CNN Head Defends Trump Town Hall

Oh, there weren’t many employees of CNN that were very happy about Chris Licht’s decision to move forward with a town hall broadcast featuring the GOP leading candidate at this point, Donald Trump. Many of the employees thought that Licht was on some very powerful drugs. Some like Oliver Darcy, the CNN media reporter, got hauled into Licht’s office for a bitch session. He was berated for the way he covered the event, and tried to push back, but Licht failed to back down. People that watched Darcy come out of Licht’s office described him as “visibly shaken”.

Of course, the leftist socialists that comprise CNN’s audience couldn’t believe one of the left’s strongest allies was going to give a Republican time to spout whatever they wanted to on the channel. All sorts of leftist whack jobs came forth to complain. But it didn’t do any good. Chris Licht is trying very hard to make CNN a news channel to rival Fox News, not come in third behind MSNBC on a daily basis. So far, he’s met with a lot of resistance, and has had to fire a lot of personnel.

One that may end up being on the chopping block because of this is Kaitlan Collins, the 31 year-old that tried to fact check Trump in real time with terrible results. It got so bad that at the end of the broadcast, Trump called her “a nasty person”, and commented that she was a very bad host. It was very obvious to anyone that watched, and even those that only saw the highlights, Collins was way out of her league. The fact-checking didn’t go very well. She tried in real time to fact-check the former president, and failed miserably at it. Her style was anything less than professional, often arguing with Trump. That’s not a town hall, Kaitlin. That’s a debate, and you’re not running for anything (other than a job).

I do have to give Chris Licht some credit. He said when he came on board a year ago that he was going to make CNN more mainstream and less of a party platform for the Democrats and the Socialists out there. He has largely succeeded in that. When you look at the people that have left CNN in the past year, either of their own accord or by the boot, it’s pretty astonishing. Brian Stelter, Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo (though he left before Licht got there), and the entire CNN+ group except for Chris Wallace, who really isn’t really doing much of anything there are all gone or heading out the door. Now you can soon add Oliver Darcy and possibly Kaitlin Collins to the mix.

It’s all done by design. Chris Licht was hired for one very simple reason. Advertisers weren’t flocking to the news channel because viewers were leaving it in droves. Oh, it happens to every news channel after a major election, and 2020 was no different. But where the audience usually comes back after a couple of months (it took six months in Fox News case), they were flipped to MSNBC when it came to CNN. And the one-time king of cable news not only was dethroned, but was relegated to a daily third place finish. Licht’s job was to correct that. And he’s making strides.

CNN is no longer a bash-Trump, bash-Republicans channel. Oh, they still have their slant, and it’s decidedly liberal. But in the end, it’s a lot better than it had been. I still hate watching the channel because it is still a liberal bastion, just not a socialist liberal bastion.

The key for Licht’s success will be in the numbers. If the audience comes back, the advertisers will come back. And if that happens you can kiss any chance of CNN returning to it’s liberal ways anytime soon. And who know? They may just end up giving Fox News a run for their money!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Will CNN Make It Through 2023?

If you look at the history of mass media, there is a birth, a life, a death, and a rebirth of pretty much everything that is included in media. Take newspapers. After Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press back in 1440. Newspapers flourished. It was that way until 1920 when radio burst on the scene. At that point, you didn’t need newspapers to give you the news. Radio was quicker, easier, and cheaper. But newspapers could do what radio couldn’t. It could go much farther in depth. And so, when it died, newspapers found a different way to operate. They gave in-depth analysis into “why” something was happening, not just that it was happening.

And it’s happened that way with radio, and television, and cable television, and satellite television, All have been born, led a life, and for the most part have or are dying. Some have been reborn, like AM talk radio. You don’t hear too many AM stations playing music anymore. FM does a much better job. The question is, can one of the giants in cable news make it to the end of this year?

That giant is CNN.

