A New Plot Twist at CNN

Trump’s Pandora’s Box, Media Mondays, Hollywood’s New Reality
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Trump’s Pandora’s Box, Media Mondays, Hollywood’s New Reality

Happy Fourth of July from Puck! Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to the latest and most provocative reporting from our elite team of journalists.

Today, we lead with Dylan Byers’ exclusive reporting on the leadership vacuum atop CNN Digital, the frequently under-appreciated web juggernaut (bigger than The New York Times) and profit machine ($120 to $150 million) that is nonetheless bleeding executive talent under David Zaslav’s belt-tightening regime.

Plus, below the fold, Bill Cohan surveys Wall Street attorneys and former prosecutors on the all-consuming legal question of the moment: Could Donald Trump be indicted? Jon Kelly and Peter Hamby discuss the future of the digital media landscape. And Matt Belloni examines how Hollywood insiders are responding to CAA’s acquisition of ICM.

Will Licht Let CNN Digital Bleed?

In the months since Jeff Zucker’s departure, much of the focus on CNN has pertained to CNN+, talent decisions, and headline-friendly gimmicks like pumping the breaks on the Breaking News banner. But are Zaz and Licht hitting pause on Zucker’s other, less-discussed powerhouse, CNN Digital?

DYLAN BYERS

For the last five months, ever since Jeff Zucker’s abrupt and unceremonious ouster and Chris Licht’s installment, the sturm und drang surrounding CNN’s turbulent leadership transition has focused on the real and perceived effects of the management shuffle on the core linear television product. Media coverage of Licht’s CNN, like most conversations inside the organization and across the industry these days, center on his mandate to turn down the volume (less “Breaking News” alerts, et cetera) and produce less polarizing and alarmist journalism—a shift away from Zucker-style programming that is either very welcome or very foolhardy, depending on whom you ask, but certainly indicative of David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery’s desire to ensure that CNN is a universally palatable brand with an optimized total addressable market that can eventually juice the HBO Max offering, or perhaps even help facilitate the optionality (one day, at least, hypothetically) for a sale of the company, itself, or another mega-deal, once the synergies are complete and the debt is dialed down.

The focus on the television asset is logical: the cable channel still drives the vast majority of the business unit’s roughly $1 billion in annual profit, and the reputation of the brand rests on the shoulders of stalwarts like Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper as well as the channel’s utility to citizens when real news actually breaks. Nevertheless, this focus ignores another effect of the leadership-ownership change that, while less discussed, is arguably no less important: the uncertainty over the future of CNN Digital, which is the world’s most popular digital news site and, to date, a significant boon to the business’s bottom line.

Every month, an average of 144 million people visit CNN Digital in the U.S. alone—a staggering number that far surpasses the Times or the Post—allowing the company to rightfully claim that it is the world’s dominant digital news outlet...

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