CNN ousts CEO Chris Licht
NEW YORK (AP) — CNN ousted chief executive Chris Licht after a tumultuous year leading the struggling news network that culminated in a damning magazine profile and the realization that he’d lost the confidence of the network’s journalists.
The change was announced at CNN’s editorial meeting Wednesday morning and came just two days after Licht said he would “fight like hell” to earn the trust of those around him.
David Zaslav, CEO of CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, accepted some of the blame for the network’s struggles as he appointed a four-person interim leadership team. He promised a thorough search for replacing Licht, whom he informed of the leadership change on Wednesday morning.
“This really caps a tumultuous year for CNN that has seen shrinking profits, programming mistakes and really low employee morale,” CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy said on his own network Wednesday.
Licht had a mandate to try and make CNN more palatable to both sides of the country’s political divide; Republicans had become increasingly suspicious of the network following repeated attacks by former President Donald Trump.
But some at the network saw Licht’s mandate for change as a repudiation of their past work. A live town hall interview with Trump last month drew widespread criticism, with the former president overwhelming moderator Kaitlan Collins with several misstatements as a pro-Trump live audience cheered him on.
Earlier in the year, Licht revamped the network’s morning show, but that proved unsuccessful and led to the firing of longtime personality Don Lemon. Efforts to build a new primetime lineup moved slowly, with Collins only recently appointed to fill a 9 p.m. hour without a permanent host since Chris Cuomo was fired in December 2021.
Licht oversaw layoffs last year following Zaslav’s decision to shutter the CNN+ streaming service only weeks after it had started.
Licht, who had produced MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” CBS’ morning news show and Stephen Colbert’s late-night show, was appointed by Zaslav just over a year ago to replace an internally popular predecessor, Jeff Zucker. Zucker was fired for not revealing a consensual relationship with a fellow CNN executive.
A lengthy profile of Licht in Atlantic magazine that came out on Friday, titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” proved embarrassing and likely sealed his fate. Author Tim Alberta discussed how Licht’s effort to reach viewers turned off by CNN’s hostility to Trump had failed and damaged his standing with CNN journalists.
“Licht’s theory of CNN — what had gone wrong, how to fix it, and why doing so could lift the entire industry — made a lot of sense,” Alberta wrote. “The execution of that theory? Another story. Every move he made, big programming decisions and small tactical maneuvers alike, seemed to backfire.”