CNN announced Thursday it will cut about 200 jobs from its traditional TV operations in favor of a comparable number of new digital roles such as data scientists and product engineers as well as different types of journalists.
This represents about 6% of its workforce of about 3,300 employees. About 1,000 work in Atlanta out of the Midtown headquarters.
Mark Thompson, who has running CNN for 15 months, told the New York Times half of the new jobs will be hired in the first half of this year.
“The process of change is essential if we’re to thrive in the future, but I both acknowledge and regret its very real human consequences,” he wrote in a memo to CNN staff Thursday.
A bulk of CNN’s digital operations are based in Atlanta so these changes could result in more net employees locally compared to New York or Washington D.C.
In a statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CNN said: “In order to continue to deliver journalism to our linear audiences while also serving a multiplatform and primarily digital audience, we are also shifting some resources to set us up for success and fully utilize the state-of-the-art facilities available to CNN in our original founding home of Atlanta.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
In his staff memo, Thompson noted: “Our objective is a simple one: to shift CNN’s gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN’s future as one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”
Thompson also told the Times that “if we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”
CNN’s cable network has generated most of the revenue and profits for the media organization over the past 35 years, but shifting viewership patterns are battering its bottom line. And interest in news in general has waned since the election with ratings for CNN dropping sharply for both its digital and traditional TV sides.
Thompson started signaling his plans early last year to focus more on digital operations, but he waited until after the presidential inauguration to start making bigger moves.
Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, has offered up $70 million to help CNN make the transition, the company said. CNN said it has a goal of generating $1 billion from its digital operation annually by 2030. It did not say how much its digital side creates in revenue now.
Oliver Darcy, CNN’s former media reporter who left last summer to create his own subscription newsletter Status, said the cuts in the cable operations are not surprising: “I expect we will see more of them in the future.”
CNN launched a paywall for much of its CNN.com content last year, costing $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year. It did not release current subscription numbers. (Readers can read a limited number of stories a month, but subscribers can get unlimited access plus bonus content.)
Thompson previously announced plans for a subscription streaming service but did not provide tangible details Thursday beyond the fact it will have both lifestyle and feature oriented products. He ran the New York Times from 2004 to 2012 and helped it introduce successful puzzle, cooking and shopping features.
A CNN streaming service launch in 2022 was cut short just weeks after new Warner Bros. Discovery corporate owners took over.
Frank Sesno, former CNN D.C. bureau chief and current media and public affairs professor at George Washington University, does not envy the difficult challenge Thompson faces.
“While the shift is absolutely necessary,” Sesno said, “it remains an untested gamble. Can they replace the audience and revenue from its heyday? And it’s more than money. When a TV is on CNN in a hotel lobby or airport lounge or family living room, it becomes a focal point, a centerpiece. Digitally, you can reach more people but does it define itself as a compelling brand?”
In addition, the digital world “is a crowded universe and CNN is a little late to the game [when it comes to streaming and subscriptions]. My hope is that its Ted Turner DNA that revolutionized news can do it again. It’s a tall order and will require excellent content, real journalism and creative inspiration.”
Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com. Jim Acosta at the Atlanta Press Club August 10, 2019.
Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com. Jim Acosta at the Atlanta Press Club August 10, 2019.
Thompson is tweaking its daytime CNN schedule, with veteran D.C.-based anchor Wolf Blitzer moving to mornings and Washington D.C.-based anchor Jim Acosta’s 10 a.m. show dropped. Acosta has reported aggressively about Donald Trump over the past eight years and has occasionally been a target of Trump’s ire.
“Thompson pulled Acosta from CNN’s lineup without a real explanation as to why,” Darcy said. Thompson “could have found ways to keep Acosta anchoring, especially given that he posts some of the network’s highest ratings and has been a loyal employee for nearly two decades... It’s impossible to ignore that his inexplicable decision comes just as Donald Trump returns to power.”
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