits on the board of CNN’s new parent company Discovery, before the sale and Licht’s hiring said he “would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists.”

Licht has repeatedly said he is on the same page as WarnerBros. Discovery Chair David Zazlav and CNN’s other corporate leaders.

In the end, his success may come down to ratings and revenue. Cable networks are generally seeing ratings dip, though declines at CNN have been the sharpest. In total day viewers this year, Fox News averaged 1.4 million compared to 733,000 who watched MSNBC and less than half a million at CNN, according to Nielsen Media Research figures.

“The underlying issues that will impact Licht’s tenure will be economic. And they will be driven by a board that wants to see its stock price rise,” said Margot Susca, an assistant professor of journalism at American University with expertise in the economics of news companies. “This company is still 50 billion dollars in debt and doesn’t have the Trump bump. … It’s lost Trump driving audiences. I don’t think his [Licht] decisions should be looked at as political decisions; his decisions should be looked at through the lens of economics.”

In September, Licht canceled CNN’s flagship morning show “New Day,” another Zucker brainchild, and tapped Don Lemon, one of the network’s most recognizable prime-time hosts, to anchor a revamped morning news program along with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlin Collins. The program has struggled in the ratings during its first two months.

In prime time, CNN remains without a permanent host in the advertiser-rich 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. weekday time slots, where the race for audience share is fierce and partisan opinion programming on competitor networks reigns supreme.

“When I hear about what’s happening at CNN today, I think that someone somewhere is trying to return to those old and earliest days of the network,” said Lisa Napoli, an author on media issues who wrote a recent book about Ted Turner and CNN’s origins. “Which is a valiant pursuit, especially to those of us who remember those days before glitz and name-brand anchors and opinion and screech domineered the landscape.”

Some of CNN’s challenges aren’t specific to CNN.

News fatigue is real, particularly after the Trump presidency and coronavirus pandemic, said Frank Sesno, former director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, who previously spent years as a reporter at CNN.

“And then there’s the confusion about ‘what is cable news anymore.’ Is it news? Is it talk radio with a camera? Is it debate and discussion,” Sesno said. “And coming out of the Zucker era and into the Licht era, CNN has very publicly said they are trying to calibrate more toward the news and less toward opinion. So there’s a swirl of change, activity and confusion and that’s what they’ve got to navigate.”

Hanging over CNN’s political coverage in 2023 will be how much airtime to give to Trump, whose 2016 presidential run benefitted from near-constant cable news coverage.

“We have fact checkers ready to go. We will put things in perspective. We will not let everything he does consume the news cycle,” Licht said during the November interview with Swisher.

Trump’s specific attacks on CNN have had lasting impacts on the network Licht inherited, experts say.

“This is a company that is trying to still shed the moniker of ‘fake news media’ and for many parts of the country that moniker stuck and trust in the network was impacted,” Susca said. “So I think Licht as a choice is really fascinating. There are few other people who know how to engage audiences that advertisers find attractive. Whether that means the audience will be informed remains a big question.”

While Licht has acknowledged finding a path to increased profitability and reputational rehabilitation with more Americans for CNN won’t be easy, he remains committed to his vision for the network headed into his first full year as the chief executive of one of the largest news brands in the world.

“I want CNN to be essential to society,” he told the Times. “If you’re essential then the revenue will follow.”

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