CNN corporate head David Zaslav takes ‘full responsibility’ for disastrous Chris Licht tenure
CNN’s corporate head, David Zaslav, spoke to network staff at its New York headquarters Wednesday and took “full responsibility” for outgoing CEO Chris Licht’s disastrous tenure.
The Warner Bros. Discovery CEO, who hired Licht — who had never been a success as the executive producer of several shows, but was untested at the top of an entire network — praised Licht’s past successes. But he said, “Like all of you, he was in the line of fire and he’s taken a lot of hits.”
“For a number of reasons, things didn’t work and that’s unfortunate and ultimately that’s on me. And I take full responsibility for that,” Zaslav said.
He added, “But now we begin a new page.”
Licht, who had previously been the executive producer of Stephen Colbert’s hit “Late Show,” weathered a stream of disasters in his year-long stint at the network, from the embarrassing and messy collapse of his “CNN This Morning” show to his much-panned town hall with Donald Trump last month.
Page Six reported back in March that Zaslav had privately lost faith in Licht, even while supporting him publicly. “He hates the job and can’t do it,” a source told us a far back as three months ago.
But the final nail in the coffin was an excruciating article about his first year in the job published in the Atlantic, which lost Licht the support of the last of his backers.
He named a transition team including EVP of editorial, Virginia Moseley, EVP of programming Eric Sherling, EVP of talent, Amy Entelis, and David Leavy, a Zaslav confidante who was appointed just last week to shore up the struggling Licht.
Zaslav said, “I have great confidence in this group until a new CEO is named.”
He said he’s conducting a thorough search for a new leader “both internally and externally.”
“We are in no rush,” he added.
A rep for CNN didn’t get back to us.
