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Sunday, February 23, 2025

CNN is announcing layoffs as part of a further shift to digital business

by

31 days ago
20250123
Signage is seen at the CNN Center in Atlanta on April 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

Signage is seen at the CNN Center in Atlanta on April 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

CNN an­nounced a re­struc­tur­ing Thurs­day that in­cludes some 200 lay­offs, an ac­cel­er­at­ed piv­ot to dig­i­tal op­er­a­tions and new TV roles for per­son­al­i­ties like Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tap­per and Au­die Cor­nish.

It’s the bold­est re­vamp yet in the 18-month tenure of CEO Mark Thomp­son, a for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive at The New York Times and BBC called up­on by par­ent com­pa­ny Warn­er Bros. Dis­cov­ery to re­vive the news out­let’s flag­ging for­tunes.

The lay­offs are con­cen­trat­ed in CNN’s TV busi­ness, where rat­ings have tum­bled as con­sumers cut off ca­ble and seek oth­er news sources. They will even­tu­al­ly be off­set by new hires in dig­i­tal, where Warn­er Bros. Dis­cov­ery is mak­ing a $70 mil­lion in­vest­ment, CNN said.

“This is not a cost-sav­ing ex­er­cise,” Thomp­son said in an in­ter­view. “We’re ac­tu­al­ly lean­ing in with in­creased in­vest­ments.”

Lay­offs have ei­ther tak­en place or are an­tic­i­pat­ed across the news in­dus­try. CNN’s rat­ings have tak­en a hit since the elec­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, a long­time crit­ic of the net­work. CNN av­er­aged 1.7 mil­lion view­ers for Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion this week, com­pared to 8 mil­lion for Joe Biden’s in­au­gur­al four years ago, though au­di­ence can fluc­tu­ate based on the po­lit­i­cal stance of the per­son be­ing in­au­gu­rat­ed.

CNN al­so took a fi­nan­cial hit — how much is un­clear — when a Flori­da ju­ry last week found the net­work li­able for de­fam­ing a U.S. Navy vet­er­an on a sto­ry in­volv­ing a paid ef­fort to ex­tract en­dan­gered Afghans fol­low­ing their coun­try’s Tal­iban takeover. The net­work set­tled the case be­fore the ju­ry could ful­ly de­cide dam­ages.

CNN an­nounced Thurs­day it was de­vel­op­ing a prod­uct that would al­low con­sumers to watch a TV-like video stream on any de­vice, al­though it won’t be TV simul­cast. There was no es­ti­mat­ed launch date.

Un­der Thomp­son, CNN has qui­et­ly re­designed and of­fered new fea­tures on its CNN.com web­site. Late last year, it in­sti­tut­ed a $3.99 month­ly and $29.99 year­ly sub­scrip­tion for its heav­i­est users and is work­ing on new on­line prod­ucts in ar­eas like lifestyle, weath­er and sports.

In some re­spects, Thomp­son is try­ing to do for CNN what he did at the Times, where its dig­i­tal prod­ucts mod­ern­ized the news­pa­per’s busi­ness. Ex­ec­u­tives are hop­ing CNN’s video com­po­nent and in­ter­na­tion­al pres­ence of­fers growth op­por­tu­ni­ties that won’t du­pli­cate the Times.

CNN’s trans­for­ma­tion “isn’t and can’t be a sin­gle set of changes but a process of in­vest­ment, ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and adap­ta­tion that will last years,” Thomp­son said in a memo to CNN staff. “Our ob­jec­tive is a sim­ple one: to shift CNN’s grav­i­ty to­wards the plat­forms and prod­ucts where the au­di­ence them­selves are shift­ing.”

CNN is look­ing for sav­ings in tele­vi­sion with a lean­er staff and a trans­fer of some of its tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions to its At­lanta of­fice.

The net­work an­nounced a se­ries of sched­ule changes: vet­er­an an­chor Blitzer’s “Sit­u­a­tion Room” will move from the evening to 10 a.m. East­ern, where he will be joined by Pamela Brown; Tap­per’s two-hour show will now be­gin at 5 p.m.; Cor­nish will host “CNN This Morn­ing” be­gin­ning at 6 a.m.; Kasie Hunt will host a new show, “The Are­na,” at 4 p.m.; and Ra­hel Solomon will do a show, “5 Things,” at 5 a.m.

Left out for now is cur­rent late morn­ing host Jim Acos­ta, a fre­quent Trump spar­ring part­ner dur­ing the pres­i­dent’s first term. He’s ne­go­ti­at­ing a new role, CNN said, af­ter he re­port­ed­ly balked at a late-night as­sign­ment.

Be­sides cord-cut­ting, the tele­vi­sion net­work’s biggest chal­lenge is reach­ing Trump sup­port­ers who con­sid­er the net­work en­e­my ter­ri­to­ry. Many sup­port­ers, in fact, went on­line Thurs­day to ex­press glee at the thought of lay­offs there.

“Not on­ly is Trump stronger than he’s ever been in his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, he may well have killed lega­cy me­dia as we know it,” ra­dio host and Out­Kick founder Clay Travis wrote on X.

Thomp­son said he want­ed CNN to dis­tin­guish it­self with hard-hit­ting jour­nal­ism and fact-check­ing to let view­ers make up their own minds on is­sues. He not­ed Ab­by Phillip’s prime-time pro­gram as one of the few in ca­ble news that al­lows peo­ple with wide­ly di­ver­gent views to de­bate is­sues.

“I think we need to qui­et­ly and pa­tient­ly get on with our jobs as jour­nal­ists,” he said. —(AP)

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Sto­ry by DAVID BAUD­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press


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