CNN's new chief executive says the company needs to recapture the “exaggeration and innovation” of its early days, which he says increasingly means embracing a future outside of television.
Mark Thompson, who was appointed CNN's chief executive last fall after stints at the New York Times and the BBC, outlined a strategy to staff on Wednesday that included a restructuring of the company. Few external details were given about how it would be carried out.
Once a “scrupulous outsider,” CNN has been slow to respond to the reality that its main television business is shrinking, Thompson said in the memo.
“There is currently too little innovation and risk-taking,” Thompson said in the memo. “Like many other news players with broadcast traditions, CNN's Linear service and even his website seem outdated and unadventurous, as if the world hasn't changed when the world has changed.” Sometimes I feel like there's no atmosphere.”
CNN needs to follow its audience, he said, and the first place most people under 40 turn to get their news is their smartphone.
Thompson said the change in mindset requires merging the current national, international and digital teams into one unit under the leadership of Virginia Moseley as editor-in-chief. Mike McCarthy will become CNN's editor-in-chief.
Atlanta-based CNN also plans to hire Alex McCallum, currently the Washington Post's chief revenue officer, as an executive responsible for digital projects and services.
Mr. Thompson, who is credited with establishing the digital subscription service that transformed the Times' business over the past decade, will look to it for sustainable revenue at CNN. It's unclear if this means a paid subscription service or some other product.
In the past, he wrote, CNN hasn't always “goed the extra mile to squeeze every ounce of value out of the great news and other intellectual property we produce.” “no longer.”
He said the CNN.com website “needs a fundamental modernization.” The network also has multiple digital projects to complement its CNN Max streaming service.
Cord-cutting has reduced U.S. cable TV viewership by a fifth in the past two years, he said. CNN's average daily viewership rating in 2023 was 479,000, down 15% from the previous year. Fox News Channel's 1.22 million viewers were down 18%, while MSNBC's 780,000 viewers were up 6%, according to Nielsen.
Thompson said CNN TV personalities must find a multi-platform audience and praised Anderson Cooper's grief podcast “All There Is.”
