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CNN is in flux. It has a brand new proprietor, and a brand new boss, who guarantees to remake the information channel and has informed staff to be ready for “a time of change.”
Most of these adjustments have but to manifest. However one of many first ones — canceling its long-running Dependable Sources present and pushing out anchor Brian Stelter — has already unsettled some CNN staff and viewers.
However the greater query floating over one of many world’s largest and most vital information organizations is why it’s altering. Is it as a result of the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, its new proprietor, needs an overhaul? Or is it on the behest of a conservative billionaire investor within the firm who sits on its board?
That billionaire is John Malone, a legend within the cable TV enterprise and one who has deep and longstanding ties with David Zaslav, the CEO of WBD. Folks near each males insist that Zaslav is remaking CNN as a result of he needs to for each enterprise and editorial causes, and never as a result of Malone has informed him to.
However complicating that narrative is the truth that Malone has repeatedly wished, in public, for CNN to remake itself. And his prescription occurs to sync with the brand new CNN agenda: a plan to steer the channel away from what Malone and others name a liberal bias they are saying muddles opinion and information. And to shift it towards a supposedly centrist, just-the-facts bent.
In November 2021, Malone sat down for an hour-long interview with CNBC, the place he held forth on the state of the pay TV enterprise — the place he made his $10 billion fortune — and loads of different subjects.
Certainly one of them was CNN — on the time, owned by AT&T, however scheduled to change into a part of WBD, an organization that Malone would personal a bit of together with a seat on its board. Malone waved away one little bit of recurring hypothesis — that WBD would wish to promote CNN — after which supplied some programming recommendation for the brand new firm:
“I want to see CNN evolve again to the form of journalism that it began with, and truly have journalists, which might be distinctive and refreshing,” he stated. Then he instructed a mannequin: “Fox Information, in my view, has adopted an fascinating trajectory of attempting to have ‘information’ information, I imply some precise journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”
Malone’s feedback didn’t resonate a lot past a few locations: At Fox News, which responded with glee, and inside CNN, the place they sounded alarm bells.
These bells began ringing once more final week when the corporate pushed CNN media reporter Brian Stelter out of his job. As I’ve reported, some individuals in and out of doors CNN believed there was a direct by way of line between Malone’s perspective on CNN and Stelter’s departure. The speculation: Stelter, a frequent critic of Fox Information, was let go both at Malone’s direct urging or by managers who needed to please the investor.
That principle is hotly contested by staff and executives at CNN, WBD, and Liberty Media, Malone’s holding firm. “It’s not in line with John’s character or fashion that he can be doing that,” says Liberty CEO Greg Maffei.
There’s additionally a center floor between the 2 arguments: Malone meant what he stated however didn’t assume he was meddling along with his soon-to-be property.
“I don’t assume John would assume it respectable for him to provide particular course on protection or personnel. However I don’t assume he would restrain himself from saying what he thinks on general content material. And he in all probability wouldn’t view his feedback as revealing a bias,” says former Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who’s recognized Malone for the reason that late Nineteen Seventies.
What we do know: Malone made his feedback in November. In February, Zaslav introduced he was hiring TV producer Chris Licht to run CNN after which the group promptly started messaging its plans to “push CNN again to onerous information, and away from red-hot liberal opining.” And now one of many faces most frequently critiqued by CNN’s right-wing competitor Fox Information is out of a job.
Malone is well-known within the pay TV world, the place throughout the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties he held extra energy than arguably another govt or investor. And for some time, some TV watchers knew who he was as effectively, when he grew to become a stand-in for every little thing individuals hated about cable TV on the time. Al Gore memorably referred to as him “Darth Vader” on the Senate ground.
However that was some time in the past, and until you’re paying a whole lot of consideration to company media possession, it’s possible you’ll not know who he’s at this level. Let’s sketch it out.
Malone, who was raised in Connecticut and graduated from Yale with levels in economics and engineering, traveled west and made his fortune by getting in on the bottom ground of the cable TV enterprise within the Nineteen Seventies.
