Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Be careful what you wish for CNN anchors

Though the joy is muted, it doesn’t take a genius to see the schadenfreude from current and former CNN staffers in response to the news that Chris Licht is out as CEO.

That may be short-lived. I spoke with a number of industry executives both inside and outside CNN who believe that Warner Bros. Discovery executives are now way more likely to clean house at the embattled cable news outlet. The very rank and file so eager to see Licht ousted may come to regret their open — yet anonymous — undermining of the former CEO. A leader who made mistakes, but wasn’t nearly as toxic as he was made out to be.

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Licht’s mission was to bring trust back to the network, and he was treated with by a staff that immediately distrusted his vision, opting instead for a “they know best” approach that lay at the root of the conflict.

Following the controversial Trump town hall, CNN’s staff were in open revolt, best evidenced by Oliver Darcy’s candid criticism of the event. “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” Darcy wrote in the Reliable Sources newsletter the morning after.

So while CNN’s rank and file are likely thrilled that their nemesis is out as CEO, it doesn’t change the WBD mission for the network. WBD CEO David Zaslav and lead shareholder John Malone have made abundantly clear that they see CNN as a nonpartisan news outlet willing to treat all news as nonpartisan.

I reached out to Dan Abrams, the founder of Mediaite and a veteran of the cable news industry, who is not just a trusted colleague but also a really smart guy, for his thoughts:

CNN’s bigger problems aren’t really about Chris Licht. The more significant issue is that David Zaslav clearly wants to position CNN as a more non-partisan network. . more centrist. . and even though they won’t admit it, many of CNNs rank and file just aren’t on board with that mission. They are convinced that their more left leaning worldview is the correct one, the only one. So the only way WBD could really achieve its broader goals is to make some serious changes at various levels of the organization. Licht came into an organization resistant to a major change the company wants to implement. No doubt some of the problems he encountered were self inflicted, but others are festering and will reappear no matter who is hired to lead.

One network insider I spoke to was far more blunt in his assessment: “CNN’s staffers are probably going to regret pushing Licht out because the WBD leadership will be far less accommodating.”

Members of CNN’s rank and file that remain committed to Jeff Zucker’s conflict-oriented and personality-first programming vision? They will likely soon be looking for work, given corporate leadership’s steadfast desire to move away from that very vision.

Really illustrates how the mainstream news is run by Bolsheviks, from the top down. It has the credibility that Pravda had at the height of the Soviet Union.

There is no money in pushing progressive propaganda.

Without Trump, CNN and MSNBC are dying.

This could get very entertaining.

at the end of the day a 24/7 news channel, in competition with the internet is not going to be able to deliver neutral news content, it will simply be too repetitive

Without talking heads interjecting their idiotic opinions to their watching echo chamber, they won't be able to keep viewers.

ESPN learned that lesson about 15 years ago.

When CNN was the only game in town, they could just keep running news segments on a loop waiting for the next plane crash, hurricane or Hollywood murder to dedicate a days to "breaking news"

Now, twitter gets the information to the public much faster, cheaper with more in depth than any network can ever hope - so their only option is to tell you why you should be outraged over whatever is happening.

Fox News has gone woke. Have you seen their sickening celebratory bits on Pervert Month. What total sell outs.

As a Warner Brothers stockholder I was glad Chris was brought in. I was hoping for some mass firing and the elimination of the leftist lean that CNN has taken on in the last 30 years. But, it seems that the leftist do not want to lose their biased news reporting. As a stockholder we would be better off if CNN just locked their doors and stopped broadcasting. They are unrepairable.

kwg

not to derail the thread we started but I saw this the other day and it stuck with me

Well put.

CNN may as well just file bankruptcy, they will never be a trusted organization again.

They are the Bud Light of the news world.

That was mean (but accurate).

But it is MSNBC that I want to fail. Their sanctimonious, egotistical approach is impossible to deal with. Joy Reid, Nicole Wallace, and the rest need to be on the soup line permanently.

Fox News is getting there, too.

CNN = Communist National Network PERIOD !

Unless they get PBS/NPR-type funding.

No, that could only happen without a fair/free, legitimate election.

Could never happen.