Disclaimer: This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.
There has been a great deal of reporting centered around what looks like the beginning of the end of at least some bastions of the mainstream media. In particular, there has been more than a little amount of decimation surrounding the ultra-liberal network, CNN. The culling is happening from inside the network, as the new CEO Chris Licht has been going on a Musk-like crusade within their walls.
It is now being reported by CNBC that:
Licht’s review is part of a larger effort spearheaded by Zaslav, who has told division heads throughout the company to rethink their units and find ways to cut costs. More than 1,000 people will be laid off by Warner Bros. Discovery before the end of the year, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private and ongoing. Warner Bros. Discovery has about 40,000 employees.
Licht doesn’t have a specific order to cut a certain amount of jobs or save a specific percentage of spending. But he’s planning to cut parts of CNN that he have become bloated over time, said the people. A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.
CNBC went on to report that:
“When [Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav] called and offered me the job, he told me what he was looking for out of CNN,” he said. “And I said, ‘That’s exactly the kind of network I would like to see.’ There’s no daylight between his vision for this network and my vision for this network. The only reason why I took this job is because it was him in charge. I thought, I can deliver this for him.”
“I love the control room, and I love the feeling of sending a text and seeing it show up on screen 10 minutes later, but there’s so much happening that we’ll be paralyzed if everyone is waiting to hear from me,” he said. “That’s just not how I operate.”
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IndieWire went on to report that:
The broadcast news channel is set to cut back on commissioning documentary films and television series from its programming, chairman Chris Licht announced to employees on Friday.
In an email to staff obtained by IndieWire, Licht explained that the decision was made due to budgetary reasons and the cost of commissioning projects with outside partners. Going forward, long-form documentary content for the channel will now be produced almost entirely in-house — and instead, Amy Entelis, CNN’s executive vice president for talent and content development, will explore creating a studio focused on long-form content.
It was then that IndieWire went on to report that:
“This was a very difficult decision to make, and it was based, in large part, on the ever-increasing cost of commissioning third-party premium content,” Licht said in the email. “However, I want to be clear that longform content remains an important pillar of our programming.” The news comes days after Licht sent a memo to CNN staff earlier this week promising “noticeable change” to the network, in response to the looming threat of a recession.
The channel is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery, which has faced falling stock since its formation in April and has taken several measures to cut spending on content across several divisions. One of the earliest casualties of WBD’s formation from the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery was the quick cancellation of CNN+, a streaming service off-shot of the channel that was shut down after a month.
So, it does seem to just be getting worse and worse for the now-somewhat-fledgling network. In fact, we reported back in the beginning of this month that former President Donald Trump sued CNN for defamation claiming the cable news network has escalated a campaign of libel and slander against him because the network thinks he’ll run for re-election in 2024. CNN has attempted to taint Trump “with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler,’” the former president’s filing states.
Trump’s filing of defamatory labels and nothing positive is a feeble argument and most likely won’t hold up in court. And if that is how his team of lawyers will go about it, it shouldn’t.