In its earliest years, cable was offered as a strategy to ship broadcast channels in areas the place regular TV antennas wouldn’t work, just like the Rocky Mountains. Malone constructed up his Denver-based firm Tele-Communications Inc. right into a cable Goliath by rolling up a collection of small mom-and-pop operators utilizing debt financing. Alongside the way in which, he used his energy as a distributor to extract possession stakes in cable TV programmers like Fox Information and QVC. He cashed out by selling to AT&T for $48 billion in 1999.
Since then, Malone has purchased and offered and swapped firms and stakes in firms again and again, all the time with an eye fixed on preserving his taxes as little as potential. He now owns a portfolio that features significant possession in every little thing from satellite tv for pc music service SiriusXM to baseball’s Atlanta Braves to Reside Nation, the ticketing and live performance big. And till final 12 months, he was the key pressure behind Discovery, the cable programmer greatest recognized for actuality TV exhibits like Deadliest Catch. He plucked NBC govt David Zaslav to run Discovery in 2006.
That relationship has given Zaslav a strong mentor. It has additionally made Zaslav very rich, via a series of giant stock-based compensation packages. The 2 males have been in fixed contact through telephone calls and walk-and-talks over time.
“Anyone who underestimates the quantity of house that [Malone] occupies in David’s strategic thoughts and emotional bandwidth has simply not adopted the final decade,” says considered one of Zaslav’s pals. “He’s in awe of John,” says one other Zaslav pal.
The 2 males do have very totally different politics: Zaslav has been a constant donor to Democrats; Malone is conservative/libertarian whose bona fides embody a former board seat on the Cato Institute, the libertarian assume tank, and a $250,000 donation to Donald Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee. (Two years later, Malone had pivoted: He informed CNBC that Trump generated an excessive amount of chaos and shouldn’t have a second time period. “Look, I believe a whole lot of the issues Trump has tried to do — figuring out issues and attempting to unravel them — has been nice. I simply don’t assume he’s the proper man to do it,” he stated.)
Malone has additionally stated he admires Rupert Murdoch as a enterprise frenemy and shares a political viewpoint with the Fox Information proprietor: “Rupert is form of like I’m. He’s a libertarian, however he thinks we should always have a robust navy,” he informed the Financial Times in 2017.
However not like Murdoch, who loves each proudly owning information retailers and getting his arms soiled working them, there’s no report of Malone entering into the positive particulars of the properties he owns.
Which brings us again to the bizarre nature of his pronouncements about CNN final fall. Whereas Malone has beforehand talked about his affection for Fox Information — the US “wants Fox Information or one thing prefer it. As a result of in any other case, every little thing’s leftist,” he informed FT — it’s uncommon for him to opine about programming decisions in his personal portfolio of properties. You’ll be hard-pressed, as an example, to seek out him commenting on the music acts Reside Nation books for its venues.
And that’s why some individuals who know Zaslav are satisfied Malone has informed Zaslav his theories in regards to the course he’d like CNN to go. And that given their relationship, Zaslav can be all ears. Below that principle, Malone — who now owns a small sliver of Warner Brothers Discovery as a substitute of a lot of Discovery — wouldn’t must explicitly inform Zaslav tips on how to run CNN. He would simply broadly lay out his view of the world, which Zaslav put into place by hiring Licht, who had produced Morning Joe on MSNBC, the CBS Morning Information, and most not too long ago The Late Present With Steven Colbert.
That argument raises actual hackles at varied corners of the WBD, the place defenders of each Zaslav and Licht say the 2 males aren’t taking marching orders from Malone — it’s simply that all of them agree.
Largely agree, that’s: Licht’s supporters acknowledge that Malone’s feedback holding up Fox Information as a paragon of journalism can be searing for CNN staff, as an example. However they’re aligned on the concept that a CNN that occupies a center floor between Fox and MSNBC is sweet for American democracy in addition to WBD’s enterprise prospects as a result of then CNN can seize an viewers that doesn’t need partisan information from the left or proper.
The concept Fox Information is a journalism outlet, versus cynical pandering within the type of a information channel that sometimes experiences information, isn’t price debating right here. However if you happen to wanted convincing, you can, say, learn Jane Mayer’s piece about the channel’s complete immersion with the Trump White House.
