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0:35

This is Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That

0:37

is me. And for the second time

0:40

in, I don't know, a couple months, I'm talking to

0:42

Dylan Byers from Puck News. Dylan, when were you back,

0:44

when were you most recently on Recode Media? I

0:47

would have been the beginning

0:49

of summer. Beginning of summer.

0:52

And

0:52

when they got rid of Chris Licht, the

0:55

former chairman and CEO of

0:57

CNN. So you broke the news that the

0:59

head of CNN was out. Tuesday

1:02

night, you broke the news that the

1:04

new CNN CEO had been

1:06

hired. He is Mark Thompson. If you

1:08

are a deep media nerd, that name will be familiar

1:10

to you. For the rest of us, tell us who

1:12

Mark Thompson is.

1:14

Sure, Mark Thompson was

1:16

for a long time BBC

1:20

producer, executive producer,

1:23

executive, and then finally the director

1:25

general of the BBC, which

1:27

is sort of the equivalent, I think, of chairman

1:30

and CEO. And then,

1:33

more familiar to American media

1:35

fans, had a very, what is

1:37

I think widely seen

1:39

as a very successful run as

1:42

the CEO of the New York Times,

1:45

where he effectively

1:48

spearheaded the transformation

1:51

of that business from the sort

1:53

of

1:54

days when, you know, the Times

1:56

was indebted to Carlos Slim and

1:58

owned various real estate. estate assets

2:01

and I think a piece of the Boston Red Sox

2:03

and was sort of didn't have a digital strategy

2:06

to speak of to all of a sudden

2:08

being what we think of when we

2:10

think of the New York Times today, which is this sort

2:12

of growth oriented, multifaceted

2:17

lifestyle brand that is sort of has

2:19

things like

2:20

cooking and wire cutter and

2:23

all of these other assets that sort of prop up

2:25

the poor journalism news gathering

2:28

business. And in

2:30

that regard, I would say that he's coming

2:33

at this new position at CNN as

2:35

with both the experience in television,

2:38

which is the sort of legacy traditional

2:40

aspect of the CNN business, as

2:43

well as this understanding

2:44

of how to grow

2:46

a digital business, which is I think

2:49

very much where CNN needs to go

2:51

in the sort of post linear future. Yeah, we

2:53

can talk about where it's going to go. Let's talk about where

2:56

it is right now. Just remind

2:58

us why there is an opening

3:00

at the head of CNN. The

3:03

last guy was Chris Licht. He someone

3:05

that you've reported and others reported was always

3:08

the choice by David Zasloff who

3:10

runs WDB, Warner Brothers Discovery

3:12

to run CNN. He did not last

3:15

there, I think a year. What did Chris

3:17

Licht fail at? Why is he no longer in that

3:19

job?

3:21

Well, I think where

3:24

to begin. There's a lot of media coverage

3:26

about Chris Licht, but when we point out why

3:29

he doesn't work there anymore, what

3:31

did he not do or what did he screw up? I

3:33

think he failed on a number of fronts. I think

3:35

one, he failed just as a chief

3:38

executive period. I don't think he

3:40

was, his history was as an executive producer

3:43

of both morning and late night television. He

3:45

was probably ill qualified from the beginning

3:48

to be thinking about the grand

3:50

business considerations, let alone

3:53

running a news organization that

3:55

was not just one show like he did at Morning Joe

3:59

or CBS's Morning Joe.

3:59

but rather a global 24-hour entity of 4,000, 4,500 employees. I

4:07

think he failed in that regard. I think even

4:09

in his area of expertise, which

4:12

was programming, I think he failed to actually

4:14

create good television. He

4:17

sort of dragged his feet on coming up with a primetime

4:19

strategy. He made a lot of moves of talent

4:22

that were sort of meant to address internal

4:24

politics, but did not address the fundamental

4:26

problem of making good television,

4:28

which is still what the TV business is about,

4:31

whether it's news or anything else.

4:33

And he failed to,

4:36

I mean, if we're just being frank, he sort of

4:39

very quickly alienated

4:41

or pissed off

4:43

a lot of the talent

4:45

and rank and file through some of his management

4:48

decisions. So I think

4:50

that coupled with the headwinds of the mismanagement

4:53

of his own press

4:55

sort of led to a

4:57

place where, for Warner Brothers Discovery

4:59

and for David Zaslov, it was sort

5:01

of untenable to keep him on board.

