Tag: CNN

CNN’s Chris Licht is stepping down following a tumultuous tenure atop the cable news network, where he was seen as having lost the support of the newsroom.

His departure comes after a year of difficult press and public fumbles, including the disastrous town hall event with Donald Trump and a misfire of a morning show reboot, which quickly unraveled with the abrupt departure of Don Lemon. His leadership was also dogged by anemic ratings and a diminution in profits. All told, his stewardship of the network belied the sterling reputation he’d garnered in the industry as a former producer of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

“Definite feelings of widespread relief in the building. It just couldn’t last at this point,” one CNN source told Vanity Fair Wednesday morning.

We’re told Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav informed Licht in person early Wednesday morning that his time at CNN was up. Things were moving in that direction over the weekend, and the decision became a fait accompli early this week.

Licht’s fate was apparently sealed last Friday by a devastating profile in The Atlantic by journalist Tim Alberta, which depicted Licht as a detached executive with little vision for how to run the cable news network. Alberta, who spoke to nearly 100 CNN employees in the course of reporting the profile, wrote that everyone “was asking some variation of the same question: Did Licht have any idea what he was doing?” 

In addition, he wrote, “CNN employees had asked me, again and again, to probe for some humility in their leader,” even a “morsel of self-awareness.” Despite Alberta’s bruising assessment, Licht came across in the piece as highly self-assured while criticizing elements of CNN’s journalism prior to his tenure, bragging to Alberta about his workout routine, and defending his leadership of the network. 

As we reported on Monday, following conversations with well-placed sources plugged into the thinking at the top, Zaslav hasn’t happy about where things are at with CNN his concerns had been percolating for several months now. In February, he initiated the conversation about bringing in a chief operating officer to work alongside Licht as a stabilizing force, and to shore up management of the network.

An implicit theme of The Atlantic piece was that Zaslav had been managing Licht to the bone and that Licht had perhaps gotten caught up in executing for a highly demanding boss. Zaslav’s sympathizers would argue that he’s known for being an engaged executive and that CNN ended up requiring more engagement than expected for a unit that represents about 5% of Warner Bros. Discovery’s business.

In either case, the day before The Atlantic piece dropped, Zaslav installed his longtime lieutenant David Leavy to the role of COO. Leavy will become part of an interim leadership team, along with Amy Entelis, EVP of talent and content development; Virginia Moseley, EVP of editorial; and Eric Sherling, EVP of US programming, the network announced. Puck first reported the news of Licht’s exit. “For a number of reasons, it didn’t work out,” Zaslav reportedly told staff Wednesday morning. “And that’s on me, I take full responsibility.” 

The interim leadership trifecta for editorial resembles the strategy put into place after Licht’s predecessor, Jeff Zucker, stepped down early last year amid a controversy triggered by an undisclosed romantic relationship with, Allison Gollust, CNN’s former communications executive and marketing chief. Entelis, who’s been at CNN since 2012 and was the driving force behind the network’s celebrated original films and series, was part of the previous interim leadership team as well, and one longtime CNN journalist told us there’s considerable support for her among talent. 

“The overwhelming sentiment I’ve heard this morning is thank God it’s Amy,” this person said. “David Zaslav would be wise to, if she wants it, consider her [for the top job] for a lot of reasons.”   

The apology tour began first thing Monday. “I know these past few days have been very hard for this group, and I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role in it have overshadowed the incredible week of reporting we just had and distracted from the work of every single journalist in this organization, and for that, I’m sorry,” Chris Licht said at the top of CNN’s morning editorial call, soundbites from which immediately found their way into the press. “As I read that article, I found myself thinking, CNN is not about me. I should not be in the news, unless it’s taking arrows for you. There are parts of that article and characterizations made, where I don’t recognize myself. But there are those of you who do. This experience has been tremendously humbling, and to those whose trust I lost I will fight like hell to win it back.”

Licht was referring, of course, to The Atlantic’s devastating postmortem of his first year leading the embattled cable news network, which landed on the heels of the highly controversial Donald Trump town hall shepherded by Licht weeks earlier. The 15,000-word fly-on-the-wall profile by Tim Alberta wasn’t a typical takedown so much as the type of all-access feature where the writer essentially hands his subject some rope and the subject hangs himself. In the viciously gossipy and schadenfreude-filled media world, it’s all anyone’s been talking about since the piece dropped on Friday morning, and the fallout is still being assessed. The question now is whether the imbroglio will continue to metastasize, and to what extent.

Licht could presumably keep his hands on the controls for some time to come. And yet, it’s also easy to imagine the possible headlines a few months down the road: Chris Licht is stepping down from his tumultuous role as the CEO of CNN. Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav thanks him for his contributions to the company. He plans to take a beat and spend more time with his family before figuring out his next move. (Or even—never say never!—Chris Licht will return to his celebrated role as executive producer of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.)

That narrative appears to have already been seeded. “In the last 48 hours, it has become clear, based on conversations with well-placed sources, that Zaslav’s once steadfast support has wavered considerably,” Puck’s Dylan Byers reported. Writing for New York, Brian Stelter (who is also a contributor to VF) came upon a more brutal assessment from employees inside the network, who shared their impressions as follows: “He’s over.” “He’s done.” “There’s no coming back from that profile.”

On Monday, I got on the phone with some sources who are plugged into the thinking at the top to try and get my own read on where Licht stands. For what it’s worth, I didn’t come away from those conversations thinking that he’s definitely a goner; it may just be too early to gauge one way or another. As one source put it, “This doesn’t have to be fatal at all.”

Something that did come across in my chats is that Zaslav isn’t happy about where things are at with CNN in general and that his concerns have been percolating for several months now. (For those of you who’ve been following, ratings are down, morale is in the tank, and a fully-formed programming slate has yet to take shape.) I’m told it was as early as March that he initiated a conversation about bringing in a chief operating officer to work alongside Licht as a stabilizing force, and to shore up management of the network; the conversations about that person being Zasalv’s longtime lieutenant and confidante David Leavy, whose appointment was announced the day before The Atlantic piece hit, heated up within the past month. (Zaslav, by the way, didn’t know there was a year-long Atlantic piece in the works until a few weeks before it was published when WBD’s communications chief put the kibosh on an on-record interview he had been negotiating.)

The case for the Licht-Leavy turnaround plan is this: Licht can focus on the programming side of things (as well as the now herculean task of rebuilding trust within CNN’s sprawling network of journalists around the world), while Leavy gets down and dirty with company culture, processes, commercial matters, etc. You can choose to believe this or not, but I’m told Licht and Leavy have developed a strong rapport and become genuine friends over the past year, gone out to dinner with their wives and all of that. Also, while it’s easy to peg Leavy as the bean counter, my understanding is that he actually has relationships with CNN producers and on-air talent going back to the years he spent working in the Clinton White House in the ’90s, which, well, that certainly doesn’t hurt. (No comment on any of this from CNN or WBD.)

What comes next? In the immediate term, Leavy, who lives in DC, is headed to New York this week to roll up his sleeves, get under the hood, and figure out what needs to be done. As Stelter reported over the weekend and I also confirmed, his phone’s been blowing up with calls from CNN journalists, who are understandably rattled by everything that’s been going on. So Leavy’s schedule this week will be just what you’d imagine: meetings out the wazoo. As for Licht’s long-term fate, only time will tell.