Warner Bros. Discovery this week ousted Chris Licht as CEO of CNN after simply over a 12 months on the job. Licht’s departure got here days after The Atlantic printed a damaging profile describing a “meltdown” on the struggling cable information outlet beneath his management. The article mentioned Licht had “misplaced the boldness of his personal newsroom” as he made adjustments to shake the liberal popularity CNN had beneath former chief Jeff Zucker. A CNN city corridor throughout which former President Donald Trump repeated his false claims in regards to the 2020 election and mocked CNN in entrance of an viewers of his followers introduced the simmering inner complaints to a boil.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav mentioned Licht had made a valiant effort to do the job he was employed to do and remake CNN. “I’ve nice respect for Chris, personally and professionally,” Zaslav mentioned in a press launch. “The job of main CNN was by no means going to be straightforward, particularly at a time of big disruption and transformation, and he has poured his coronary heart and soul into it.”
CNN’s scores had been falling when Licht took over, they usually stored happening. In Might, CNN’s prime-time viewership fell 25% in comparison with a 12 months earlier. Fox Information, recent off its sacking of No. 1 host Tucker Carlson, fell much more sharply, with its prime-time viewers falling 37% 12 months over 12 months, however the conservative outlet remained the most-watched cable community by far. MSNBC, which appeals to a extra progressive viewers, was the one one which made beneficial properties. Was Licht simply the fallacious individual for the job, or do CNN’s struggles simply present that making an attempt to draw each liberal and conservative viewers will not work on cable information in a rustic so sharply divided?
Cable viewers need a standpoint
Zaslav wished Licht to shift CNN away from what he noticed as its “left-leaning ‘advocacy’ and towards extra ‘steadiness,'” mentioned Jim Rutenberg in The New York Occasions. However discovering steadiness is far trickier than merely giving equal time to “each voices,” one thing CNN was reminded of after the Trump city corridor. And attracting viewers with an “unaligned impartial method” is tough to do in an period of “splintered, on-demand” information sources. “Polarization is sky excessive.” And “cable, a medium that performed to divided pursuits from the beginning, is now competing with social media, the place probably the most profitable gadgets are usually probably the most stridently partisan and provocative.”
At this level, it is value asking whether or not cable audiences “actually need laborious information with out a standpoint,” mentioned Ed Morrissey at Sizzling Air. “They actually do not appear to reward it. Fox Information wins each time, and that is no accident. MSNBC stays aggressive, extra so than CNN now, and that is no accident.” Licht might need purchased himself a while, and canopy within the newsroom, if he had chosen another Republican candidate — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or, higher but, Nikki Haley — as a substitute of Trump for that first city corridor, nevertheless it wasn’t his fault that he failed. His bosses made “a really unhealthy guess” and “discovered the laborious means” that cable viewers may say they simply need the details however “put their cash on leisure and self-validation as a substitute.”
Licht’s “anti-woke centrism” is what failed
Licht wasn’t championing laborious information, mentioned Perry Bacon Jr. in The Washington Put up. He was peddling an “anti-woke centrism that’s more and more outstanding in American media and politics at present, significantly amongst highly effective white males who reside on the coasts and do not determine as Republicans or conservatives.” Licht fired nice CNN journalists “for being too anti-Trump” and tried to current himself as truthful by criticizing progressive causes. “There can and needs to be open debate about police reform, range, COVID-19 insurance policies and different points,” however when the left is “pushing America to complete the work of the Sixties and create a real multicultural democracy” and the fitting “is banning Black mental concepts from public faculties, it is an enormous mistake for highly effective non-Republicans in society to spend a lot time bashing the left.”
Licht leaves CNN as he discovered it, mentioned Ethan Bauer within the Deseret Information, fumbling for a method to survive now that Trump has modified the world for the mainstream media. The second Trump introduced he was operating for president in 2015, he upended “two conventional assumptions of political reporting: cordiality and (at the least some semblance of) a good-faith give-and-take. No sitting president had vilified the press because the creation of TV information to the extent Trump did.” Viewers on the lookout for left-leaning fare can tune in to MSNBC, and people on the fitting flock to Fox Information. CNN is “uniquely positioned to bridge that divide,” however Licht “within the eyes of many observers squandered no matter alternative he needed to construct one thing transformative.” The chance remains to be there, however CNN cannot determine learn how to seize it.