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Former BBC and New York Times head Mark Thompson has been appointed chief executive of CNN, as the troubled cable news channel seeks to turn round its business after a rocky year and a half.
Thompson, who started out as an editorial trainee at the BBC more than four decades ago, will lead CNN’s business and also act as “editor-in-chief” for the news network, parent company Warner Bros Discovery announced on Wednesday.
Warner Discovery chief executive David Zaslav has been searching for a leader to steer CNN after a tumultuous era that culminated in his firing of the network’s president Chris Licht in June.
“There isn’t a more experienced, respected or capable executive in the news business today than Mark,” said Zaslav, adding that Thompson “transformed for the digital age two of the world’s most respected news organisations”.
Thompson will be taking charge of a news network that has suffered plummeting ratings, sweeping job losses and the high-profile exits of stars such as Don Lemon.
CNN has been in a state of flux since the abrupt departure of longtime and revered leader Jeff Zucker in February last year, which rattled staff. Zaslav last year handpicked Licht, a respected television programmer, to replace Zucker. But Licht’s tenure turned out to be disastrous, mired by a series of controversies that came to a head with an embarrassing profile in The Atlantic magazine, leading to his ouster.
Under Zucker’s watch, CNN reached record ratings during the charged Donald Trump presidency. But Zaslav, who took over CNN’s parent company Warner last year, has tried to reposition the network away from an “activist” stance.
While all the US cable news networks have suffered shrinking audiences in the past few years, CNN has fallen to a distant third place in ratings behind rivals Fox News and MSNBC.
Thompson is no stranger to controversy. During his eight-year tenure as director-general of the BBC, he cut more than 6,000 jobs and faced scrutiny from the likes of James Murdoch.
The British executive has been credited with building the BBC into one of the world’s biggest digital news brands, and was closely involved in the development of the iPlayer.
At the New York Times, Thompson steered the newspaper through a dramatic online transformation, helping it reach nearly 6mn digital subscribers by the time he left in 2020.
Thompson said: “I couldn’t be more excited about the chance to join CNN after years of watching it and competing against it with a mixture of admiration and envy”. He starts at the network on October 9.