CNN Chief Executive Mark Thompson decided on Wednesday to cut 100 jobs, his first major layoffs since taking charge of the struggling cable network.
Thompson, who has mostly tweaked the morning programming since taking over the reins from Chris Licht in October, has sought to lay out a new vision for the No. 3 network.
“Positioning a great news organization for the future will not be done overnight,” Thompson said in a memo to staff ahead of a town hall meeting scheduled for later in the day. “It will be done incrementally over time.”
The new “five-point plan” also includes cutting 100 jobs, or about 3% of CNN’s workforce, as part of an effort to consolidate news operations and strengthen CNN’s digital business.
Thompson, a former New York Times and BBC executive, called the changes “a significant milestone in the transformation of CNN”.
Last month, CNN announced it was partnering again with the Associated Press to use AP reporting on its website, sparking concerns among CNN staff that layoffs were imminent.
A CNN spokesman denied that the deal with The Associated Press would lead to job cuts.
Meanwhile, staff are reportedly unhappy over company-wide cuts to bonuses and the promotion of news executive Virginia Moseley, who some have called a “nasty bitch” and a “tyrant.”
Thompson is facing a company that is struggling amid a steady decline in its cable news business and revenue.
CNN was originally founded in 1980 by Ted Turner as a 24-hour cable news network — a revolutionary concept at the time — and has long relied on distribution fees from cable companies.
While CNN and its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery continue to turn a profit, the cable TV business model is disappearing as Netflix and other popular streaming services have upended the TV industry.
CNN’s definitive subscription launch has been long overdue: CNN+, a streaming service, was launched in March 2022 but was almost immediately canceled the following month after parent company WarnerMedia merged with Discovery.
Currently, the affordable streaming service CNN Max is under the umbrella of parent company Max.
But Thompson said the company plans to create a subscription business that could bring in more than $1 billion in revenue.
Thompson also said he plans to combine three newsroom divisions, introduce AI tools into the newsroom to “recapture” Turner’s “pioneering spirit”, and adopt a 24/7 global “follow the Sun” news model by expanding the Hong Kong bureau and putting more effort into the London and Los Angeles bureaus.
“This will allow us to serve the needs of a wider range of platforms around the clock and provide flexibility to our newsdesk resources when the news cycle takes unexpected turns,” Thompson said.
Alongside the digital changes, Thompson announced smaller, more vague updates to CNN’s television programming.
The network’s ratings have been sluggish this year: In May, CNN hit its lowest prime-time ratings since 1991 among its most coveted demographic as it struggled to keep up with Fox News and the left-leaning MSNBC, whose parent company News Corp. also owns The Washington Post.
“He seems to have given up on cable TV,” a top TV news producer told The Post.
Thompson joined CNN after years of leadership turmoil.
Longtime CEO Jeff Zucker abruptly left the company in 2022 and was replaced by television producer Licht, who was fired after a volatile 13-month tenure that saw him lay off hundreds of CNN staffers early on.
Thompson was then tasked with replicating the success he had seen at The New York Times, which this year announced that its digital subscriptions business was generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
