CNN CEO Mark Thompson is preparing for sweeping staff cuts that could see hundreds of employees, including some of the network’s on-air stars, let go in the coming months, according to a report from Puck News.
This anticipated wave of layoffs comes as CNN’s Chris Wallace has said he won’t be renewing his contract, marking a departure for one of the network’s most notable figures. “In the next few months, I’m told, CNN will implement another round of layoffs that will impact hundreds of employees across the organization,” wrote Puck News reporter Dylan Byers. He added, “Some of the on-air talent are also likely to be affected.”
It remains uncertain which specific figures may be impacted, but with top stars like Anderson Cooper reportedly earning $20 million annually and Kaitlan Collins making around $3 million, these high-profile salaries could be scrutinized as the network assesses its costs and operational structure:
The challenge ahead for CNN is similarly—no pun intended—linear. Its election night broadcast, itself, fully framed the issue in its quintessence. All the panels and sets were teeming with high-priced stars, nearly all of them interchangeable to the average viewer, filling the time with canned talking points, often without much news to discuss in the earlier hours of the evening. I’m not saying that Brian Williams’ Election Night special is going to win an Emmy or reinvent the medium, but it did articulate a future vision for the format: scrappy, ephemeral—and cheaper. On CNN, meanwhile, many of the anchors appeared as oblivious to their own fates as they were about Trump’s impending win.
The soul-searching has obviously begun within the Democratic Party, which has been trying to restore its Obama-era mojo for many cycles, despite the fact that so much has changed about our politics in the past 15 years. CNN, in working through its own introspective journey, may come to a similar conclusion: Re-creating the past never works. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that audiences these days would respond enthusiastically to the product that filled the airwaves during the Zucker era. Similarly, as a transformation executive, Thompson has clearly prioritized the next phase of the business over the current one. It’s going to be an awful next couple months inside the business, but perhaps it’s necessary to protect its future.
The decision comes amid a challenging period for cable news networks, with both CNN and MSNBC experiencing significant declines in viewership. Post-election ratings show that CNN saw an average of only 419,000 viewers last Thursday, while MSNBC brought in 596,000 viewers. In stark contrast, Fox News averaged 2.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen data.
The downturn in ratings has been nothing short of catastrophic for MSNBC and CNN, which have shed 54% and 33% of their audiences respectively compared to the same time last year.
While CNN braces for mass layoffs and the cable news landscape shifts, the full impact on talent and staffing at major networks remains to be seen.
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Back in the very beginning of CNN 1980 I knew what it was all about (DEVIOUSNESS) their dirty tactics are coming home to roost.
CNN, as well as MSNBC, should be out of business due to their anti American Leftist Marxist stance on everything.
They may be stars to the few ultra liberals still watching cnn but in the real world they are nothing.