It is possible that Jeff Zucker could have constructed a worse scenario for his all-too-abrupt departure this week, but I must confess that I am a human of very little imagination, and can’t think what that scenario might be.
Zucker stunned his CNN staff Wednesday morning, resigning as president of the cable news organization and acknowledging he had previously failed to acknowledge his intimate relationship with his “closest colleague,” CNN Chief Marketing Officer Allison Gollust.
Gollust, an exec VP with CNN, has worked closely with Zucker for many years, even living in the New York apartment above his when both were married to others and working at NBC, according to a passage in Katie Couric’s memoir. What Couric called a “super-strange" close working relationship back then “evolved” for the two subsequently divorced executives during the pandemic lockdown, Zucker said.
“I was required to disclose it when it began, but I didn’t,” Zucker wrote in a staff memo Wednesday morning. “I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”
The departure leaves the news organization rudderless at pretty much the worst possible time, as vast uncertainty and a major new initiative already were looming straight ahead.
WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, Zucker’s former boss, sent out an all-hands memo after Zucker’s resignation note, saying CNN will be led for now by the triumvirate of Michael Bass, Amy Entelis and Ken Jautz. Gollust will stay on, too.
They’ll be charged with helping CNN figure out its future amid the declining business of pay-TV, where cord-cutting has eaten into ratings even for the biggest of the three cable news networks.
For CNN, the ratings decline has been particularly sharp, especially since the 2020 election ended. It’s not clear whether fixes are possible amid the broader secular decline in cable television, even if mid-term elections likely will boost short-term audience and advertiser interest.
At least some staffers are upset that Zucker had to quit, saying the punishment didn’t match the “crime.” The result is still more uncertainty and distraction.
“I came to this network with Jeff,” CNN political analyst S.E. Cupp told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know this network without Jeff. A stunning turn of events and an unknown future.”
This time last year, Zucker reportedly had been considering retiring at the end of 2021. But he seemed revitalized by the surprise May announcement that AT&T would spin off WarnerMedia into an independent media company merged with Discovery, run by his long-time chum, Discovery CEO David Zaslav.
While Zaslav is prepping for a move to a big Los Angeles mansion to run his new and much larger empire, plenty of CNN and other WarnerMedia employees are worried about what happens to them in the merged entity.
Discovery puppet master John Malone has been chortling publicly over the potential for $3 billion in “synergies” when the deal closes, probably in Q2. For the potentially de-synergized, however, the deal means many months more of layoffs and reorganizations, after five years of such stuff since AT&T first began trying to acquire what’s now WarnerMedia.
Somewhat improbably after the Discovery deal was announced, word surfaced that Zucker was championing creation of a subscription video service, to be called CNN Plus. This fall, the company began hiring hundreds of new staffers for the streaming service, including such high-profile recruits as Fox News’ Chris Wallace and NPR’s Audie Cornish.
CNN Plus is supposed to launch this quarter, though I’d been told in December that timetable was optimistic. Zucker’s departure will only complicate timing for what already was an expensive, audacious, and risky move.
Will Bass, Entails and Jautz bring the same shared vision as Zucker to CNN Plus’ direction? How long will the three need to figure out basic decision-making processes, priorities, and areas of responsibility? What gets pushed back, or to one side?
For that matter, what will be Gollust’s role as chief marketing officer in launching CNN Plus, whenever it arrives?
Marketing will be crucial to the success of the new service. One need only look at corporate sibling HBO Max’s badly botched launch nearly two years ago to see what crummy marketing can do to a promising product.
Kilar, who’d just come on board when HBO Max lurched out of the starting gate, was so unhappy with the stumbling result that he reorganized out of jobs many of Warner’s key executives involved in the debut.
Now Kilar is almost certainly headed to the reorg bin himself, and both CNN and CNN Plus will have to figure out their place without benefit of the man who helped make both of them what they are. Should be a fun summer.