Cable News Network, which started as a brain child of Ted Turner back in the 1980’s has been around for a couple of generations. It found it’s stride with blow-by-blow coverage of the first Gulf War back in 1990. It made household names out of it’s reporters who were on the ground covering the war. But somewhere in the past 20 years or so, CNN decidedly turned liberal. They let reporters give opinions on stories. They spun stories to allow the liberal viewpoint to take front and center. And they introduced news that wasn’t really news, but liberal talking points. Jeff Zucker headed up CNN for much of that time, and took the credit for it being the liberal bastion that it was.

But then CNN was sold to Discovery. Zucker found himself out of a job, replaced by a more moderate Chris Licht, who decided that he was missing half his audience solely because of the bias CNN was projecting. He vowed to make changes to the cable news network, who had slipped in popularity and was coming in third behind Fox News and even MSNBC.

Back in the spring of 2022, Licht started firing people. A lot of the reporters left the company either by choice, or they were shown the door. The list of names that once graced CNN was long and rather star-studded. Scandals also didn’t help as people like Chris Cuomo were fired over his protecting his brother Andrew during the former New York Governor’s sex scandals. Another round of layoffs cut further into the staff last month.

So, the question is, can CNN find it’s very own “rebirth”? Or is it doomed, along with other cable news outlets who are struggling to make a profit? All of these cable news monoliths are having problems selling ads as millions of people are turning off cable altogether and heading where you are right now…the internet. The result is now you can find about 1.4 million people tuning into Fox News on a daily basis. There are about 750,000 folks watching MSNBC, and less than a half million people are being loyal to CNN. That doesn’t bode well. There are local radio stations in this country that can boast more listeners than CNN has viewers. And when you don’t have viewers, you don’t have advertisers.

Can Chris Licht turn it around and make CNN respectable again? Can he get back some of the more mainstream and conservative viewers that were lambasted and made fun of by CNN’s previous hosts? And can he do it in time to turn some sort of profit in 2023, or will Discovery be forced to do to CNN, what Licht did to CNN+ a month after it’s launch…and that’s put it out of it’s misery altogether? That’s what lies ahead for the grandfather of cable news networks!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

The Axe Falls Again At CNN!

Just when the staff at CNN thought it was safe to go out Christmas shopping, they learned of yet another round of cuts. This time, they’re deep and cross over to include the CNN sister network, Headline News.

Gone are at least five on-air correspondents including Alex Field, Mary Ann Fox, Martin Savidge, Chris Cillizza, and Allison Kosik. And there are probably several more pink slips floating around HLN as CEO Chris Licht has decided that it’s just too damned expensive for HLN to be doing live newscasts. He’s canning all of the live HLN broadcasts.

Just wondering what’s going to happen to some of the more highly paid “stars” of the CNN family. People like Jim Acosta, Wolf Blitzer (who’s gotta be ready for retirement soon!), and former Fox deserter, Chris Wallace have got to be on pins and needles. I can understand Wallace. He turned down a chance to stay at Fox because he thought CNN’s new online service was going to be the future of news. And as has been the case with Wallace throughout most of his career, he was wrong. The online service died shortly after he arrived, causing him to jump ship to whatever the mothership would offer him. Wallace is 74 years old, as is Blitzer. I can see both deciding it’s time to find the rocking chair on the front porch.

This has to be a huge blow to liberals everywhere who are watching “their” online social media platform, Twitter, go more mainstream now that Elon Musk has taken over and moved it into the privately owned business realm. Libs are still screaming how unfair it is. What’s hugely amusing is that the left is usually the part of our culture that is concerned with free speech and making sure that they have a platform that’s not going to be interrupted while they spew. That’s precisely what Musk is giving the world in the “new and improved” Twitter. However, that doesn’t fly because no longer are conservative voices being silenced as “hate speech” and “disinformation”.

Now, you’ve got Chris Licht following directives cast upon him by the folks at the Discovery Network who never thought CNN should be so biased in it’s reporting and commentary. And that’s hurting people on the staff because it’s what they’ve become known for. And if the knife cuts deep at Wallace, Blitzer, and Acosta, the screaming will be incredibly loud and obnoxious. Hell, you might even get Senate hearings on the matter.

