Just days after David Zaslav took the reins of a newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery in April 2022, the chief executive shuttered CNN+, a $300 million streaming subscription service that barely got off the ground. Now, as the network prepares for next week’s launch of its streaming successor, “All Access,” Zaslav dropped more big news on staffers: WBD is for sale.
Launching yet another streaming service amid another possible deal marks the latest twist in the CNN ownership saga, as the network has shuffled between corporate parents over the past decade, from Time Warner to the AT&T-owned WarnerMedia, in 2018, to the eventual Warner Bros. Discovery, in 2022.
With the prospect of more changes coming, the mood inside CNN on Tuesday, one staffer told TheWrap, “is less concern about who buys us and more about the uncertainty of it all,” adding: “I think people just want to know they’ll have a job.” Such anxiety reflects the shifting stewardship and editorial strategies in recent years at CNN as the groundbreaking linear cable network charts its course in the digital world.
Another staffer was more blunt: “People want this phase to be over.”
Chatter about WBD selling off CNN alone has only ratcheted up amid the company’s decision to open itself for sale either as a whole or in parts, with Zaslav saying in a memo on Tuesday that “multiple parties” expressed interest in the company. This is separate from its prior plan to split into Warner Bros. (HBO Max, its film and television studios) and networks-and-sports-focused Discovery Global (cable networks including TNT and CNN, among others), and potentially accelerates the chaos to come.
It’s just the latest bout of turbulence for CNN, which has seen a string of different CEOs since 2021, from Jeff Zucker to Chris Licht and now Mark Thompson, a former New York Times chief executive whose two-year CNN tenure has been focused on carrying the network into the digital age and who faces his greatest test next week with the “All Access” launch. CNN laid off 200 staffers earlier this year as part of a digital-and-streaming pivot and is banking on cord-cutters’ willingness to pay $6.99 a month for a selection of live and on-demand programming.
The second staffer told TheWrap that, while their colleagues have sought some level of stability, they’re more eager to see a buyer who wants to let CNN fulfill its digital ambitions and capitalize on its expertise in international reporting.
“I don’t think that the folks that have been in charge — beyond Mark Thompson, the folks that write Mark’s checks — have really had a full vision of what CNN can be and what its mission should be going into the future,” the staffer said. “My aspiration is that whoever comes in and buys us has a set of values that they not only communicate to us, but also to the world, and that they foster an independent journalism that we can be proud of.”
A CNN spokesperson referred TheWrap to the WBD memo.
Who might buy CNN?
Now, the network’s future could hinge on another owner, perhaps a company with a major stake in the news business, such as NBCUniversal parent Comcast, or a streamer like Netflix, both of which are reportedly among the interested parties. WBD’s announcement came after it rejected Paramount’s latest bid to purchase the company wholesale this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Clearly, Paramount has already demonstrated a willingness to shake up a storied news brand, with newly minted CEO David Ellison quickly installing a conservative think tank veteran as a network watchdog and completing his $150 million purchase of The Free Press, opinion journalist Bari Weiss’ contrarian news outlet. Ellison installed Weiss as CBS News’ editor-in-chief, where she immediately leaned into coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, a subject close to her and Ellison.
Expanding his reach into a 24/7 cable news operation like CNN would allow Ellison to tap into its expansive newsgathering operation and synergies (CNN primetime staple Anderson Cooper remains a “60 Minutes” correspondent, and “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King led a short-lived talk show with Charles Barkley between 2023 and 2024) while his own Paramount undergoes layoffs, staving off a potential total brain drain of talent.
Should Comcast make a play for the combined Warner Bros. Discovery, they would once again gain a cable news network alongside its own broadcast news operation. Comcast is in the process of spinning off its cable networks, stripping NBC News of its cable counterpart MSNBC and forcing the two networks to move forward as distinct brands and without shared correspondents. Given this, Comcast may only be interested in the Warner Bros. studio assets and its valuable IP, so there’s reason to be skeptical CNN would be included in any deal.
A potential Netflix acquisition of the whole company would bring the streamer fully into the news business, something its competitors have only toyed with. The company has said previously it would not enter the breaking news business, but as its scale has grown and its stances on other sectors — sports, ad-supported tiers — have changed, its ability to manage a large-scale news organization could prove more successful than Amazon’s subdued election night program with Brian Williams last year or the streaming components launched by ABC, NBC and CBS for their news programs.
It would also give Netflix a new avenue to compete with Amazon, which was reportedly considering other ways to break into news, though Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the company’s earnings call Tuesday the company still has “no interest in owning legacy media networks,” so it could be more interested in Warner Bros.’ studio and streaming business on its own. Netflix did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
While there’s surely uncertainty about CNN’s future, Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino pointed out Sunday that “for all the talk about declining ratings,” the network is “immensely profitable.”
“Now I fully understand the concept of cord cutting etc., but the place has a deep news infrastructure, a global presence and it’s in the middle of a restructuring to [adapt] to changes in the way people view news,” Gasparino said. “Moreover it’s still very relevant. People talk about it all the time. It’s in almost every airport and hotel lobby. I speak to bankers all the time, and they tell me this thing has massive potential, probably more so than the Free Press. Zas knows this.”
CNN is currently valued at around $5 billion, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates, based on approximately $750 million in EBITDA, per the company’s earnings reports, and $1.75 billion in revenue at a 6.5 times multiple.
Steward v. Scavenger
For now, the network soldiers on as Warner Bros. Discovery continues its plan to split its streaming and studios businesses from its networks. But it’s that infrastructure and presence the second CNN staffer wants to see maintained should a sale go forward, one that doesn’t include the yearslong series of questions about what its corporate owners want to do with the 45-year-old news organization.
“I hate to evoke Jeff Zucker, because that’s in the past, but when we had a different sort of corporate structure and we had Jeff Zucker in charge, we never heard anything about Time Warner or AT&T,” they said. “That stuff was so beyond anything that impacted us day to day, where now we’ve had, over the last few years, a consistent drumbeat of speculation and analysis about how our corporate ownership looks at us, what they want out of us, how they’re building a strategy around us. From the day that we were purchased, there was a conversation about whether we would be merged down the road, and questions about strategy more broadly, and I don’t think that that helps the process.”
The staffer said a new suitor should want to honor CNN’s legacy of reporting, and appreciate its “enormous value if they let us do good work.”
“My fear is that, given the landscape, there’s a good chance that a scavenger comes along and rides the wave of cable disintegration and irrelevance and either dismantles us for parts or merges us with something that already has a lot of redundancies and that we see CNN dwindle into irrelevance,” the staffer said.
