4 ms·

I don’t think it’s even been a week since that Atlantic article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/ http

I don’t think it’s even been a week since that Atlantic article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-rat... Archive link: http://archive.is/QhBcU http://archive.is/QhBcU

sbuccini 3y ago
I'd recommend any (aspiring) manager/founder to read this piece. So many lessons to be learned from Licht's tenure.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I feel like lesson #1 is avoid getting into a dying business.
  - sbuccini 3y ago
    This is a good one! If your mentors/the people who made your career warn you not to do something, you should think really, really hard about doing that thing!
    - pxue 3y ago
      All comes down to man's pridefulness.
- subsubzero 3y ago
  A few mistakes(he made and stuff to avoid): - Know your workforce, Licht seemed completely oblivious to his staff and showed next to zero interest in any of them. - Make yourself available to your team(open door policy) - Licht hid out on the 22nd floor and was intentionally difficult to find. - Know your core customer - CNN is known as having bias against the political right, its audience skews very left. Licht having the debacle of a Trump town hall alienated its main constituency and further drove down ratings. - Pick the right people for critical jobs - Having a heavy and controversial morning host in Don Lemon makes zero sense, people want mellow and light-hearted banter when they are waking up. - Constantly bad mouthing the previous regime looks petty - Despite issues with CNN under Zucker it just looks bad and UN-professional to constantly put down ex-coworkers. - Sometimes a ship is just going to go down - Leaders and managers love turning around bad companies and teams, but I think CNN is headed one way and its all downhill from here. Thanks to social media, partisan news channels(Fox/MSNBC) and just changing demographics(not as many people watch live TV anymore).
burnished 3y ago
That was interesting, well worth the read.
zoogeny 3y ago
I want to comment on this article way more than the news he was fired. This article is proof that allowing sleazy journalists unfettered access can never be in your best interests. 90% of the article is informative and seemingly straight reporting. 10% is subtle and brutal undermining of Licht through implication and opinion. Little details, like mentioning the pauses before answering or how he "chews" his lips. All of the subtle details relay a much more biased outlook than the seeming fact-based narrative. The story the article wants us to believe is that Zaslav setup Licht as a "marionette" (in the article author's words) so that he could push unpopular changes through at CNN. Licht is made out to be impersonal, impotent and naive. He is both forced to tow the line for the execs above him and suffer the humiliation of being undermined by his underlings. There is the implication that even his greatest failures aren't due to incompetence but due to the meddling that was forced upon him. But Licht genuinely appears to have represented an attempt to move CNN back into a trustworthy news organization. The implication is that such a move is impossible due to the meddling of execs and the entrenched politics in the org. Every time I read an article in The Atlantic I get the impression that I am staring the Ministry of Truth in the face. We are about to see the media landscape once again reshaped. Articles like this are providing the context for some longer narrative arc that is just beginning to take shape. We all hope that discourse in America is going to return to some kind of moderate center and the rifts between partisan sides will be healed. But this article suggests that things are actually being steered away from that. The resistance to extreme populism is being painted as ineffectual. I can't blame them. Trump running in 2024 is going to cause quite the stir. There is the fear of an escalation of the kind of events we saw on Jan 6. My impression is that rather than calming things down, the sides are preparing to mobilize.
- hedora 3y ago
  > But Licht genuinely appears to have represented an attempt to move CNN back into a trustworthy news organization. What?!? He fired a bunch of “radical left” reporters for saying there was no evidence the 2020 election was stolen, and for pointing out that it had been proven that many people claiming it was were intentionally lying. (these are both verifiable facts, and CNN management doesn’t dispute that). Then, they said their business plan for the next few years was to pull in the Fox News demographic by running similar content. Trump famously made fun of them for this, since it’s a transparently desperate, destined to fail strategy. It also immediately started alienating their existing audience. Note that, for legal reasons, Fox News is extremely clear that its programming is entertainment, and not news, so, even if you approve of their stated intentions, you can’t plausibly argue they are trying to become a “trustworthy news organization” by emulating Fox.

