When Chris Licht told his then-boss Stephen Colbert in February 2022 that his pal David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, had offered him the top job at CNN, Colbert’s advice was categoric: “Definitely don’t go do that.”
Licht should have taken Colbert’s advice; with friends like Zaslav, who needs enemies?
Licht is out after barely a year at the network. In explaining the termination, Zaslav uttered the usual pap, “I have great respect for Chris, personally and professionally.” Zaslav declared, “The job of leading CNN was never going to be easy, especially at a time of huge disruption and transformation, and he has poured his heart and soul into it.”
“Heart and soul” just wasn’t enough, apparently.
When Licht was appointed CNN sachem, the network’s behemoth parent AT&T had just spun off Warner Media, which owned CNN, into a new entity where Zaslav was the big enchilada. Zaslav, a longtime Licht friend, was known to be a bluff guy from Brooklyn who snaps the whip and demands instant results.
CNN had prided itself on being the “most trusted name in news”; it became the most dysfunctional. It was all about programming.
Zaslav had recently announced that he was appointing another friend, David Leavy, chief corporate affairs officer at Warner Bros. Discovery, to become chief operating officer of CNN. Leavy was to skim off a number of Licht’s direct reports. The party line is that Leavy’s appointment would give Licht more time to focus on editorial strategy and programming while Leavy would deal with the financial side.
Nice try! Leavy came in to advise Zaslav on Licht’s future with the network.
Top anchors such as Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper reportedly told Leavy they questioned Licht’s leadership, and what they told Leavy went straight to Zaslav.
With declining ratings and profits, CNN was a can of worms; its predicament that of a ship listing after hitting an iceberg. Zaslav’s recipe to right the ship was to maneuver the network’s ideology from port to starboard — that is, give CNN more of a MAGA flavoring in the style of Fox, OANN or Newsmax.
Bad idea. As then-President Kennedy warned in his inaugural address: “In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
No wonder Jay Sures, the top Hollywood agent who had long represented many of CNN’s high-profile anchors, gave Licht as a congratulatory present a framed bulletproof vest with Licht’s name inscribed at the bottom.
Licht boarded the listing ship in May 2022. His predecessor, Jeff Zucker, had been forced out after he revealed an undisclosed romantic relationship with a colleague.
Hosts and analysts were fired, and it was more than coincidence that all projected a point of view critical of former President Trump and his MAGA base — views diametrically opposed to the ideologically neutral vision of CNN that Zaslav had for Licht.
Zaslav’s concept of journalism discouraged journalists from opinion. If it is raining outside, reasoned Zaslav, we just say it’s raining — not whether we like or dislike rain — a strategy certain to go from the provocative to the dreary.
Trying to cut the wheat from the chaff, Licht was swift to chop lines of business, as well as people. CNN’s streaming vehicle CNN+ was a big loser. So he fired around 400 people working for the business unit. CNN’s revenues and profits plunged to roughly $750 million this year, down from $1.25 billion the previous year, in part because of the costs referable to CNN+.
Despite CNN’s precipitous decline in ratings since Licht took over, he appeared to have Zaslav’s full support. Then, the bad stuff hit the proverbial fan. Licht gave an open-kimono interview to The Atlantic in which he rubbished the network and the leadership of his predecessor Zucker, who was revered in the newsroom.
The principal bone of contention is that Licht had decided to hold a “own hall featuring Trump in New Hampshire. The interview was live when it could have been pre-taped, as were recent Fox News interviews and a Sean Hannity town hall with the former president. The interviewer was star anchor and former White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, and the audience was stacked with Trump supporters. The viewership was an estimated 3.3 million.
Trump easily overpowered Collins, whom he called a “nasty person.” He drenched the audience, according to The Washington Post, with a “fire hose” of more than 20 false or misleading claims in an hour, some old and some new.
If Licht’s strategy was to boost CNN’s ratings, the effort failed. In a moment of temporary insanity, Licht seemed to have decided that the network did not need moderate or liberal viewers, and he could win over Fox News’s rightwing base. It didn’t work: Viewership dropped more than 25 percent that night and has never recovered.
In his book about Jack Welch and General Electric, “Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon,” investigative journalist Bill Cohan makes the salient but fairly obvious point that the person who is the chief executive officer of a large business organization really matters.
So let it be with CNN. It’s what the British call a cock-up. Licht never should have taken the job.
James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.