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CNN Plots Major Overhaul as It Enters a New Trump Era

Mark Thompson has promised to reinvent CNN since he arrived in 2023. Now, he is remaking the network’s TV lineup and its work force.

Illustration by Alice Lagarde; Photographs by Tolga Akmen/Shutterstock; Jeenah Moon for The New York Times; Andrew Mangum for The New York Times

Illustration by Alice Lagarde; Photographs by Tolga Akmen/Shutterstock; Jeenah Moon for The New York Times; Andrew Mangum for The New York Times

Give people news when and where they want it.

That, says Mark Thompson, CNN’s chief executive, was one of the brilliant insights Ted Turner had when he started the network at the dawn of cable TV. And if CNN doesn’t follow that advice for the digital age, Mr. Thompson says, the company may no longer exist.

“This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

Mr. Thompson has been spreading this message inside CNN during his first 15 months in the job. But now, he is taking the biggest steps yet to overhaul the company, steering it away from its reliance on traditional television and attempting to cash in on digital audiences wherever they are, at the same time that President Trump has sent the news cycle into hyperdrive.

On Thursday, the company announced that it would eliminate about 200 jobs focused on CNN’s traditional TV operations, and add about the same number for new digital roles like data scientists and product engineers. CNN is aiming to hire 100 of those people in the first half of the year, Mr. Thompson said.

CNN also previewed a new streaming service, similar to its TV product, that it will charge for. Mr. Thompson said that CNN would also release a new subscription product this year around “lifestyle” content — examples include food and fitness — though he didn’t specify what the product would be. The digital efforts, Mr. Thompson said, were financed by a $70 million investment for this year from CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Mr. Thompson also announced a slew of changes to CNN’s TV schedule, replacing Jim Acosta’s 10 a.m. show with “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown,” and introducing a new morning show anchored by Audie Cornish. The network is in talks with Mr. Acosta about another role.

“In the end, this is about CNN being — as it has been in its history — an indispensable way in which many, many millions of people get their news,” Mr. Thompson said in the interview.

The changes to the TV side of the business could be a blow to the newsroom’s morale during an uncertain time in the news industry. But in many ways, the challenge in front of Mr. Thompson, 67, is similar to what he faced at his two previous jobs, as chief executive of The New York Times and as director general of the BBC. At both of those stops, major sources of traditional revenue were in long-term decline.

The traditional cable TV business remains CNN’s main revenue driver, but the network has been stuck in last place in the ratings among its main competitors, behind MSNBC and Fox News, the longtime leader. Its prime time ratings have plummeted since the election, and its digital audience has also shrunk.

In December, the network saw its lowest period of web traffic in two years, according to analytics firm Comscore, with 90.5 million unique visits, down from a high point of 175.5 million in March 2020, during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. (CNN said that other news sites have experienced similar declines, adding that CNN.com was the top news site in terms of total audience last year.)

During a town-hall meeting with staff in the network’s Hudson Yards headquarters this month, Mr. Thompson presented a series of slides that underscored the necessity of CNN’s digital pivot, flagging its underperforming advertising business and the lack of energy on its website.

Mr. Thompson has been sounding the alarm about CNN’s digital progress since he joined, and he has told the staff repeatedly that big changes would be coming. In May, during a summit in Atlanta organized by Mr. Thompson, executives were told that CNN’s reliance on its traditional TV business — which then encompassed roughly 72 percent of revenue — had only increased in recent years.

By October, CNN introduced a paywall to its website and app that targets readers who visit the site most often. At the end of last year, Alex MacCallum, a former New York Times executive who is CNN’s executive vice president of digital products and services, said at a town hall with staff that the paywall had exceeded CNN’s expectations for subscribers but did not provide specific figures.

 

Alex MacCallum sits alongside several other women on a stage.
Alex MacCallum, center with microphone, CNN’s executive vice president of digital products and services.Credit...Mat Hayward/Getty Images

 

Mr. Thompson and Ms. MacCallum have also appealed to David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, for additional investment in CNN’s digital priorities. Mr. Zaslav greenlit this year’s $70 million investment.

One of those priorities has been vertical videos, which have become important to media organizations because they can be viewed easily on mobile phones.

CNN has begun increasing the number of vertical videos and eventually plans to publish 50 to 100 of these videos per day. Executives have been encouraged by the results so far, with video engagement — a key metric at CNN — up by 20 percent last year.

