Who’s next out the door at CNN? No one knows, but word on the street is that the beleaguered cable network will be slashing hundreds of jobs, and some of those might be faces familiar to viewers.
According to the Daily Mail, the original cable news network—it was founded by Ted Turner and went on the air in 1980—is hemorrhaging money and that means costs need to be cut. Anchor Chris Wallace (son of the late 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace) has already left the network, believing he’ll find success in the podcast world (likely too late for you, Chris).
‘In the next few months, I’m told, CNN will implement another round of layoffs that will impact hundreds of employees across the organization,’ reporter Dylan Byers wrote Friday, referencing CNN’s recent 100-person layoff seen over the summer.
The man behind it, they said, is none other than new CEO Mark Thompson – the former New York Times boss brought in to overhaul the network under its Warner Bros. Discovery parent. The old BBC boss filled the position left by then-languishing leader Chris Licht this past August, and since then, ratings have fallen more than 20 percent.
While everything at this point is coming from unnamed sources, the gossip is that even big names like Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer were not given raises recently. Will their highest-paid talent survive the layoffs? Anderson Cooper (scion of the Vanderbilt family) makes $20 million, and Kaitlan Collins $3 million.
It looks like mainstream/legacy media may be finally reaching its final stage of life. From the days when the three on-air networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, to the explosion of cable news and entertainment channels in the 80s, to today’s streaming “television” beamed to phones and computers, the mainstream institutions have seemed untouchable.
But they’re not solidly positioned. CNN, for example, lost half its viewers during the 2024 election cycle compared to 2020. On election night itself, the network brought in only 3.3 million viewers, which is almost half as much as they had during the 2020 presidential race.
Why are the media old guard having such a hard time? Because they lie constantly and no one trusts anything they say. Filled with hard-left liberals who no longer even pretend to care about objectivity, every old-school outlet worked overtime to try to scupper another Trump election, but it didn’t work.
It’s also unclear whether outfits like CNN will be able to get a firm footing in the digital and podcast worlds. So many erstwhile viewers want nothing to do with the major news brands that their parents trusted and had on the TV set while they were growing up.
A sampling of social media reaction to the news:
Ouch, Kaitlan!
