Mark Thompson says he likes to take on “big, juicy strategic puzzles” — first when he ran the BBC, then The New York Times, and now as CEO of CNN.
The new job might be his hardest one yet: CNN is a big brand that still makes a lot of money, but it’s a cable TV network, and cable TV networks are in big trouble. So Thompson is trying to find an answer in streaming, with a new service that will give you just about everything CNN shows you on TV, for $7 a month.
The most obvious question about the streaming service’s launch is whether there are many people who care enough about CNN to pay for it separately — instead of as part of a cable TV bundle, where it has lived all its life. The next question is how you get people who aren’t paying for news to start doing that, especially when there’s so much out there for free.
As Thompson notes, people once said the same thing about The New York Times — which used to give itself away for free online. Now it has more than 11 million digital subscribers.
Thompson’s challenges aren’t just product-related, though. He also has to deal with continual critiques that his network is too left-leaning. But it’s entirely unclear whether there’s a meaningful audience for down-the-middle news anymore. And looming over everything is a transaction that could likely give him a new owner in the near future — maybe the world’s second-richest man and his son, maybe someone else.
I talked to Thompson about all of that in the most recent episode of my Channels podcast. Below are edited excerpts of our conversation.
Peter Kafka: Right now, CNN makes most of its money from fees that cable TV customers pay to cable TV companies. You’re trying to launch a model where I pay CNN directly. Where is this going?
Mark Thompson: We think we’ve got one of the best-known — by some measures, the best-known and most widely trusted — news brands in the world.
Our original legacy platform of conventional pay TV in the US on cable has stood the test of time for decades. But we’re now seeing a very big audience transition — from that platform to others, and from a fixed mode of consumption, typically the television set, to lots of different modes. Small screens, large screens, short duration, long duration, on the move, and sometimes leaning back at home.
To keep CNN strong, we have to go after our audiences where they are now — and feed them, give them the service of breaking news and everything else CNN stands for, in ways and on devices that work for them.
You’re charging $7 a month. Who are you targeting? People who have cable but want to cut the cord? People who’ve already cut the cord or never had it to begin with?
We think something like 80 million Americans are in households who’ve cut the cord since COVID. Our market research suggests about 18 million of them say they’d be very interested in receiving and paying for CNN as a stand-alone subscription. That’s an initial target audience.
Seven dollars a month is much cheaper than other streaming services — but it’s much more than the free TV news you can now get online from the likes of CBS and NBC. How will you get people to pay?
That was the argument — very vocal at the time — about why a digital subscription service at The New York Times wouldn’t work. I believe that certain things around brand and quality and distinctiveness [matter], and you actually have to deliver it. But if you can deliver on those things … I think we essentially proved at The New York Times that there are scalable subscription models.
You could say, “Well, how do you know it’s going to work for TV news?” I would say I don’t think anyone’s really tried it properly in TV news yet.
If this works like it did at the Times, you’ll eventually be relying on consumers to directly fund CNN. Can that support the cost of making live, high-quality television?
Yes, at scale. The key thing is, can you scale an audience to get the economics to work?
Will you have to make cuts to make that work?
Our head count’s gone up since I’ve been at CNN. We are going to need to probably continue to hire on the digital side. Will we need, over time, to cut some costs on the linear side? The answer is probably yes.
But this is more of a shifting of cost. And a change in skills mix. I always think in these conversations, there’s a risk that the cuts get noted, and the new hires and the investment doesn’t. I don’t believe that, as far as I can see, there’s going to be a significant net reduction in the number of people who work at CNN.
Your predecessor said he was trying to make CNN centrist, because critics — including John Malone, the investor who has a stake in CNN-owner Warner Bros. Discovery — think CNN is too far to the left. Do you feel like you still have to fight that label?
What we are trying to offer is a form of journalism where we hold ourselves to account for actually trying to find out objective facts, to bring them as quickly and accurately as we can to the public, and then to have measured and courteous debates about what that might mean.
What do you make of CBS News hiring Bari Weiss, supposedly to tackle bias in its reporting?
I would rather patiently wait to see how CBS News develops, and then make an assessment of it.
Bari, by the way, is a really interesting figure. Thoughtful, and not to be stereotyped in the way she often is in the current discourse about CBS. I would say that she’s an interesting kind of individual.
There’s a very good chance your owner, Warner Bros. Discovery, will be sold. How do you manage with that uncertainty?
You may have noticed in recent years that the whole of media is going through change. Things are combined, they’re dis-combined, sold, bought and sold, and the rest of it. As I sometimes say to my colleague, if you’re looking for a life of complete certainty …
The best thing CNN can do to assure its future is one of high-quality journalism, is [practice] genuinely fair journalism — dealing with sensitive and difficult stories in a way which is fair-minded and treats everyone involved with dignity. That’s the best thing we do.
The second good thing we can do is continue to develop a compelling plan for our digital future, and demonstrate our ability to reach digital audiences and engage them.
I won’t ask you if you think Paramount owner David Ellison should own CNN. But what kind of owner is an ideal owner for CNN?
Over the last two years I’ve worked for the owners and board of Warner Bros. Discovery, and for [WBD CEO] David Zaslav, who have been supportive of the strategy, invested in CNN’s future and have [been serious about] CNN’s editorial independence, including independence from them — allowing me to be where the buck stops in terms of editorial decision-making. They’ve honored all of that.
I would test any owner not on general perfection, but a commitment to editorial independence and a commitment to building.
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