CNN's CEO Chris Licht is out after his short and terrible tenure with the network. Licht has stepped down from his responsibilities as reported by Oliver Darcy on CNN's website. The news article about CNN CEO Chris Licht stepping down discussed his one-year tenure being marred by missteps. The CNN story stated the following over Licht's breaking news:
“I met with Chris and he will be leaving CNN,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, told CNN employees at the start of the network’s daily editorial meeting.
Licht’s departure capped a tumultuous year for CNN, marked by layoffs, shrinking profits, historically low ratings, the firing of two anchors, and rock-bottom employee morale. The chaos that defined the last year also followed several other gut punches to the organization, including the ouster of previous leader, Jeff Zucker, and shuttering of nascent streaming service CNN+.
Licht, who became network chief last May after most recently leading “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” to much success, saw his tenure dogged by fierce criticism in the press, often the result of leaks from employees around him who never fully trusted his leadership skills or editorial vision.
CNN keeps taking losses in the ratings and even Tucker Carlson was able to get millions of views on just a single video he posted on Twitter. It's unclear what direction CNN will go next for their new CEO and how they will handle the network. Will CNN recover when Donald Trump's campaign heats up or he possibly returns to Twitter to make mean tweets? CNN appeared to do very well in ratings when Donald Trump fueled their content, but CNN hasn't had very much Trump content to work with lately amid the network shakeups.
