Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO
Sixteen months ago, Chris Licht was on top of the world. The showrunner had been hand-chosen to lead CNN, one of the world's largest and most respected news organizations.
The news came this morning following months of growing discontent at the news outlet. Things intensified over the weekend after The Atlantic published a searing profile of Licht, which painted him as a self-obsessed leader without much of a vision for CNN.
By Tuesday night, top CNN anchors were voicing their concerns about him.
And on Wednesday morning, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav emailed staff, letting them know Licht was stepping down.
Here's a look at the tumultuous tenure of Licht:
At the end of February 2022, Zaslav announced that Licht would become the head of CNN as soon as the WarnerMedia and Discovery merger went through. He'd take the job of Jeff Zucker, who had left earlier in February following his failure to disclose a consensual relationship with a colleague.
At the time, Licht was the showrunner of Stephen Colbert's "The Late Show" and the executive vice president of special programming at ViacomCBS. He'd previously worked as the executive producer of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and "CBS This Morning."
Initial reactions were mixed: Licht was a star producer, but had never run such a large division.
Licht didn't officially take the helm until May, but before that, he and his Warner Bros. Discovery bosses were shaking things up.
In April, days before Licht's start date, WBD announced would shut down the network's subscription streaming service, CNN+, less than a month after it had launched, leaving hundreds of employees without work.
"This is not a decision about quality; we appreciate all of the work, ambition and creativity that went into building CNN+, an organization with terrific talent and compelling programming," Licht said in a statement at the time. "But our customers and CNN will be best served with a simpler streaming choice."
Upon his arrival at CNN HQ, Licht made his hands-off approach — one that was very different from Zucker's and would be a factor in his demise — known right away, choosing to take an office on the 22nd floor of CNN's headquarters, rather than in the middle of the newsroom.
By the end of last summer, it became clear that big changes were afoot. Licht set out to make the network a place for middle-of-the-road news, not analysis and opinion, which had come to mark the network and caused it to be a target of Trump and the right wing.
He canceled the media analysis show "Reliable Sources," which had run on the network for decades, and laid off its host, Brian Stelter, and production staff. John Harwood, the network's White House correspondent and a critic of both Trump and the Republican Party, was next to go.
More cuts were coming at CNN.
They started small, in September, when about eight audio staffers were let go.
By November, Licht announced that they'd be intensifying — after telling employees a few months earlier that there would be no major layoffs. The final number became apparent in December: The network would be cutting about 400 positions, or 10% of the workforce.
At the same time, Licht was already coming under fire from staff, who accused him of not having a plan and said he was running low on good will.
"Very, very senior senior people and talent are finding out about wholesale changes that impact them and their teams via press release," a person familiar with internal conversations at the network told Insider at the time. "Horrible programming decisions that folks don't have confidence in."
On the programming side, Licht launched "CNN This Morning," with anchors Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow, and Kaitlan Collins. But six months in, he had not yet found a replacement for Chris Cuomo at 9 p.m.
Meanwhile, employees were growing increasingly frustrated with the small changes, like new conferencing systems, email addresses, and travel policies, during the run up to the midterm elections.
After a relatively drama-free January for the network — and a particularly boring New Year's Eve broadcast — CNN was back in the limelight amid falling ratings. Its primetime ratings were down 62% year-over-year, and it was garnering its lowest audience in decades, AP reported.
Licht's passion project, "CNN This Morning," was also suffering in terms of both ratings and bad press, after one of its anchors, Don Lemon, said 51-year-old Nikki Haley "isn't in her prime." By the middle of the month, the network had to bring in two executive producers to try to revive the only four-month-old show.
Things got so bad that Zaslav, himself, had to deliver a pep talk to CNN managers.
"Ratings be damned," he said, according to AP. "Let's focus on who we are. This is our mission. This is our legacy. And this is our journey together."
Things only got worse for Licht and his star anchor, Lemon, the following month, when a bombshell Variety report detailed allegations of misogyny and problematic workplace conduct by Lemon.
"It's another shit show" on top of Licht's multiplying challenges at CNN, one former employee told Insider at the time.
"Everyone knows the a.m. show is a problem," another company insider said. "His behavior has hurt the show since it launched. The stench won't go away. Variety is the latest example of that. I assume he'd be out."
At first, Licht stuck by Lemon. But by the end of April, Lemon was out at the network, announcing his own firing in a Tweet that can only be described as messy.
With the Lemon drama taking center stage, other news from the network — like announced shows from Gayle King and Charles Barkley and a new hosting role for Dana Bash — barely broke through.
Things heated up for Licht in May, when — much to the dismay of both staffers and a large swath of the public — he insisted on having Donald Trump on for a town hall in the name of appealing to a larger audience, including conservatives.
During the broadcast, Trump called CNN's Collins, who anchored the event, "a nasty person" and joked about sexual assault.
"Having people applaud those sexual abuse comments definitely made me question my allegiance to this network," one network executive told Insider.
"It was an unmitigated disaster. The audience was like a Trump rally," a former exec said.
It wasn't just one action or statement that sealed Licht's fate — it was 15,000 words in The Atlantic.
The profile, which came out on Friday, was the result of deep access over many months. It laid out in scathing detail a leader who was out of touch, aloof, and without a plan. The story described everything from gym sessions in which he mocked his predecessor Zucker to his disastrous handling of the Trump town hall, which he wanted to make "extra Trumpy."
The response was nearly instantaneous.
"Also it's so clear Licht lacks the management experience to steer a behemoth like cnn and he's seeing his task more like running a show than a multi-billion-dollar company," one media insider told Insider's Nich Carlson. "Well, that's what it once was. CNN revenues have now shrunk under his disastrous leadership."
Another insider said the writing was on the wall: "The way he was painted, whatever support he had left at the company is likely gone."
Even his champion Zaslav seemed to be questioning things.
"In the last 48 hours, it has become clear, based on conversations with well-placed sources, that Zaslav's once steadfast support has wavered considerably," Puck's Dylan Byers reported Friday.
That was prescient, for while Licht tried to win his staff back on Monday, he wouldn't last long.
"I know these past few days have been very hard for this group," Licht said to staffers. "I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role in it overshadowed the incredible week of reporting that we just had and distracted from the work of every single journalist in this org. And for that, I am sorry."
He even said he'd move his office closer to the newsroom.
But it was too little too late.
CNN's own media reporter Oliver Darcy said Licht had "lost the room," adding that dozens of CNN staffers no longer had confidence in their leader.
By Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that top talent like Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper had begun voicing their concerns.
Less than 24 hours later, WBD announed that Licht was stepping down.
"Unfortunately, things did not work out the way we had hoped — and ultimately that's on me," Zaslav wrote in a note to staffers, according to Semafor's Max Tani. "I take responsibility."
He leaves a tough job for whoever fills his shoes — though it's a safe bet that that person will last longer.
