Mark Thompson faces ‘peak disruption’ as he takes CNN helm

After nearly two years of morale-sapping tumult, CNN newsrooms around the world cheered on Wednesday after the veteran UK journalist Mark Thompson was appointed to lead the struggling network.

Thompson, 67, ran the BBC before leaving in 2012 to become chief executive of The New York Times, where he launched a digital strategy that spurred dramatic improvements in subscriptions, profits and the company’s share price. The hope, say longtime CNN employees, is that Thompson will execute a similar turnaround at the struggling news network.

“Everyone I have spoken to so far is thrilled,” said one CNN journalist. “CNN needs a bold strategy [and] he did that at The New York Times. He knows how to navigate sprawling organisations.”

Thompson, who will come out of retirement to start his new role on October 9, will arrive to a full inbox. CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros Discovery, will be gearing up to cover the 2024 US presidential election — the type of big news event that the network would have once dominated. But CNN’s ratings have fallen well behind rival networks MSNBC and Fox.

Beyond the nightly ratings wars, however, CNN and its competitors are also facing the rapid decline of traditional television itself — presenting Thompson with the challenge of developing a successful streaming strategy for news without killing the profitable, if shrinking, core business. 

“He has his work cut out for him — the ratings and profits are down,” said Marty Kaplan, a professor of communication and journalism at the University of Southern California.

On average only 573,000 people watched CNN on any given evening in the second quarter of this year, down from 1.8mn during the same period in 2020, according to Nielsen.

“It’s kind of shocking, actually, that less than a million people on a good day are consuming CNN, and it’s now regularly being beaten both by Fox and by MSNBC,” said Kaplan. “And that raises the question of whether the [ideological] middle is still a place that can be competitive.”

Thompson will have to navigate such thorny questions about CNN’s political positioning compared with Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left.

The issue dogged his predecessor, Chris Licht, who tried to reposition CNN as a less “activist” network than it had been during the Trump administration — a goal set for him in effect by Warner Bros chief executive David Zaslav and John Malone, the cable billionaire and Warner board member.

Licht struggled to carry out the mission. He championed a live “town hall” meeting with former president Donald Trump in May that drew fierce criticism — especially within the CNN newsroom. He was fired the following month after an embarrassing profile was published in The Atlantic. 

Given Thompson’s record, many believe he will be allowed a greater degree of independence than Licht. “I would be very surprised if Mark hadn’t carved out journalistic autonomy and articulated his approach in that regard,” said a media executive who has worked with him. “His record speaks for itself.” 

The Licht drama was just one of many setbacks suffered by the cable network over the past 20 months. Its popular chief executive, Jeff Zucker, resigned in 2022 after a relationship with a colleague became public. The CNN+ streaming service was axed shortly after Warner Bros and Discovery completed their merger in April 2022. High-profile presenters were fired, and morale collapsed. 

Shortly after Licht left in June, Zaslav approached Thompson. The two men had crossed paths over the years because Zaslav had been the head of the TV channel Discovery, which struck programming deals with the BBC. 

There were a number of candidates considered for the CNN job, both internally and externally, said a person familiar with the process. However, after a series of meetings and calls during the summer, Thompson emerged as the chosen candidate. He also holds the title of editor-in-chief.

“There isn’t a more experienced, respected or capable executive in the news business today than Mark, and we are thrilled to have him join our team,” Zaslav said in a statement. 

Jon Miller, who was a senior executive at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp during Thompson’s time at the BBC, said that Thompson “has as good a background as could possibly be imagined”. 

“You can decide what you think of the BBC and The New York Times, but it’s pretty clear what he did there and how he reinforced their position,” said Miller, now the chief executive of Integrated Media, which specialises in digital media investments. 

In a note to CNN staff on Wednesday, Thompson did not sugarcoat the problems facing CNN and the industry. He said television journalism was “approaching peak disruption”. 

“We face pressure from every direction — structural, political, cultural, you name it,” he wrote. “Where others see threat, I see opportunity”.

Thompson has weathered his fair share of crises at the BBC and The New York Times, two highly-scrutinised organisations. The Oxford graduate first joined the BBC as a production trainee in 1979. He worked his way up to the top, cutting more than 6,000 jobs along the way. 

Thompson modelled his strategy at The New York Times after Netflix: investing heavily in “content” to attract subscribers. “Our thesis is you have to invest in the product to have a chance in the digital media business,” Thompson told the FT in 2020.

He transformed The New York Times from a paper that had been stuck in perpetual cost-cutting mode to a media group with a presence in television, games and cooking in addition to its core journalism. 

If there was a worry in CNN newsrooms following the announcement this week, it was that Warner Bros Discovery’s debt-reduction programme could hamper Thompson’s efforts to revive the 4,000-strong network.

“The [CNN] content has to be better — that was the promise at The New York Times and it worked,” said a senior journalist. “And better content means spending money.”

But Roger Mosey, who worked with Thompson at the BBC, said he had proved that he could balance the needs of a newsroom and keep a business running. “He can be both a great journalist and manager, which is a rare combination,” he said.