5:04

So I can imagine why Mark Thompson,

5:06

who you and others, I think Ben Smith originally reported,

5:09

he was under consideration, but she reported that

5:11

Zaslov really wanted Thompson to take

5:13

this job. I can see a lot of reasons

5:15

why he makes sense on paper as

5:18

a business person, and the

5:20

Times job was a business job, right? He wasn't

5:22

directing the Times coverage. He managed

5:25

the Times in a real crucial

5:27

pivot point for them when they went from sort of

5:29

the ad-based model to the subscriber-based

5:31

model, it was phenomenally successful. He

5:34

didn't screw anything up. There's no scandal

5:36

attached to his tenure there. He's British

5:39

and Americans are really impressed with an English

5:41

accent. BBC

5:44

sounds like an important place to have come

5:46

from, but it is the CNN job,

5:48

at least the way it's been run the last couple,

5:51

under the last couple of men who ran it. That's

5:53

a programming job. That's deciding

5:56

what shows should run where, which anchor

5:58

should run where.

5:59

Both Zucker and Lick were very hands-on

6:03

about the production of the shows

6:05

all the way down not just talent But what the talent's

6:07

wearing everything else like that Does

6:09

Thompson have any of those chops and

6:12

and if not what happens to

6:14

that part of the job?

6:15

So I actually think that he does

6:17

and again here in the states were

6:20

familiar with him as the the CEO of the New York Times

6:22

but I went back and I talked to a lot of

6:25

folks who he worked with at the Times this week

6:27

and What they said is

6:29

that he always displayed a real love

6:31

of television a real and a real

6:33

sort of Understanding of the language of television.

6:35

He had a lot of thoughts that he shared for instance

6:38

about what he was seeing on American

6:41

cable news or broadcast news and Indeed

6:44

so much more of his CV

6:47

is made up with that television experience

6:49

as opposed to the digital experience And then you go further

6:52

back and you talk to folks who worked with the BBC Many

6:55

of them sing his praises as well not

6:57

just as an executive on the business side but but

7:00

very much in terms of his sort of

7:03

editorial and programming intuition

7:05

and

7:07

if the failure of the Chris

7:09

Lick era was that he

7:12

was a programmer by nature

7:14

but came in and tried to be an executive

7:16

which he was not equipped to do

7:19

The difference here is that Mark Thompson

7:21

seems much more

7:23

Savvy across all fronts

7:25

and he is also being given a much more clear mandate

7:28

to do all things in addition to running the

7:30

business he has also been described

7:32

as by WBD leadership as a sort

7:35

of

7:35

Effectively the editor in chief of CNN

7:38

now He will continue to have a lot

7:40

of people below him who can make those

7:42

sort of day-to-day Programming decisions

7:45

and run their shows the way they want

7:47

And I don't know if he necessarily

7:49

needs to be or wants to be sort of micro

7:53

Managerially involved as Jeff Zucker

7:56

was in every you know, every

7:58

programming decision everything

7:59

that was said, every chiron that appeared on the

8:02

bottom third of the screen, but he might be,

8:04

and that is the mandate he's been given. So it really will

8:07

be, I

8:08

think Jeff Zucker's CNN was Jeff

8:10

Zucker's CNN. I think Chris Lick's CNN

8:12

was sort of the first

8:15

crack that Warner Brothers Discovery took at it,

8:17

and they mismanaged a lot of things. And

8:19

I think the new CNN

8:21

will be much more Mark Thompson's CNN.

8:24

Our colleague Ed Lee pointed

8:26

on Twitter today that the British media environment's

8:29

very different than the US media environment,

8:31

especially when it comes to TV. There just simply is a lot

8:33

less competition. It's one thing

8:35

to go, I'm a fond observer of

8:37

television, and I enjoy comparing

8:40

the differences between MSNBC and Fox and CNN. So

8:42

another thing to say, I'm going to plot out a course that

8:46

figures out where CNN can work

8:48

in a hyper-competitive world where

8:51

linear TV period is in

8:53

decline.

8:54

Any sense that he's up for that challenge?

8:56

Yeah, I mean, look,

8:59

you're right. CNN

9:01

is facing a lot of headwinds.

