Licht had taken over the top post at CNN last year in order to bring the station further into the political center.
(Photo: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
new York After just a year at the helm of the US television network CNN, CEO Chris Licht has to go again. This was announced by the head of the CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, on Wednesday.
The globally important news broadcaster is thus still stuck in a leadership and ratings crisis. A four-person team is to temporarily run the station until a new boss is found.
A series of mishaps and declining ratings had recently caused more and more criticism of the light. Only last year he took over the top post from Jeff Zucker, who had resigned, with the mandate to bring CNN more into the political center.
A critical article about light in The Atlantic magazine was decisive for the abrupt departure. The now former CNN boss had been accompanied by journalists for several months, and the resulting portrait was not very flattering. For example, Licht shot against the reporting before his tenure.
The portrayals went so far that the 51-year-old had to apologize to the station’s staff after appearing and promised to fight to regain their trust. But even before that, morale at CNN had hit rock bottom.
Great criticism of the Trump show
Several rounds of dismissals, the dismissal of well-known moderators and a town hall interview with Donald Trump – with a noticeably large number of Trump fans in the audience – caused great displeasure within the house. Most recently, reporter legends such as Christiane Amanpour had been highly critical of the event, which Trump knew how to use to his advantage.
David Zaslav had personally chosen the now sacked CNN boss Licht. Warner Media was acquired from AT&T last year by Discovery, where Zaslav is in charge. Licht primarily brought experience producing morning shows and Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” but had never before run a large organization like CNN.
It was his task to re-open the station, which was recently strongly left-wing, to a broader political audience and thus improve the ratings, which he did not succeed in doing. CNN has completely shut down the streaming service CNN+ under his leadership. Some of the ratings fell behind those of smaller news competitors such as MSNBC.
“I have a lot of respect for Chris, personally and professionally,” said Zaslav. “The job of leading CNN would never have been easy, especially in a time of great disruption and transformation, and he has put his heart and soul into it.”
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