I look at this simply as the pendulum swinging back toward the center, both in the case of Twitter, and in the case of CNN. Yes, both companies have lost advertisers because of their move, but as anyone familiar with media will tell you, any time you change up your format, you’re going to blow out your old audience in hopes of generating a larger and more diverse group of viewers, or tweeters. And it’s not that CNN has become a Fox News Jr. cable channel either. They’re still pretty liberal when it comes right down to it. They just are flaming to the point that Bernie Sanders thinks they’re too liberal for him. As for Twitter, I find it funny that the Biden administration wants to make sure they “keep an eye” on the company.

The only reason they want to do that is because they are losing out on their “direct to liberal” platform. And if you think Musk is going to go all Donald Trump on the liberal world, think again. He just suspended Kanye West’s account for his antisemitic statements that he made. The only difference between Musk and Jack Dorsey is that Dorsey had a penchant for banning people forever and for the wrong reasons. Musk is going to give folks a little more latitude when it comes to free speech, but not everything goes. Nor should it.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

EXTRA! Harwood Gone At CNN!

John Harwood, an uber-leftist snowflake reporter on CNN has been handed his walking papers and shown the door. The move comes less than a month after Brian Stelter, the overweight host of Reliable Sources was canned. The move is seen as yet another example of what new CEO, Chris Licht had forecasted back in June.

Of course the left is extremely upset over Harwood’s firing. Harwood last appeared on CNN on this past Friday, as he lambasted Donald Trump as a “demented demagogue” while praising Joe Biden’s rambling attack on MAGA Republicans. Apparently, that was enough to send him over the edge.

Personally, I didn’t watch much CNN, so Harwood’s departure doesn’t mean much to me. I can bet, however that between Stelter and Harwood, people like Jim Acosta, Erin Burnett, and Jake Tapper can’t be too far behind. I’m sure all three are polishing up their resumes.

I do give Licht credit. He is trying very hard to bring back some of the glitter that CNN had back in the early 1990’s after coving the first Gulf War. Back then they made news reporters like Wolf Blitzer household names, and were a very reliable network for covering the news. Since that time, however, they’ve taken a hard left turn that has seen them mis-quote people, totally falsify and make up stories altogether, and vilify anyone that doesn’t agree with their socialistic rhetoric.

So, it’s adios amigos to John Harwood. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

EXTRA! Stelter OUT At CNN

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Brian Stelter, the flamboyant, host of “Reliable Sources” got canned today at CNN. The program, which has lasted some 30 years also was cancelled.

Stelter as of late was trying to smooch up to new CEO, Chris Licht’s vision of a milder, more moderate and unbiased approach to news. He recently had slammed Democrats and the left on various topics, trying to show Licht that he could do what was required to fit the new CNN model.

It wasn’t enough.

Stelter came to CNN some nine years ago after leaving the New York Times as a media reporter. He clashed with several less than socialist media members and had a fire-brand approach to his show that the left-leaning snowflakes adored. They loved it when he bashed Donald Trump for four years.

But Stelter’s ratings had taken a beating lately. He was trying to fit in and just couldn’t do it. He actually looked tired and beat up every time he went on the air.

He was let go with the obligatory, “He is the greatest journalist that ever lived” crap that networks are prone to throw out to the world hoping that it makes it look like everything was hunky-dory between the two. But it wasn’t to be. Pretty much anyone that was the slightest bit tuned in to CNN over the past year or two could have written this one!

Stelter’s last show will be on August 21st (this Sunday).

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

And Another One Bites The Dust

Remember Jeffrey Toobin? He was know for two things really. He’s an attorney that was the CNN legal analyst for a good long while. He was also known for being “that guy” that during a Zoom meeting with the New Yorker staff, was caught masterbating.

Yeah…THAT Jeffrey Toobin.

Well, he’s decided that he’s going to be leaving CNN forever. He’s currently “on vacation”, but tweeted the other day that he was finished at the cable news channel. He becomes the latest casualty in CNN’s efforts to go more mainstream.