9:04

It is facing the headwinds that everyone in the linear

9:06

television business is facing because of

9:08

the decline of the business model itself.

9:11

And I think his experience with the

9:13

New

9:14

York Times, with the digital

9:16

growth and things like that could be extremely

9:18

meaningful for CNN here if he's

9:21

given the leeway to do everything that I think he

9:23

wants to do. On the programming

9:25

side,

9:27

he's facing headwinds that some of his competitors

9:29

are not facing, which is obviously

9:31

Fox News is very confident in its

9:34

editorial bent, and MSNBC is very

9:36

confident in its editorial bent, and MSNBC

9:38

has indeed been thriving,

9:41

relatively speaking, from a ratings perspective

9:44

because of the Trump indictments and

9:46

the election season that we're in.

9:48

The sort of pivot that CNN took under

9:50

Warner Brothers Discovery and under Licked to

9:53

be this sort of centrist,

9:56

respectful to both sides, have more Republicans

9:58

on the air. I don't actually

10:00

think that that in and of itself was a bad

10:03

strategy. I just go back to the fact that Chris

10:05

Licht actually didn't execute at making

10:07

good television. And I think that Mark Thompson,

10:10

it remains to be seen. I think Ed

10:12

is right that the British media market

10:15

is different. The expectations and demands of that

10:17

market are different. The competitive landscape is different.

10:20

But

10:20

I do anticipate

10:22

that he will be more thoughtful

10:25

and creative. And

10:27

in many, in many ways, I think that one of

10:29

the reasons Mark Thompson was willing to take

10:31

this job was because he he only sees

10:34

upside. I mean, in many ways, CNN

10:36

has hit a sort of nadir in terms of the ratings

10:39

and in terms of the reputation. And

10:41

so I think anything he does, buoyed

10:43

by the increased audience

10:46

of a campaign season and one as sort of historic

10:48

as this, I think there's a lot of potential

10:51

here for for upside. It's still go

10:53

lower, could still go lower. They're making 800 million

10:57

dollars, give or take. And in profit this year,

10:59

that number can keep shrinking. You mentioned

11:02

that the political positioning of it. This

11:04

was something that it wasn't just Chris

11:06

Licht, right? It was his boss, David Zaslav, saying

11:09

we need to be in the middle. It's very important

11:11

for us. It's important as a business

11:13

imperative. It's also important for the country.

11:16

David Zaslav's boss, John Malone,

11:18

very, very influential shareholder and sort of Malone's

11:21

main benefactor for years,

11:24

was also super explicit that he wanted CNN

11:26

to be more like Fox News. But he thought

11:28

that meant centrist. Any indication

11:31

from Zaslav or

11:34

his people that they've had a rethink

11:36

about that positioning argument and that Thompson

11:38

might do something different?

11:40

Or do they want him to do what they wanted Chris Licht to do,

11:42

but do it better? I think the latter. I don't

11:44

think the fundamental mandate has

11:46

changed. I certainly don't think that someone

11:49

once

11:52

told me that the older you get, the harder it is

11:54

to change your worldview. I don't think John

11:56

Malone's view or David Zaslav's view on which

11:59

CNN should be.

11:59

B has fundamentally changed.

12:02

I do think that they see the BBC

12:05

as a sort of model

12:07

of a journalistic

12:09

institution that can, you

12:12

know, and I'm sure it's much more complicated

12:14

than this on the other side of the pond, but that

12:16

can be sort of generally known

12:18

as being a non-vicerated

12:20

voice. Authoritative voice, yeah. Yes,

12:22

authoritative voice. I think that is ideally what they

12:25

want CNN to be. Again, you go back

12:27

to this landscape, it's very hard,

12:28

right? I mean, it's a very

12:31

partisan environment and the expectations

12:34

for television viewers in this audience are different. They don't,

12:37

all research suggests that they don't actually

12:40

just want, you know, bland

12:42

milk toast news reports at

12:44

night. They actually want entertainment, they want perspective,

12:46

they want voices, and it's why people

12:48

gravitate toward the Rachel Maddows or

12:51

the Sean Hannitys, and the

12:53

fundamental challenge

12:56

for CNN has always been outside

12:59

of those great breaking news moments when, you

13:01

know, Russia's invading Ukraine or protestors

13:03

are storming the Capitol, how do

13:05

you create compelling television

13:08

and it becomes

13:09

all the more challenging when you're trying to do so

13:12

and appeal

13:13

to multiple political perspectives?

