In the wake of Chris Licht’s sudden departure from CNN, where he served as C.E.O. for just more than a year, there’s been plenty of media attention lavished upon his performance: how he lost the newsroom and the support of his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav; and how he couldn’t quite figure out how to program for an eroding medium. (Consumers of my partner Dylan Byers are certainly well-informed on these micro-topics.)

In many ways, however, Licht was handed an impossible task. While the spotlight focused on CNN’s post-Trump political positioning, its fundamental headache is its business model. CNN wasn’t losing viewers simply because of Licht’s missteps; rather, CNN is a legacy cable news product suffering from secular, industry-wide decline. Pay TV subscriptions dropped to 58.5 percent as of Q1 2021, marking the lowest rate for Pay TV since 1992, and there’s less certainty than ever about the streaming model that aspires to replace it.