The Warner Bros. Discovery chief, David Zaslav, was clear from the day he took control of CNN in 2022 about what he wanted for the cable news network. Publicly and privately he told associates, reporters and whoever else might care that he wanted to move the network away from what he viewed as left-leaning \u201cadvocacy\u201d and toward more \u201cbalance.\u201d His CNN would not be anti-Trump, and would be more welcoming for Republicans.<\/p>\n
As Mr. Zaslav\u2019s handpicked CNN leader, Chris Licht, appeared to struggle with that remit in the months that followed, Mr. Zaslav backed him with the ultimate carte blanche statement: \u201cRatings be damned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, the ratings would go on to be damned, as would be Mr. Licht\u2019s tenure, which abruptly ended after little more than a year on Wednesday, when Mr. Zaslav hit his limit.<\/p>\n
Mr. Licht\u2019s dismissal immediately raised a defining question for the television news industry and beyond: Can an unaligned independent approach to news work in today\u2019s splintered, on-demand media era, when audiences are primed for news on their own terms? And can it work in, of all places, the highly niche precincts of cable?<\/p>\n
In the end, Mr. Licht\u2019s attempt appeared to satisfy no one. And the early lines among some news commentators was that he had failed because his mission was impossible, a dead idea from a bygone time.<\/p>\n
In fact, Mr. Licht\u2019s short tenure does not provide an easy answer. His mission was in large part doomed by the particular\u00a0shape of his assignment, his own missteps and an apparently incomplete understanding of the network as it existed before his arrival.<\/p>\n
But it did illuminate just how hard it can be to find success where Mr. Licht was sent looking. Polarization is sky high, and Americans occupy dueling informational silos. Cable, a medium that played to divided interests from the start, is now competing with social media, where the most successful items tend to be the most stridently partisan and provocative.<\/p>\n
Yet for all of that, trying to create a media version of a shared public square is especially hard without a clear notion of what it means to be \u201cbalanced\u201d or to give equal say to \u201cboth voices\u201d \u2014 as Mr. Zaslav puts it. That is especially the case when former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, still falsely maintains that the 2020 election was \u201cstolen\u201d from him.<\/p>\n
And, several current and former CNN staff members said, that clear notion was precisely what was lacking under Mr. Licht and his boss, Mr. Zaslav, whose direction he was following. The definition was shaped more by what they did not want \u2014 all that had come before them under Mr. Licht\u2019s predecessor, Jeff Zucker \u2014 than what they did want.<\/p>\n
Several of them pointed to an early miscue from on high\u00a0that bred early mistrust \u2014 and undercut Mr. Licht \u2014 with the CNN staff before the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia, CNN\u2019s corporate parent, was even complete.<\/p>\n
In an interview on CNBC in November 2021, a prominent Warner Bros. Discovery board member, the cable pioneer John Malone, appeared to denigrate CNN and praise Fox News while discussing his own hopes for CNN under the new corporate structure.<\/p>\n
\u201cFox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news <\/em>news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions,\u201d Mr. Malone said. \u201cI would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.\u201d<\/p>\n It was taken as a slight to what was, in fact, a news organization brimming with distinguished journalists. Many of them revered Mr. Zucker, who was forced out in February 2022 after failing to report a romantic workplace relationship.<\/p>\n \u201cHis suggestion that CNN\u2019s thousands of journalists were not real was deeply insulting,\u201d said Brian Stelter, the network\u2019s former top media correspondent and former reporter at The New York Times. (Under Mr. Zucker, Mr. Stelter had emerged as the embodiment of the network\u2019s sometimes combative defense against \u201cfake news\u201d attacks that Mr. Trump waged against the network, and a regular target of conservative criticism. He would become one of the first high-profile anchors Mr. Licht cut.) \u201cI think the takeaway for many CNN staffers was that Malone wanted CNN to be more like Fox.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Stelter maintains that the network was already recalibrating for the post-Trump era when Mr. Zaslav took over. Many staff members agreed with Mr. Licht on the general notion that the network should play it straight, and he and others viewed the new leadership as \u201cpunching at a straw man.\u201d<\/p>\n For instance, one thing Mr. Zaslav and Mr. Licht made clear was that they wanted to reverse Republican resistance to appearing on CNN. \u201cRepublicans are back on the air,\u201d Mr. Zaslav declared at a media conference in May. \u201cRepublicans weren\u2019t on the air.\u201d<\/p>\n But the idea that including Republicans in its programming was novel to the network was at variance with recent history.<\/p>\n Early on during Mr. Trump\u2019s rise, Mr. Zucker was criticized for giving Mr. Trump too much uncritical airtime, and then for hiring a cast of stridently pro-Trump analysts like Jeffrey Lord and Corey Lewandowski.<\/p>\n The tone certainly changed as CNN, like many others in the news media, more aggressively challenged Mr. Trump\u2019s false statements. He, in turn, smeared them as \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201cenemies of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n Few came under attack from Mr. Trump the way CNN did. Memories are still fresh from the mail-bomb scare at its New York offices in 2018 \u2014 part of an environment that subsided before Mr. Licht and Mr. Zaslav arrived.<\/p>\n Even now, Mr. Zucker\u2019s fans at the network \u2014 and they are still legion \u2014 will say that if his incarnation of CNN at times appeared to run hot and angry, it had done so in defense of the truth.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder the Zucker regime, CNN said: \u2018We may sound outraged, but we\u2019re calling out lies and we stand for truth. If that sounds angry, so be it,\u2019\u201d said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief and now a professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.<\/p>\n Mr. Sesno said he, too, believed that it was incumbent upon the network to \u201ctone certain elements down and dial some things back\u201d from the Trump presidency. But he said Mr. Licht had gone about it the wrong way.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Licht was really trying to do, and it didn\u2019t work, was he was trying to make a tonal change but he made it sound like a substantive change," Mr. Sesno said.<\/p>\n The town hall that CNN conducted with Mr. Trump last month was not particularly unusual by the standards of the 2016 campaign. That, of course, was before the tumult created by four years of Trump governance and his election lies, which fueled the riots of Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n Mr. Licht\u2019s handling of the town hall would help seal his fate \u2014 particularly his decision to stage it before an ardently pro-Trump audience that cheered the former president as he delivered falsehoods and attacked the CNN host serving as his inquisitor, Kaitlan Collins.<\/p>\n There appeared to be wide agreement within CNN that the execution was bad. There was less uniformity about holding the town hall in the first place. Mr. Trump was, after all, the lead contender for the Republican presidential nomination.<\/p>\n As Anderson Cooper asked on air the next night in acknowledging viewer disappointment, \u201cDo you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?\u201d<\/p>\n An answer appeared to come in the days that followed: The network had its worst ratings week in eight years.<\/p>\n Even now, Mr. Zaslav appears intent on sticking to his strategy. \u201cRatings be damned,\u2019\u2019 he has said. But history shows no television strategy can survive eternal ratings damnation.<\/p>\n