13:15

Yeah, yeah, I just don't think that exists. I

13:18

think that's something you tell advertisers and

13:20

you may tell your owners

13:22

and it's a good thing to say out loud

13:24

and it's not a thing that actually viewers will

13:27

respond to, so we will see. And they may not,

13:29

and then in the other case, I mean, if you think about the BBC, I've

13:32

never, again, I've never lived in England, but I

13:34

don't think about the BBC

13:37

as being something that's terribly exciting

13:40

from a programming perspective or terribly dynamic.

13:43

I think about it being incredibly authoritative and

13:45

reliable, and maybe David

13:48

Zaslav and company still believe

13:50

that if they just have that asset and

13:52

if CNN has that reputation, it

13:55

will bring added value to the max

13:57

streaming service where they are going to be.

13:59

simulcasting more and more of that CNN

14:02

linear content.

14:30

some radiologists and

14:32

maybe they can even write like Shakespeare. But how

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14:35

trust the

14:37

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now wherever you get your podcasts.

15:17

And we're back. So the thing that

15:19

Mark Thompson can do right now is not screw

15:22

up, not make things worse, hopefully

15:25

improve the rating somewhat. And

15:27

so that is a giant business. So if you keep,

15:30

you know, improve the ratings without

15:32

incurring a lot of costs, you can make more money

15:34

there. That's that's an immediate hit for

15:37

immediate help to a company that by the

15:39

way needs help. We often get accused

15:41

of overstating CNN's importance, but Warner

15:43

Brothers is now a cash strap company so they

15:45

could use additional profit. But big

15:47

picture you seem to amenable

15:51

to the pitch that there's a digital

15:53

future for CNN and he can help them pivot

15:55

into it and it starts with this plan

15:58

to start streaming.

15:59

some CNN

16:03

on Warner Brothers, I'm sorry, on Max. So

16:07

give me the theory of the case. I mean, is

16:09

that sort of the main play you think for

16:12

CNN in the future or is there some other

16:14

reality that could work out for them?

16:17

Well,

16:18

let's just start with the assumption that Warner

16:20

Brothers wants to keep CNN in the fold,

16:22

which I think that Mark Thompson and I are coupled with this

16:24

streaming strategy, suggest they do for at least a

16:26

little while longer. For at least a year until there's a Warner

16:29

Brothers combination and then

16:31

the conventional wisdom is that those two companies

16:33

will combine. At that point, they'll have both NBC

16:36

and CNN. They won't need both and one of them will go.

16:38

Exactly, but starting with that assumption,

16:40

I think that when you're just talking about a

16:43

streaming strategy, the thing

16:45

about almost all of

16:48

the streaming

16:50

services that news networks

16:52

provide, the vast majority

16:54

of them, they feature sort of ancillary,

16:57

complimentary additive content.

16:59

They don't feature the core product and as Howard- They're

17:02

not replacement. They're not replacement and

17:04

as Howard Stern, I think famously joked

17:06

when CNN Plus

17:08

was getting up and

17:10

running is, no

17:12

one watches CNN anyway, how are you gonna

17:14

get people to pay $5

17:16

to watch something they don't wanna watch for free

17:18

and the theory there, which is

17:21

not dissimilar from the theory of ESPN Plus

17:23

was

17:24

we are building the infrastructure so

17:26

that when we finally do get to move the core

17:28

product to streaming, everything will be

17:30

set up and ready to go and we'll

17:32

even have a little bit of a built-in audience.

17:35

I think what I'm sort of,

17:37

my interest is peaked by the fact that

17:40

with this new CNN Max streaming

17:43

thing, that

17:45

they are being bolder than any of their competitors

17:49

in

17:49

testing the limits of their agreements

17:52

with cable providers

17:54

and saying, you know what? We're gonna go ahead and

17:56

stream some of our best content.

