Is Warner-Discovery "Fixing" CNN?Firing Brian Stelter to keep John Malone happy isn't going to help anyone.
1. You Can’t Appease Bad-Faith CriticsBrian Stelter was canned by CNN pour encourager les autres. CNN’s parent company, the Warner-Discovery, is in a load of trouble and “fixing” CNN has become a corporate priority. Warner-Discovery leadership believes that the way to fix CNN is to make it less liberal. So CNN head Chris Licht fired Stelter, who was a bugbear of the right. Okay, that’s not all entirely true. I’m leaving out some details. Let me fill them in for you: When Warner-Discovery merged, the company was saddled with tons of debt—$55b worth. Wall Street is nervous about this and has been punishing the stock almost since the very day of the merger.
CNN is not a meaningful part of this decline. The parent company, Warner-Discovery, reported a net loss of $3.4 billion last quarter. But CNN itself is a profit center: The cable network’s profitability is down to “only” a net $1 billion this year. But it’s still in the black. Warner-Discovery as a whole is not. Also, it’s not clear how CNN’s perceived political slant is contributing to the division’s business outlook. There are a lot of cross-pressures at work on the cable-news industry:
Of course there may be a simple explanation for CNN leadership’s sudden mania for being fair and balanced: They have a large shareholder—John Malone—who has a bug up his ass about CNN’s perceived political bias. So maybe the changes at CNN are just about keeping the rich old guy happy. Believe me when I tell you that dumber things have happened.¹ But for just a minute, let’s pretend that the move to “depoliticize” CNN is genuine. Join Bulwark+ to read the rest.Become a paying member of Bulwark+ to get access to this postand other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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