Time to Take out the Trash – Opinion

We’ve talked about the change of ownership of CNN and how the word was that they would be changing things to move CNN back to its roots of being a news organization, the way it was decades ago.

David Zaslav is now the Warner Bros. The Discovery chief, who plans on taking control of the company that comprises CNN and many other entertainment networks is speaking out. He sat with Oprah Winfrey this past week, outlined some of the changes that would be coming, and bashed “advocacy networks.”

Winfrey was told by the CEO that CNN must be focused on reporting, truth and fact. “If we get that, we can have a civilized society,” he said. “And without it, if it all becomes advocacy, we don’t have a civilized society.” [….]

But even before that, billionaire media mogul John Malone — a close confidant of Zaslav — and a board member of the combined company, criticized CNN for its slanted coverage.

“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone said during a CNBC interview last November. “I do believe good journalism could have a role in this future portfolio that Discovery-TimeWarner’s going to represent.”

Under Zucker’s successor, Chris Licht, an executive producer with stints at “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” CNN is expected to get an overhaul that includes more hard news and less opinion programming, sources told The Post.

So not only are they moving back to their origins — being hard news — but Zaslav said that staff reductions would be coming to get rid of redundancies and the dead weight.

Brian Stelter is one of the people rumored to be under threat. However, there are a lot of people there that deserve to be axed. With the launch of CNN+ seeming to have run aground — it has barely any viewers and that has Chris Wallace throwing tantrums — one has to wonder if that might get rethought and/or cut, too.

According to Fox’s Charlie Gasparino:

According to people familiar with him, Zas is no longer loyal to CNN+ nor its staff. If subs don’t begin to grow, he will likely fold it into another streaming service, Discovery+, and lop off a chunk of the people Zucker hired.

To cut costs, he’ll probably also scale back on some of its programming ambitions while focusing on other parts of the WarnerMedia empire.

It’s all about streaming and saving CNN.

If CNN+ keeps falling, it could mean Chris Wallace is at risk of being fired unless he moves somewhere else. It’s hard to understand who would have thought it’s a good idea to charge subscriptions for something that people already hate when it’s thrown at them for free. But if Stelter and Wallace get taken out in all this debacle, it’s hard not to laugh and think that’s a positive move for the world.