18:00

on the linear network and we're

18:02

gonna have Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper and Anderson

18:04

Cooper and we're gonna do it

18:07

in real time and at least there. And

18:09

it's gonna be their shows because

18:11

this is something that I didn't understand initially

18:14

in the way they were describing it initially. I'd seemed like it

18:16

was gonna be like every other

18:18

service you've described where it

18:20

was gonna be some talent from the network

18:22

but they weren't gonna doing the thing they did like

18:25

when there was CNN plus it was gonna be what

18:27

Anderson Cooper's book club? Jake

18:30

Tapper's book club and Don Lemon's talk show. And

18:32

by the way I thought that's what they were doing

18:34

too. I had to read the release like three

18:36

times

18:37

and then interview a bunch of executives

18:39

that weren't really discovering it. And so

18:41

I appreciate you correcting me because I looked at it

18:43

and said well this is just the same bullshit. But

18:46

you now believe they are gonna show the actual

18:48

Anderson Cooper show, the actual Jake

18:50

Tapper show in real time. The stuff that

18:52

you could watch on CNN, you will now be

18:54

able to watch on Max this fall. Yes, now

18:56

a skeptic might again say

18:58

well no one's watching it on linear so who's

19:01

gonna watch it for free on screen? But it

19:03

is their most popular programming. It is their most.

19:05

It's their most popular programming and at least you are getting the

19:07

actual core product

19:10

there or at least some of it

19:12

and a significant amount of it. Now

19:15

that to me is like

19:17

the barrier to entry.

19:19

That in and of itself is not

19:22

the strategy that will carry

19:24

CNN

19:25

into a prosperous future.

19:28

I think what will are and this is

19:30

hopefully where Mark Thompson can

19:32

be creative

19:33

and bring some of what he learned at the New York Times

19:36

is

19:37

you have to rethink all

19:39

of how people are consuming media

19:41

and what people want. And in fact my colleague Julie

19:44

Alexander wrote a great piece this

19:46

week about the CNN Max play with

19:48

all of these sort of ideas for not

19:51

thinking along the lines of how do we move this

19:53

sort of linear offering on linear

19:55

television or to streaming but rather like what

19:58

are viewer habits? How do people?

20:00

engage with YouTube or TikTok

20:03

and things like that, and how can you

20:05

make the CNN Max experience

20:08

cater to more of those people

20:10

so that CNN isn't just sort of

20:12

sitting there in the background as

20:15

this,

20:16

you know, asset to maybe reduce churn

20:18

for the people who still wanna have access to

20:20

a live news feed when those big news events happen.

20:22

It's a really tough one because I believe

20:26

that what we think of as TV news

20:28

is just going away with the rest

20:30

of linear TV, that it is a habit that

20:32

makes sense to people of a certain age who remember

20:34

flipping channels, who might even remember watching

20:37

national, you know, the national news

20:39

at 5.30 or 11, and

20:42

they know that they're supposed to watch CNN

20:44

at night if they wanna be informed. And

20:46

in for a streaming world, whether it's a YouTube

20:48

world or TikTok world, where

20:50

you're generally leaning into stuff you want, I guess TikTok's

20:52

a little bit separate from that. The point is you go find stuff

20:54

you want, and so unless you know you want

20:56

news, you're not gonna watch news.

21:00

You know, it's why CNBC works

21:02

during the day because it's on in people's offices,

21:05

and at night it goes to, you know, 0.0 ratings

21:09

because no one willingly turns

21:11

on CNBC at night. CNN is

21:13

sort of the flip of that. People want

21:15

to watch CNN at night because they wanna watch Jake

21:18

Tapper,

21:19

Anderson Cooper, et cetera. So it

21:22

is very hard for me to imagine the person

21:24

who's turning on Max to watch, whether

21:27

it's Dr. Pimple Popper or the Sopranos, also

21:30

says, and I would also like to watch some news,

21:32

but that is the great live test we're now gonna find.

21:34

Well, but even, see, they've got a long

21:36

way to go in terms of innovating in that

21:39

space. I mean, one thing that they are excited about

21:41

now, which if you get any WBD

21:43

executive on the phone, they'll tell you about this with great

21:45

enthusiasm, is that you could be watching

21:47

Dr. Pimple Popper or Succession

21:50

or Sex and the City, and if the

21:52

Pope

21:52

dies, they're gonna have like, CNN

21:55

Max is going to send up a push

21:58

notification on your screen so you can jump.

