Headed for cn-end?

Failing network mulls shift to streaming: CEO

CNN’s new boss said the network faces an “existential crisis” because of cord cutting — and he eventually plans to pivot from cable TV toward a subscriptionbased streaming model similar to YouTube and TikTok.

“There are plenty of things we have to fix at CNN,” Mark Thompson, the former New York Times and BBC executive who was hired by Warner Bros. Discovery to dig CNN out of its third-place slump in the cable news race, told Financial Times.

He also hinted at more cost-cutting measures, saying there are “likely to be significant opportunities for de-duplication of parallel organizations and structures and activities.”

“I think we can and should be looking for ways of doing what we do both better, but also doing it less expensively,” he said.

The ex-BBC director general has a tall task — turning around a network that has struggled to keep up in the ratings with Fox News and MSNBC.

Thompson said he was looking at distributing

CNN content through smartphones and other devices in a shift to mostly digital — mimicking his focus as head of The New York Times Company.

“The idea that there might be digital subscription is a serious possibility,” Thompson told FT.

While no final decision has been made, “I think it’s quite likely that we’ll end up there,” he said.

Thompson did not specify what form the digital-subscription service would take, but he ruled out repeating CNN’s illfated CNN+ — the streaming news venture that lasted less than a month.

CNN+, the brainchild of former CNN boss Jeff Zucker, was axed to cut costs weeks after the news channel was inherited by the newly merged entity Warner Bros. Discovery.

Warner Bros. Discovery has $44 billion in debt it needs to reduce — leading to speculation it may look to sell CNN.

Thompson said he hopes the network gets more competitive. “But the rate at which people have been and probably will continue to cut the cord and not look at cable TV at all is a far, far greater strategic threat than the finer points of competition between individual cable channels.”

CNN didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘ There are plenty of things we have to fix ’ at CNN.

— Mark Thompson