Oh, don’t worry, there will be others. You can’t turn on a dime like what Brian Stelter is trying to do, and get away with it. Yes, America has been dumbed-down, but we’re not all stupid (yet). And while Stelter may avoid getting squashed by the moderate machine, Chris Licht is doing a hatchet job on liberal politics there, he has a LONG way to go. After all, CNN has long been the place along with MSNBC, where libs go after they got famous on Fox News.

Unfortunately for Stelter, Don Lemon, and the rest of the crew at the once-powerful news channel, there is a lot of pain to go through before you get to the other side and become a more moderate, more unbiased news source. You have to burn off all of the left-wing nut jobs that tuned in to hear the made up news and the left spinning takes on stories, as well as totally ignoring news that mattered to America.

CNN’s numbers have fallen by about 30% since Licht took over from Jeff Zucker back in May. It’s not uncommon, and you mostly see it in radio stations that change formats. They’ll do whatever they can do to burn off their old audience before they launch a new format. So, if a station was say, country, they would play something like The Partridge Family over and over and over again to get rid of the country crowd before going oldies. That seems to be the mentality of Licht at CNN right now, and Toobin is just the latest victim.

Maybe Toobin left on his own accord and maybe he was let go. In the world of broadcasting, you’ll never really know because it’s all one in the same. He’s gone. He won’t be back. One thing’s for sure…there will be a book coming out soon (there always is). And maybe you’ll see his smiling face blasting Republicans for getting upset over the Mar-A-Lago raid on MSNBC.

It HAS happened before.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

EXTRA! CNN About To Do Some Serious “Canning”

CNN was long known as one of the most liberal news networks in existence. They were one of the first to throw away objectivity and fairness in covering news stories, and slid into the cesspool of “bombastic snowflake journalism”. That was all during Jeff Zucker’s reign. But Zucker is gone, replaced by Chris Licht, who is taking a much more moderate stance. His goal is to return CNN to it’s former glory days back in the days of the First Gulf War, when people like Wolf Blitzer made a name for themselves, and CNN changed the face of news coverage forever.

And it looks like one of the first casualties is going to be Brian Stelter. The outspoken liberal snowflake socialist has come under fire within the walls of CNN as one of the leaders of the pushback to Licht’s move to the center as far as news coverage is concerned. He is the one that has been stirring the pot to the point where managing editor of the Washington Examiner, Jon Nicosia has tweeted, “SOURCE: Stelter is ‘down to weeks if not days’ left at CNN. They go on ‘He is everything that reminds the new owners of the Zucker era they desperately want to get past’ – More to come.”

That’s the good news for those looking for a more fair and balanced approach to news. It’s terrible news to people like Don Lemon who are also hanging in the balance of losing their jobs as well. And it means that maybe, just maybe, CNN may begin to actually become a credible source for information again, as opposed to the Democrat talking points that got it dubbed “The Clinton News Network”, back in 2016 when Hillary was running for president.

I’m going to take the position that this would be good news if it happens. However, I’m skeptical, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Too often we listen to the media tell us that they are going to be more moderate, only to go further to the left in their coverage. We’ve seen it with both CNN and MSNBC when it comes to cable news channels, and we’ve seen it with ABC, CBS, and NBC who have gone from stellar news gathering organizations to up to their necks in the mud they throw. We’ve also seen newspapers like the Washington Post, and the New York Times go from Pulitzer winning journalism to the depths of despair in which they have made up stories to get their points across.

All of this has led to a backlash in which all of the above listed media have fallen prey to an avalanche of criticism, a seismic loss of viewership and readership, and a deafening crash as advertisers cancel their contracts and head for much safer ground. It’s the same toxic environment that we’ve seen from the White House, and both chambers of Congress. America is not ready and certainly not accepting of the “woke community”. We’ve seen that with the recent primaries, as even entrenched RINO Republicans have been sidelined during the primary season.

We’ve seen it most recently this past Tuesday in the Texas 34th Congressional District. It was a district that was solidly Democrat. Then Filemon Vela resigned his seat in March causing a special election. In a district that is 85% Hispanic, Republican Mayra Flores beat Democrat Dan Sanchez 51% to 43% avoiding a runoff and flipping the seat. It was the first flip of a Congressional seat since 2020.