21:59

from your show to the news. And they're

22:02

like, this is a great innovation. I'm like, sort

22:04

of, but also, in what world

22:06

do you think that anyone who needs to know about the Pope

22:09

dying isn't already going to get that information

22:11

on their phone, which they're already, you

22:13

know, I think a lot of audiences already spend

22:16

a lot of time looking at their phone while they are watching

22:18

these other shows that you have.

22:20

So it's just, you've

22:22

got to go much further than that. And that

22:25

even if someone interrupted their viewing experience,

22:28

let's make it during

22:31

White Lotus. We'll upscale it a bit from Dr.

22:33

Temple Popper. Says, oh,

22:35

I'm going to stop watching this show that I like

22:38

a lot

22:39

to watch some anchors talking about the Pope dying.

22:41

I think that also betrays a sort

22:43

of an older TV view of the

22:45

world. Again, maybe I'm wrong. We'll see. I'm

22:48

all up for them experimenting with it. All

22:50

right, Dylan, last question for you. Mark Thompson

22:52

doesn't start till October. Things

22:54

will be well underway right with

22:56

the election, plus this max

22:59

move that CNN is making. Do

23:01

you imagine he can show up and make an impact

23:04

right away at CNN? Or do you think he's got

23:06

to do a listening tour and

23:08

be really wary of not

23:11

upsetting staff that's already gone through

23:13

a big shake up? And actually, he's not going

23:15

to touch it much for the first few months.

23:17

I know for a fact he will do a listening

23:19

tour. And I think he has had

23:22

ample time to see the

23:24

various mistakes that were made by his predecessor.

23:27

There is going to be, in fact, there already

23:30

is, there are some mixed feelings

23:33

at CNN, particularly I think once

23:35

you get up to the interim leadership,

23:37

Amy and Telus, Virginia Mosley,

23:40

and others, David Levy, who sort of

23:42

were blindsided by this, some

23:44

of whom thought they might have been interviewed for

23:46

the CEO position, or at

23:48

least counseled about it. And of course, David

23:51

Zasloff just does what he apparently always does,

23:53

which is just came in, picked his guy, and

23:56

put him in place. Perspectives

23:59

of others be damned.

24:00

And that might create

24:03

a little bit of friction at the jump, but

24:07

when Mark Thompson took over the New York Times,

24:10

there was some initial

24:12

push back to his leadership and his wanting

24:15

to come into the newsroom and having ideas about

24:17

what the newsroom should be doing. And

24:19

he said very confidently,

24:22

this is my company, I'm running the company,

24:25

we're gonna run my playbook. And it worked.

24:27

And I think that right now, as much

24:29

as CNN Rankin File and

24:32

Talent

24:33

are still reeling

24:35

from the last two years,

24:37

from

24:39

Jeff Zucker's ouster, the

24:41

disastrous run of Chris Licht,

24:44

and then sort of they finally now found a little

24:46

bit of stability under this interim leadership.

24:48

I think fundamentally what

24:50

they want is they want one

24:53

strong leader who has a clear

24:55

vision for how to make the network

24:58

relevant and

25:00

successful. And if he can come

25:02

in, I think he will have a fair

25:04

amount of goodwill

25:06

from the get-go based off of his

25:08

previous experience. And

25:10

I think all of this sort of, you

25:13

know, inside baseball palace intrigue

25:15

about the power structure and who should have

25:18

gotten what or who should have been given a phone

25:20

call will go away. And

25:22

then we will just sort of enter the Mark

25:24

Thompson era at CNN. I would just

25:26

add the

25:27

greater challenge is going to be

25:30

above him because Mark Thompson is

25:32

not going to be like Chris Licht in terms of just

25:34

managing up to David Zasloff. He's

25:36

going to have his own vision for how to do this. And the question

25:38

is, will he and David Zasloff, but heads

25:41

will David Zasloff give him the leeway to

25:43

do what he wants to do with CNN,

25:47

even if it doesn't always perfectly

25:50

fit into his broader vision for Warner Brothers

25:52

Discovery and Max. And that is going to be an interesting

25:54

thing to watch. I think if he makes him money, does

25:57

not create bad headlines. And again,

25:59

do not discount.

25:59

an English accent. He

26:02

will go nuts for an English accent.

26:05

He'll be successful. Dylan Byers, I enjoy your

26:07

California accent. I enjoy talking to you twice

26:09

this summer.