They have also been prototyping a new video news service that allows users to swipe through vertical videos as they do on apps like TikTok and Instagram. Mr. Thompson said it’s not clear yet whether that will exist as a stand-alone product or as a section of CNN’s mobile app.

“You can use your thumb to flick from a CNN news story to a CNN anchor to a reporter,” Mr. Thompson said. “That’s a really interesting experiment.”

The push into vertical video illustrates some of the challenges that Mr. Thompson faces.

Speed is of the essence in digital publishing, where breaking news is only relevant for a few hours at a time. But getting those videos published has been slowed at times by CNN’s review process, known as the Triad, which used to include fact-checking and standards and legal vetting, according to two people familiar with the matter. Last year, Mr. Thompson moved fact-checking, formerly known as the Row, into a new unit called CNN Fact Check that works closer with editors and producers earlier in the story-generation process. CNN still maintains teams dedicated to legal and standards reviews.

Mr. Thompson and Ms. MacCallum have recruited several executives to overhaul CNN’s digital operations. Some were former co-workers of Mr. Thompson or Ms. MacCallum at The New York Times, including Ben French, who helped launch The Times’s cooking app, and Ben Monnie, who worked on subscription pricing and bundling.

This fall, as Ms. MacCallum brought aboard new digital executives, Mr. Thompson hunted for an editor who could bridge a gap between two of his top lieutenants, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Though Ms. MacCallum directs CNN’s digital strategy, she is not responsible for its sprawling network of journalists, who report to Virginia Moseley, CNN’s executive editor. That makes Ms. Moseley, not Ms. MacCallum, the final arbiter over what gets covered, regardless of the network’s digital priorities, the people said.

The network has pursued high-profile candidates for a job that would help address that gap, by translating CNN’s reporting muscle across a variety of platforms. The company talked to Josh Tyrangiel, a former executive at Bloomberg News and Vice Media, and Cliff Levy, deputy publisher of two sites at The Times, The Athletic and Wirecutter, according to the two people familiar with the matter. On Thursday, Ms. Moseley told staff that CNN was still searching for a “visionary leader” to help tell stories across “linear and digital platforms.”

When Mr. Thompson was at The Times, online traffic and digital subscriptions rose sharply during President Trump’s first term, accelerating the company’s turnaround. Mr. Thompson said that it was too early to tell whether Mr. Trump’s second term would result in a similar spike at CNN, adding that the network needed to have a much “broader news agenda” than coverage of U.S. politics.

“It’s just a sense of proportion,” Mr. Thompson said. “But it’s not suggesting that we’re going to ignore political news, which — particularly with a second Trump term — is going to loom very large, obviously.”

Mr. Trump, since his first run for president, has regularly criticized CNN’s coverage of him and his administration. Jeff Zucker, the company’s chief executive during Mr. Trump’s first term, leaned hard into accountability coverage of the Trump administration and aired strident on-air criticism of the president during prime-time opinion shows. His replacement and Mr. Thompson’s predecessor, Chris Licht, tried to steer the network toward a more neutral posture, an attempt to broaden the network’s viewership among conservative viewers.

In the interview, Mr. Thompson said that he wanted CNN journalists to avoid falling into any preset assumptions while covering President Trump’s second term, adding that “typecasting” any newsmaker “is bad journalism.”

Some news organizations have agonized over whether to carry Mr. Trump — and his penchant for falsehoods — live on air. Mr. Thompson said that CNN would continue to carry Mr. Trump’s remarks live, with fact-checking, saying that Americans had a right to hear from the president of the United States and “form their own view.”

David Zaslav, standing outside a hotel, wearing sunglasses, talks as a reporter holds up a CNBC microphone.
David Zaslav, the chief executive of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. He approved a $70 million investment in CNN’s digital initiatives.Credit...Brendan McDermid/Reuters

 

He said he regularly talked about the news with his boss, Mr. Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery. But he said Mr. Zaslav stayed out of editorial decisions, and that the board of Warner Bros. Discovery had done the same.

“Everyone’s got an opinion about the news,” Mr. Thompson said. “That’s not the point. Have they been supportive of my editorial independence? A hundred percent. Have they been supportive of the strategy? A hundred percent.”

Michael M. Grynbaumcontributed reporting.

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at benjamin.mullin@nytimes.comMore about Benjamin Mullin

Author: Benjamin Mullin

Source: N.Y Times

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