Or, extra pointedly, you can ask Chris Wallace, the longtime Fox anchor who left for CNN final 12 months, saying that he might not abide the channel’s protection — notably the way in which it handled Trump’s 2020 election lies and the January 6 riots. Working as a journalist at Fox had change into “increasingly unsustainable,” Wallace stated.
Malone, who declined an interview request for this story, seems to have been stung by the furor that erupted in media circles when Stelter was let go final week. In an e mail to the New York Times, he stated he had nothing to do with Stelter’s departure, including that whereas he needed “the ‘information’ portion of CNN to be extra centrist … I’m not in management or straight concerned.”
Malone doubled down on that argument in one other Times story a few days later, complaining that CNN had melded opinion and information, and holding up “Fox Information host Bret Baier … [as] a reliably centrist newscaster.”
Which, once more, echoes what new CNN boss Chris Licht has been telling staff he needs to do along with his community — to take away the notion, which he thinks is correct, that CNN has a liberal bias, and that an excessive amount of of its programming has change into “outrage porn.”
I’m with Licht, by the way in which, with regards to critiquing CNN’s reliance on breathlessness normally. And an early resolution he made to tamp down its use of “breaking information” branding for nearly each merchandise it talks about is a positive concept.
However arguing that CNN misplaced its approach throughout the Trump period looks as if a misguided critique, provided that CNN, like each different information outlet, was coping with an unprecedented circumstance: Individuals had elected a president who routinely lied about every little thing and whose destruction of democratic norms was capped off by an effort to overturn a free election.
I believe it’s additionally vital to know how 24-hour cable TV information operates: Viewership spikes when there’s a real information occasion, however past these uncommon moments, information channels wrestle to retain viewers. Which is why all of them gin up faux urgency about no matter they assume their viewers will reply to.
Pre-Trump, CNN’s answer was to deal with jaw-dropping however not terribly vital occasions and speak about them incessantly — see, as an example, its round-the-clock coverage of the “Poop Cruise,” which concerned a Carnival cruise ship and … poop. Or the mysterious disappearance of a Malaysian airliner, which prompted CNN anchor Don Lemon to ask if a black hole might be the culprit.
So if you happen to had been cynical sufficient — like me — you can merely describe Trump as a unending poop cruise, assured to create new content material every day.
And I don’t understand how Licht can resolve that systemic downside, with or with out Trump. And at the same time as he guarantees to characteristic extra reporting over bloviating, CNN already boasts a robust and well-supported newsroom, which is why it could possibly do glorious protection in Washington and around the world. I additionally don’t assume that Licht is ever going to persuade a Fox Information fan — whether or not it’s Malone or anybody else — that CNN is now a centrist information outlet, regardless of who he hires or fires. However no matter adjustments he does make could also be significant, particularly because the US heads right into a charged election cycle.
It’s potential, by the way in which, that none of this may matter a lot to CNN’s proprietor in the long term. Some business sources I’ve talked to argue that despite the fact that CNN makes round a billion {dollars} a 12 months in revenue, it received’t imply a lot to the long-term way forward for Warner Bros. Discovery.
That’s as a result of WBD has a lot greater issues. For starters, like each massive media firm that makes most of its cash from conventional TV, its viewers are departing every day at no cost and paid digital choices. And WBD has particular challenges. Like a inventory value that values the mixed firm at $33 billion — lower than half of what Time Warner alone was price in 2016 when it offered to AT&T. It additionally has an enormous pile of debt to service, which is without doubt one of the causes Zaslav is chopping initiatives and employees.
Malone has constantly argued that massive media firms must consolidate in an effort to attain the size they’ll must compete globally — and by merging his Discovery with Warner Media, he’s already made a step in that course.
But it surely’s potential to see one other transaction down the street, the place WBD picks up one other asset and Malone’s energy will get much more restricted. Or perhaps it merely sells itself to an even bigger participant and Malone will get out of the enterprise altogether.
At that time, it wouldn’t matter what he thinks of CNN. However no matter CNN has change into by then can be essential for the remainder of us.