NEW YORK (AP) — A former chief executive of the BBC and The New York Times who says he sees opportunity in times of disruption was chosen Wednesday to lead CNN, which has burned through two leaders and bled viewers over the past two years.
Mark Thompson was appointed as CNN’s new chair and CEO by the network’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. Thompson will replace Chris Licht, who was fired in June, and a four-person team that had been running CNN in the interim, when he takes over Oct. 9.
Thompson, who left the Times in 2020 after eight years as that company’s president and CEO, is credited with helping the newspaper transition to a digital-first organization more dependent on paid subscribers than the collapsing advertising market that has doomed many newspapers.
The native of England, who was knighted by the British government this year, was director-general of the BBC from 2004 to 2012.
“I’ve long admired Mark’s transformative leadership and his ability to inspire organizations to raise their own ambitions and sense of what’s possible, and achieve it,” David Zaslav, chief of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a note to CNN staff.
Thompson, in his own note, said that television journalism is approaching peak disruption. CNN and other networks have suffered from people cutting off cable subscriptions, and the company has so far fumbled its attempt to establish a streaming service.
“We face pressure from every direction — structural, political, cultural, you name it,” Thompson said. “Like many other media organizations, CNN has recently felt some of the uncertainty and heartache that comes with all of that. There’s no magic wand I or anyone else can wield to make this disruption go away. But what I can say is that where others see threat, I see opportunity.”