“It’s an experiment.” That’s how CNN’s Jake Tapper framed the network’s podcast-style posture this past week, which Anderson Cooper also embraced on his evening program, complete with large microphones and more relaxed dress.
But in striking a podcaster pose, the network drew its share of mockery, along with accusations of inauthenticity — the kiss of death in today’s YouTube-driven media world. Perhaps no one was more punishing than former cable news stars who’ve gone independent and now speak with the zeal of the converted.
“They are trying to look like us,” former CNN host Piers Morgan said in a Monday conversation with ex-Fox News star Megyn Kelly. “We are unencumbered spirits,” Morgan added. “They cannot say the same. They are still living the old, mainstream media television rules.”
Kelly chalked up the CNN move as a “desperate ploy to save their ratings” and, like Morgan, emphasized her freedom as an independent operator. “It’s worth it for living free. I live free,” she said. “No one controls me.”
CNN adopting the visual trappings of the creator economy — and the white hot trend of video podcasting — comes as it seeks to boost its digital and streaming offerings, such as CNN All Access, amid linear TV decline. The cable stalwart is also grappling with an aging audience and the challenge of maintaining viewers outside of peak moments.
For instance, CNN topped 1 million total viewers in primetime, along with 238,000 in the age 25–54 demo, during the final week of February, as the U.S. and Israel struck Iran and demonstrated, once again, its strength in covering international conflicts. Its primetime numbers fell back to 820,000 and 149,000 just a couple weeks later.
But trying to imitate a vibe that is wholly different from its core identity in a naked bid to appeal to wider audiences only invites criticism and misses the point of how these independent journalists built their followings. Several TV news stars now working independently told TheWrap that legacy networks should seek ways to innovate, but not at the expense of diluting their core brand.
“People really depend on CNN to be CNN,” Jim Acosta, a former CNN anchor, told TheWrap. “Don’t lose sight of that.”
Compounding the pressure on the industry headwinds CNN already faces is the prospect of David Ellison’s Paramount taking over CNN-parent Warner Bros. Discovery. The upcoming merger has stoked fears of significant cuts — with the network likely to merge some operations with CBS — and political interference, even as Ellison has promised editorial independence.
The aesthetics of CNN’s mini-makeover are both retro — Cooper’s rumpled, newsman-in-front-of-a-microphone style evokes the legendary Edward R. Murrow, or more recently, late CNN host Larry King — and modern, nodding to the now-familiar look of a YouTube host speaking into a desk microphone.
Tapper, meanwhile, took viewers into his office, decorated with a stunning display of memorabilia from losing presidential campaigns, breaking the fourth wall in a way more familiar on YouTube than network television. Even Morgan acknowledged that Tapper’s display was “mesmerizing.”
Taken together, the on-air innovations reflect a scrambled media moment in which podcasts have increasingly added video components, essentially becoming television, while television is borrowing from the podcast playbook.
“Why do podcasters have a simplified background? Because that’s all we can afford to do,” Chuck Todd said in an interview with TheWrap.
Todd, who spent nearly two decades at NBC and MSNBC, is among a parade of TV news personalities who have gone independent in recent years, along with Acosta, Don Lemon, Mehdi Hasan, Joy Reid, Katie Couric, Terry Moran and Chris Cillizza. Earlier this month, correspondent Scott MacFarlane left CBS News to report on his own channels and has teamed up with popular progressive platform MeidasTouch.
While “CNN should be experimenting,” Todd told TheWrap, the podcast makeover felt consultant-driven to him, as if “some TV executive says, what if we make it look like YouTube?”
Todd stressed that switching up the set design isn’t going to change audience perceptions of mainstream TV news — as corporate-controlled — versus independent journalists, who gain credibility from not being “owned and operated by anybody.”
“It’s not the fact that they do it at their house or they do it in a makeshift studio, or they have these Zoom conversations. That isn’t the differentiator,” said Todd. “The differentiator is [no] one’s scripting them. No one’s telling them what to say, telling them how they should say it. Nobody else is helping to shape the reporting.”
Cillizza, a CNN veteran who does a weekly video chat with Todd, along with broadcasts during the “State of the Union” and election nights, said in an email that “the fact that CNN thinks putting mics in front of its anchors and maybe changing up the set is how they are going to find new audiences or improve ratings reveals a concerning lack of understanding of audience.”
“It’s not the desk the anchor sits behind or whether he or she has a microphone in front of their face,” Cillizza added, but “how trusted is that person” and “how good is the content they are making.”
Both Todd and Cillizza suggested TV news networks take a page from sports media, pointing out how ESPN licensed Pat McAfee’s popular YouTube show, which now airs three hours on the network. Cillizza also noted MS NOW’s partnership with Crooked Media, though he believes networks could be doing far more on this front.
“I think that’s what cable news (and broadcast news) needs to do,” he said. “Bring in independent creators who have proven they can build and retain audience — and maybe audience you don’t currently have. Give them a bunch of leeway to do things the way they have succeeded in doing them.”
To that point, Cillizza suggested networks avoid trying to turn an independent creator into a more traditional anchor. “Authenticity is the name of the game in the media world now,” he said.
“You can’t be all things to all people,” said Acosta, noting his “preference would be for CNN to keep on being CNN.”
There’s nothing wrong with experimenting — and easy jabs on X may be the price of mixing things up once in a while. But CNN’s challenge remains in balancing its well-earned reputation in global newsgathering with seeking new ways to reach audiences that doesn’t feel contrived, or worse, inauthentic.
