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Kingdom Kutler

Rebecca Kutler, Jeff Zucker’s onetime heir apparent at CNN, is now the big boss at MSNBC, where she’ll lead the company into the SpinCo wilderness—managing talent, decline, and anxieties along the way. And yet, she’s not only the best person for the job, but perhaps the only one who can do it.

MSNBC
In the grand scheme of things, Kutler’s appointment doesn’t change anything about the long-term trajectory of MSNBC as it ventures beyond the borders of the Comcast/NBCUniversal empire and into the wilderness. Photo: Shaun Heasley/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
January 16, 2025

Three years ago, before the collapse of CNN—before Jeff Zucker’s trauma-inducing defenestration, David Zaslav’s ruthless debt-reduction exercises, and Chris Licht’s reign of terror; before the dumbfounding programming forfeitures and precipitous ratings declines; and before Mark Thompson set out to transform the business into a digital juggernaut (any day now, Mark)—the heir apparent to take over the once-formidable cable news network was a little-known, then-42-year-old company veteran named Rebecca Kutler. At the time, the amiable and well-liked Kutler was overseeing programming for the network’s ill-fated streaming science experiment, CNN+.