I can’t say I’ll be sad to see either Stelter or Lemon lose their job. Both are blowhards that deserve to be on the sidelines. And it’s been a long time coming at CNN, which lost over half of it’s audience and half of it’s advertisers since Biden’s election in 2020. Maybe now media companies are starting to see that snowflake media just isn’t swaying anybody! At least we can hope!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

EXTRA! That Didn’t End Very Well…

Only a month after a much ballyhooed launch of CNN+, the parent company, Warner Brothers/Discovery has decided that enough is enough and is pulling the plug on the streaming service. CNN+ will cease operations on April 30th.

You can’t say that it’s a shocking bit of news. After all, CNN had poured about a quarter of a billion dollars into the launch, and pulled such notables as Kassie Hunt from NBC, and Chris Wallace from Fox News. Neither had anything to do with CNN itself, just the streaming service.

But when Jeff Zucker left CNN, and Chris Licht took over as the CEO, there was a lot of speculation that something like this would happen to CNN+. It was Zucker’s idea in the first place, and was also championed by Vice President, Andrew Morse, who was in charge of seeing the streaming platform take off. Morse will be leaving the company after a short transition period.

Now, this isn’t to say that CNN+ won’t live on in another format or name. Warner Brothers/Discovery says that they are going to make sure that all of their streaming services are under one roof and going down the same road. CNN+ would not have followed scenario. What it means for people like Hunt and Wallace at this point is unknown. Wallace was said to be absolutely catatonic about the fact the streaming service only had about 10,000 daily users. He was badgering his assistants to monitor the number of times his own promo’s aired on CNN throughout the day. Wallace had also been pushing very hard to take over the time slot recently held by Chris Cuomo. Not sure that is going to happen though. Wallace just isn’t that strong of a personality, though he does seem to fit the liberal mode that CNN has portrayed over recent years.

That could be the biggest hurdle that Wallace faces. New CEO Chris Licht has said that he intends to take CNN in a different direction after the news channel lost over half it’s audience by turning socialist in it’s coverage. Licht hopes to bring CNN back to more of a mainstream approach to covering the news, which to most people would be a very welcome change to the obvious left-wing bias it currently employs.

As far as CNN+ is concerned, I guess we chalk it up to Jeff Zucker reading the tea leaves and knowing it was time to bail. He left a mess at his former stomping grounds, and it’s up to Chris Licht to clean it up. Too bad people like Chris Wallace will get caught in the cross fire. It couldn’t happen to a better person!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

CNN+ Dying On The Vine

One of the things former CNN head, Jeff Zucker dreamed up and put out there before his quick departure earlier this year was CNN+. It was going to pump CNN out to the internet in a way much like Fox News had already done with Fox Nation. In fact, Zucker was so sure this was going to be a huge hit, he talked former Fox News Sunday host, Chris Wallace into leaving Fox News and coming over to CNN. But Wallace wouldn’t be on the “big channel”. Instead, he’d be featured on the internet feed.

Uh, Chris Wallace isn’t happy today.

It was reported last week that CNN+ only has about 10,000 daily users. For something that took a quarter of a billion dollars to set up, this has been a terrible blow to the once powerful cable news channel.

Let me put it another way. When I was working on the air in Toledo, Ohio, the 50th largest market in the country at the time (it’s now 79th), my average audience size on a local radio station was around 65,000 people. That’s six and a half times larger than CNN+! And I gotta tell you…no one spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on my show!

It’s so bad that Chris Wallace is having “daily breakdowns” over his decision to jettison Fox News Sunday for CNN+. I can certainly see why. he left a show that had an average viewership of 1.3 million people each week, for an internet channel that doesn’t even get 1% of that. I think I’d be having breakdowns too!

But, I will also add, that it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. Wallace was no Mike Wallace (his father, of 60 Minutes fame) when it came to interviews and investigative journalism. Oh, I know people will tell you how well-respected Chris was in his field, but in reality, Wallace was more concerned with how much time was left in each segment than what his guest had to say. I always thought he was a mediocre to poor interviewer that would ask a lot of “gotcha” questions. And his liberal bias never really worked very well on Fox News. CNN would be a much better fit, even if there were only 10,000 people tuning in online.

