CNN plots major overhaul as it enters a new Trump era

Give people news when and where they want it.

That, says CNN chief executive Mark Thompson, was one of the brilliant insights Mr Ted Turner had when he started the network at the dawn of cable TV. And if CNN does not follow that advice for the digital age, Mr Thompson says, the company may no longer exist.

“This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question,” Mr Thompson said in an interview. “If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

Mr Thompson has been spreading this message inside CNN during his first 15 months in the job. But now, he is taking the biggest steps yet to overhaul the company, steering it away from its reliance on traditional television and attempting to cash in on digital audiences wherever they are, at the same time that President Donald Trump has sent the news cycle into hyperdrive.

On Jan 23, the company announced that it would eliminate about 200 jobs focused on CNN’s traditional TV operations, and add about the same number for new digital roles like data scientists and product engineers. CNN is aiming to hire 100 of those people in the first half of 2025, its CEO said.

CNN also previewed a new streaming service, similar to its TV product, that it will charge for. Mr Thompson said CNN would also release a new subscription product in 2025 around “lifestyle” content – examples include food and fitness – though he did not specify what the product would be.

The digital efforts, Mr Thompson said, were financed by a US$70 million (S$94 million) investment for 2025 from CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Mr Thompson also announced a slew of changes to CNN’s TV schedule, replacing Mr Jim Acosta’s 10am show with The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer And Pamela Brown, and introducing a new morning show anchored by Ms Audie Cornish. The network is in talks with Mr Acosta about another role.

“In the end, this is about CNN being – as it has been in its history – an indispensable way in which many, many millions of people get their news,” Mr Thompson said in the interview.

The changes to the TV side of the business could be a blow to the newsroom’s morale during an uncertain time in the news industry. But in many ways, the challenge in front of Mr Thompson, 67, is similar to what he faced at his two previous jobs, as CEO of The New York Times and as director-general of the BBC. At both of those stops, major sources of traditional revenue were in long-term decline.

The traditional cable TV business remains CNN’s main revenue driver, but the network has been stuck in last place in the ratings among its main competitors, behind MSNBC and Fox News, the long-time leader. Its prime-time ratings have plummeted since the election, and its digital audience has also shrunk.

In December, the network saw its lowest period of web traffic in two years, according to analytics firm Comscore, with 90.5 million unique visits, down from a high point of 175.5 million in March 2020, during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. (CNN said that other news sites have experienced similar declines, adding that CNN.com was the top news site in terms of total audience in 2024.)

During a town-hall meeting with staff in the network’s New York City headquarters in January, Mr Thompson presented a series of slides that underscored the necessity of CNN’s digital pivot, flagging its underperforming advertising business and the lack of energy on its website.

Mr Thompson has been sounding the alarm about CNN’s digital progress since he joined, and he has told the staff repeatedly that big changes would be coming. In May, during a summit in Atlanta organised by Mr Thompson, executives were told that CNN’s reliance on its traditional TV business – which then encompassed roughly 72 per cent of revenue – had only increased in recent years.

By October, CNN had introduced a paywall to its website and app that targets readers who visit the site most often. At the end of 2024, Ms Alex MacCallum, a former New York Times executive who is CNN’s executive vice-president of digital products and services, said at a town hall with staff that the paywall had exceeded CNN’s expectations for subscribers but did not provide specific figures.

Mr Thompson and Ms MacCallum have also appealed to Mr David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, for additional investment in CNN’s digital priorities. Mr Zaslav greenlit the US$70 million investment for 2025.

One of those priorities has been vertical videos, which have become important to media organisations because they can be viewed easily on mobile phones.

CNN has begun increasing the number of vertical videos, and eventually plans to publish 50 to 100 of these videos per day. Executives have been encouraged by the results so far, with video engagement – a key metric at CNN – up 20 per cent in 2024.

They have also been prototyping a new video news service that allows users to swipe through vertical videos as they do on apps like TikTok and Instagram. Mr Thompson said it is not clear yet whether that will exist as a stand-alone product or as a section of CNN’s mobile app.

“You can use your thumb to flick from a CNN news story to a CNN anchor to a reporter,” Mr Thompson said. “That’s a really interesting experiment.”

Mr Trump, since his first run for president, has regularly criticised CNN’s coverage of him and his administration. Mr Jeff Zucker, the company’s CEO during Mr Trump’s first term, leaned hard into accountability coverage of the Trump administration and aired strident on-air criticism of the President during prime-time opinion shows. His replacement and Mr Thompson’s predecessor Chris Licht tried to steer the network towards a more neutral posture, an attempt to broaden the network’s viewership among conservative viewers.

In the interview, Mr Thompson said he wanted CNN journalists to avoid falling into any preset assumptions while covering Mr Trump’s second term, adding that “typecasting” any newsmaker “is bad journalism”.

Some news organisations have agonised over whether to carry Mr Trump – and his penchant for falsehoods – live on air. Mr Thompson said that CNN would continue to carry Mr Trump’s remarks live, with fact-checking, saying that Americans had a right to hear from the president of the US and “form their own view”. NYTIMES