This week, CNN C.E.O. Mark Thompson announced that he had hired Wall Street Journal video content chief Amanda Wills to serve in the newly created role of chief content officer, facilitating the news network’s long-awaited digital transformation. (For those keeping track, Thompson is about 530-plus days into the job.) The news was notable on a few fronts, though it garnered little fanfare beyond boilerplate write-ups in the trades. Such is the nature of personnel changes in TV these days—and especially at CNN, which is slouching through one of the most riveting periods in American political history with scant influence, a messy and archaic digital product, and averaging half a million linear viewers per hour of programming.