It’s so bad that Wallace has demanded that CNN give him Chris Cuomo’s old time slot on the big channel, and take him off of the internet fiasco. CNN hasn’t committed to that just yet. And as we saw with Megyn Kelly when she bolted Fox News to what she thought was greener pastures at NBC, Wallace has learned the hard way, it usually isn’t as green as it seems.

Fox has launched (and saved) several careers over the years. From Brit Hume, who had been a long-time network newscaster and ended his full-time career at Fox News as the managing editor of “Special Report”, to people like Bill O’Reilly. Hume has maintained a part-time presence on Fox News, while O’Reilly, who was fired over sexual harassment issues that had been long going, and cost Fox News millions in settlement fees. But like we’ve seen with several former Fox News reporters and anchors, usually, the move isn’t exactly what they wanted.

As far as Wallace is concerned, he’s likely making around $10 million a year according to outkick.com. And he signed to a multi-year contract that means that if CNN decides to fold CNN+ into other Warner Media outlets like HBO Max and Discovery+, Wallace may be the only current member of CNN+ that doesn’t have a home to crawl back to. The rest of the CNN+ crowd either comes directly from CNN itself, or they signed shorter term contracts which would expire quickly. Wallace isn’t so lucky. And he’s not talented enough to jump into CNN’s most watched hour (9pm) to take over for Cuomo.

In a word, Wallace is expendable, especially with new CEO Chris Licht in charge. If Licht doesn’t like what Wallace brings to the table, he’s likely to bounce him, much like NBC did with Megyn Kelly after several failed attempts to fit in. And, at 74 years old, it may be time for Wallace to hang up the microphone, and take up golf. We’ll have to wait and see.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

But Will The “NEW” CNN Be Any Better?

I don’t know how it can get much worse. But the “new and improved” CNN is coming. Since Jeff Zucker left the cable news channel, the staff has drifted rudderless. It wasn’t much better when Zucker was at the helm. His uber-leftist stance in presenting the news cost CNN about half of their audience, a ton of advertising revenue, and really damaged any positive reputation the news channel once had. Remember…this was the channel that basically started the whole cable news channel revolution and put an end to the networks’ nightly news stranglehold.

With Zucker gone, new CEO Chris Licht is set to step into his new office on April 11th. And when he does apparently there are rumors that there will be a lot of changes. One of the changes is who Licht will answer to. David Zaslav, who is the CEO of Discovery channel portion of Time/Warner will oversee Licht. Thats going to mean changes at the cable news network.

The rumors swirl that CNN is going to go back to the more straight forward news approach. If that’s the case, then one wonders what is going to happen to the likes of Jim Acosta, Erin Burnett, Anderson Cooper, Van Jones, Brian Stelter, and Jake Tapper. If CNN decides to be more mainstream and less flame-throwing with their presentations, these six could be out the door as could Don Lemon.

Frankly, it would be nice to have an unbiased cable news channel out there. Pretty much anymore you have to choose whether you want a conservative or liberal view and then pick. And the liberal view has been dominated by CNN and MSNBC for decades (of course the network newscasts have all been way left of center for a long time as well). The more conservative cable shows can be found on the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN.

The big question is, if CNN does indeed move to the center, leaving only MSNBC as the only liberal snowflake channel out there on cable, does that improve their ratings? Or have they lost that crowd already?

And one of the things that a lot of folks working in the Atlanta hub are concerned about is the launch of the new streaming service CNN+. Some folks I know who work there say that the streaming service needs a major overhaul already, and is nowhere near ready for launch. That should be interesting for someone like a Chris Wallace who left a relatively stable gig at Fox News, as their major leftist host to join a more friendly group at CNN. Poor Chris is finding out he may have jumped too soon!

Whether CNN makes it or has to revert back to the old snowflake days, they’ve got a lot to prove. Just saying you’re going to be more unbiased is one thing. Doing it is quite another.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!