sbuccini 3y ago

I'd recommend any (aspiring) manager/founder to read this piece. So many lessons to be learned from Licht's tenure.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
I feel like lesson #1 is avoid getting into a dying business.
- sbuccini 3y ago
  This is a good one! If your mentors/the people who made your career warn you not to do something, you should think really, really hard about doing that thing!
  - pxue 3y ago
    All comes down to man's pridefulness.
subsubzero 3y ago
A few mistakes(he made and stuff to avoid): - Know your workforce, Licht seemed completely oblivious to his staff and showed next to zero interest in any of them. - Make yourself available to your team(open door policy) - Licht hid out on the 22nd floor and was intentionally difficult to find. - Know your core customer - CNN is known as having bias against the political right, its audience skews very left. Licht having the debacle of a Trump town hall alienated its main constituency and further drove down ratings. - Pick the right people for critical jobs - Having a heavy and controversial morning host in Don Lemon makes zero sense, people want mellow and light-hearted banter when they are waking up. - Constantly bad mouthing the previous regime looks petty - Despite issues with CNN under Zucker it just looks bad and UN-professional to constantly put down ex-coworkers. - Sometimes a ship is just going to go down - Leaders and managers love turning around bad companies and teams, but I think CNN is headed one way and its all downhill from here. Thanks to social media, partisan news channels(Fox/MSNBC) and just changing demographics(not as many people watch live TV anymore).

burnished 3y ago

That was interesting, well worth the read.

zoogeny 3y ago

I want to comment on this article way more than the news he was fired. This article is proof that allowing sleazy journalists unfettered access can never be in your best interests. 90% of the article is informative and seemingly straight reporting. 10% is subtle and brutal undermining of Licht through implication and opinion. Little details, like mentioning the pauses before answering or how he "chews" his lips. All of the subtle details relay a much more biased outlook than the seeming fact-based narrative. The story the article wants us to believe is that Zaslav setup Licht as a "marionette" (in the article author's words) so that he could push unpopular changes through at CNN. Licht is made out to be impersonal, impotent and naive. He is both forced to tow the line for the execs above him and suffer the humiliation of being undermined by his underlings. There is the implication that even his greatest failures aren't due to incompetence but due to the meddling that was forced upon him. But Licht genuinely appears to have represented an attempt to move CNN back into a trustworthy news organization. The implication is that such a move is impossible due to the meddling of execs and the entrenched politics in the org. Every time I read an article in The Atlantic I get the impression that I am staring the Ministry of Truth in the face. We are about to see the media landscape once again reshaped. Articles like this are providing the context for some longer narrative arc that is just beginning to take shape. We all hope that discourse in America is going to return to some kind of moderate center and the rifts between partisan sides will be healed. But this article suggests that things are actually being steered away from that. The resistance to extreme populism is being painted as ineffectual. I can't blame them. Trump running in 2024 is going to cause quite the stir. There is the fear of an escalation of the kind of events we saw on Jan 6. My impression is that rather than calming things down, the sides are preparing to mobilize.

hedora 3y ago
> But Licht genuinely appears to have represented an attempt to move CNN back into a trustworthy news organization. What?!? He fired a bunch of “radical left” reporters for saying there was no evidence the 2020 election was stolen, and for pointing out that it had been proven that many people claiming it was were intentionally lying. (these are both verifiable facts, and CNN management doesn’t dispute that). Then, they said their business plan for the next few years was to pull in the Fox News demographic by running similar content. Trump famously made fun of them for this, since it’s a transparently desperate, destined to fail strategy. It also immediately started alienating their existing audience. Note that, for legal reasons, Fox News is extremely clear that its programming is entertainment, and not news, so, even if you approve of their stated intentions, you can’t plausibly argue they are trying to become a “trustworthy news organization” by emulating Fox.