Months after letting longtime anchor Don Lemon go, CNN has finally announced his replacement, as well as a slew of additional lineup changes. In an effort to improve ratings and provide some stability, the struggling cable news network will move around a lot of its pieces and launch some new programming. The big changes were announced on the company’s website in an extended article that also took pretty direct aim at former CEO Chris Licht, accusing him of letting MSNBC surpass the network in ratings and ruining staff morale, among other things.
First, let’s get to the lineup changes. The biggest news is probably the network finally announcing a replacement for Don Lemon. After almost twenty years at CNN, the fashionable and free-wheeling host was let go earlier this year, not long after he was taken off the air following comments he made about women of a certain age being past their primes. Co-host Kaitlan Collins was also moved to primetime, which left Poppy Harlow as the only one of the three that remained on CNN This Morning. She’ll now be joined by Phil Mattingly, who has been serving as the network’s chief White House correspondent.
In addition to that change, Abby Phillip, who currently hosts Inside Politics Sunday, will be getting her own 10 PM ET nightly show, and Laura Coates, the network’s chief legal analyst, will also be getting her own nightly show that’ll run at 11 PM ET. Beyond that, Kasie Hunt has been named the new host of Early Start and investigative correspondent Pamela Brown will be getting her own show that’ll air at 3 PM ET. None of the changes will affect Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett or Wolf Blitzer, who will stay in their current timeslots.
It’s not a surprise that CNN would be open to making so many changes at once. Things haven’t gone super well in the ratings department. There’s often shuffling after a CEO departs an organization, but I’m frankly a little rattled at how much CNN’s story about its own changes takes aim at Chris Licht. The former CEO clearly didn’t win many friends over there if they’re dropping sentences like this…
The dramatic changes are some of the most wide-ranging in the cable news landscape in years and represent a new chapter for CNN, which has been aiming to reverse its fortunes after a rocky run under former chief executive Chris Licht. Licht, who was fired earlier this year after a little more than a year on the job, never committed to a consistent prime time lineup and left CNN’s overall slate of programming in an unsettled state. That contributed to a decline in staff morale and left a major opening for its rival MSNBC, which surpassed CNN in the ratings, including in the key advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic.
I know that might not sound that bad compared to the discourse on Twitter everyday, but for a lineup announcement on a company’s own website, that is as vicious of a middle finger as you’ll see. Referencing the ratings is one thing but just openly admitting a “decline in staff morale” is quite another. It would make it seem like there’s still a lot of animosity there, but that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise given his abbreviated year or so in charge did not go well and generated a lot of stories about unnamed staff allegedly being unhappy.
We’ll see whether these changes at CNN, made by the network’s interim leadership team, have a positive effect on ratings, and at some point in the future, we’ll see whether CNN’s next CEO will be able to build a better relationship with their employees.
