BREAKING! Chris Licht is Out at CNN (Updated)
/The writing has been on the wall for quite a while.
After just over a year on the job, Chris Licht is out at CNN.
The drumbeats to his firing grew louder and louder, and it got to the point where they could not be ignored.
Licht had promised to change CNN, to get rid of the left-leaning bias and bring the network back to the middle.
But all he did was shuffle around the same people in new time slots and nothing changed. He had CNN do a town hall with Donald Trump, and it was a disaster.
Licht was in over his head trying to run an entire news network.
Staffers at CNN liked Jeff Zucker, they didn’t like Chris Licht. But, no boss needs to be liked to be effective, but they do need to be respected. Licht lost the respect of the staff and that led to his downfall.
But, he did get rid of Don Lemon, so it wasn’t like a total loss.
Update: The staff found out about Licht’s firing during the 9 AM editorial call from Discovery CEO David Zaslav.
In tomorrow’s newsletter, FTVLive will have more on why Licht was fired, what role Jeff Zucker played, and how TV managers can learn from what Licht did wrong.
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