Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest.

Happy Friday. This is Dylan Byers, Puck’s media reporter and author of In The Room, stopping by with some new reporting on the aftermath of CNN’s Trump town hall, plus notes on today’s Atlantic opus on the network’s C.E.O., Chris Licht. Was this week’s installment of David Leavy as CNN C.O.O.—a longtime David Zaslav consigliere—a sign that Licht’s days are numbered?

It was a tongue-in-cheek goodwill gesture, of course, and a nod to the fact that any newly minted C.E.O. was destined to come under fire from critics inside and outside the building. After all, Licht inherited an empire that had been burdened by years of reputational warfare with Trump; a staff that was reeling from the sudden defenestration of its widely revered leader, Jeff Zucker; and corporate overlords at Warner Bros. Discovery who intended to slash jobs and cut costs while refashioning the network to satisfy some John Malone-approved vision of a more centrist, G.O.P.-friendly broadcast that discouraged journalists from speaking their minds—a mission Licht had ostensibly been charged with executing.

For most of the last thirteen months—through his early leadership missteps, layoffs, programming misfires, ratings declines, the Trump town hall, and the depletion of staff morale—Licht has kept the framed vest on the floor, leaning against the wall. In that time, he has endured more scrutiny and criticism from employees, industry insiders and critics than perhaps any other contemporary media executive, almost all of it cataloged in this column.

Throughout, his shield against that criticism has been not a vest but a brittle smile: an unwavering projection of confidence in himself and conviction in his mission that, in the eyes of some critics, borders on the delusional. Privately, he has been extremely frustrated and preoccupied by the coverage, according to high-level CNN sources and others who have met with him. (One media executive who recently spent more than an hour with him was struck by his singular obsession about his own press coverage, and noted that he kept a shockingly accurate tally of how many articles I had written about him). Nevertheless, he never betrays that insecurity publicly, but presses forward declaring that he has the unwavering support and approval of his boss, David Zaslav, a mentor in the art of self-assuredness.

The official corporate line is that Leavy’s appointment will allow Licht to focus on programming and editorial strategy while Leavy manages the P&L, operational logistics, and marketing and P.R.—and that much is true. But while Leavy will officially report up to Licht, the new org chart belies the true nature of his position. Leavy will have total oversight over business affairs and will continue to work directly with Zaz, as he has for two decades. He is, for all intents and purposes, a co-C.E.O., providing both trusted help and adult supervision. He is also Zaslav’s eyes and ears, and will be tasked with determining what needs to change and who needs to leave. After a year of revenue misses and bad press, he is likely to start by re-assessing Licht’s hand-picked business strategy chief Chris Marlin, as well as the leading members of the communications team.

Some reports have stated that it was Licht’s idea to hire Leavy, a masterful bit of corporate spin meant to distract from the fact that Zaslav & Co. identified the need for a C.O.O. more than two months ago and allowed him to conduct a perfunctory search that inevitably ended with Zaslav installing his own consigliere. (Licht made one offer to an ABC Television executive who dragged her feet.) But the truth is hard to shade. Instead of hiring a traditional operator, Zaz is bringing in a messaging and P.R. person to try to fix the culture and prevent the narrative from getting any worse.

The Leavy arrangement will effectively give Licht the role he probably should have had from the beginning: editorial chief and news director. The hope is that this will also provide CNN with a reset, and, in an ideal scenario, allow Licht to create the compelling television he was famous for before joining CNN while repairing his relationship with top talent and rank and file.

Of course, two things stand in the way of that gradual renewal. The first is that Licht has failed to make good television since joining CNN. The Don Lemon-helmed morning show blew up in his face, the Trump town hall became an instant classic for all the wrong reasons, and, after running a few misguided experiments in primetime, television’s most crucial hours, he has only now set upon a permanent anchor for that lineup, Kaitlan Collins. Indeed, Licht’s least controversial programming move to date has been an aesthetic overhaul of the network’s least-watched hours. No longer distracted by the true obligations of being a chief executive, he will now be judged solely on the basis of whether or not his programming acumen can raise the ratings and reputation of CNN—both of which appear to have hit their nadir.

The second obstacle to this reset is that Licht has now lost the vast majority of the room. Zaslav no doubt hopes that Leavy’s installment will change the mood—he is a very affable guy, who prides himself on his ability to build culture at other Discovery networks—but the impression I get from the dozens of CNN staffers I talk to on a regular basis, as well as the dozens more who have sent unsolicited emails and text messages bemoaning the network’s current state of affairs, is that Licht is too far gone to win back the support of his newsroom. And lest Zaslav wasn’t aware of that before this week—though, let’s be honest, he was—he certainly is aware of it now.

In December, Licht enjoyed the soft-focus treatment from The Times’ Jim Stewart, a usually fear-inducing journalist, who provided a biographical perspective, chockablock with access and quotes from Zaz about Licht and his mission in The Education of CNN’s Chris Licht. This morning, however, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta dropped the counterpoint, Inside the Meltdown at CNN, itself a masterwork of mismanaged public relations. The 15,000 word treatment, which Alberta began work on last summer, depicts Licht as a mission-driven leader, yes, but also the sort of vain and tone-deaf guy who invites a reporter to his 6 a.m. workouts. It is a portrait of hubris, and a vivisection of a lonely and insecure leader who lacks the self-awareness to realize that he’s been living in a bunker with an ever-shrinking circle of yes-men. There are no CNN journalists here rallying to Licht’s defense. His only champion is Frank Luntz and, arguably, his personal trainer.

The most notable omission here, of course, is the customary vote of confidence from Zaslav. Alberta notes that Zaz and his P.R. chief, Nathaniel Brown, had agreed to an on-the-record interview only to augment the offer in the final 24 hours before publication by insisting that the conversation be on background, which Alberta refused. However, I was told that Brown offered Alberta an on-the-record statement from Zaz that he declined to use. Perhaps that was for the best. The statement, which Brown furnished to me, is by no means a ringing endorsement of Licht, but rather a generic, ChatGPT-style statement of support that provides him total optionality for CNN’s future.

“CNN is a very important business for us, and, in fact, we believe that nothing we do is more important,” the statement reads. “We have the best journalists in the world at CNN reporting the news wherever it happens, and we aspire to be the news organization most trusted by viewers globally. We set a high bar for ourselves and while we know that it will take time to complete the important work that’s underway, we have great confidence in the progress that Chris and the team are making and share their conviction in the strategy.”

Ever since he took the CNN job, Licht has faced the vexing and occasionally incomprehensible challenge of three dimensional management: placating Zaz and Malone, dealing with a global team of sharp-elbowed brilliant journalists, and managing the exigencies of cable’s decline. And yet, in retrospect, he’s gone about it without the sort of plan that one might expect of a C.E.O: a traditional multi-stream, parallel-path-friendly 30-60-90-120 day vision for programming, handling personnel, dealing with COGS, etcetera. Instead, he appears to have approached it as a creative tinkerer, noodling with challenges as they occurred rather than pre-emptively.

Managing CNN, especially now, may yet be damn near impossible. But in the post-Alberta, post-Leavy era, one thing seems clear: Licht better have a new plan. He’s going to need it.