OAN’s James Meyers
1:42 PM – Wednesday, July 10, 2024
CNN will cut an estimated 100 jobs as part of a new shift in the company to change its operations and strengthen its digital media presence, senior leadership told employees in an internal memo.
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“We are building a billion dollar digital business of the future,” CNN Worldwide CEO Mark Thompson wrote in the memo, made public on Wednesday.
CNN plans to merge its news gathering and digital news teams, launch a unit to produce content for its partnership with streaming service Max (HBO) and other digital channels, centralize its pitching process, and eliminate divisions between its U.S. and international teams.
Additionally, CNN launched a paid subscription product centered around its website, according to the memo.
“We will develop new digital products with a special focus on digital experiences worth paying for,” the memo reads.
Meanwhile, the subscription-based launch on CNN.com is expected by the end of this year, with a focus on lifestyle and featured content.
The 100 jobs cut will only slightly affect CNN’s roughly 3,500-person workforce.
The latest round of job cuts at CNN comes as nearly 2,000 media workforce jobs have been terminated across the U.S., UK, Canada, and Ireland this year, according to the Press Gazette.
Additionally, CNN has also faced its lowest primetime viewership in 10 years, as viewers continue to switch to other streaming services and different news networks.
Thompson said that CNN‘s digital strategy must be “ambitious enough to deliver the audiences and the revenue we need to maintain our unique journalistic firepower and succeed as a business.”
“In the future our digital products need to do a far better job of reflecting CNN’s massive strength in video and anchoring/reporting talent,” Thompson said.
Furthermore, CNN will also be utilizing more artificial intelligence (AI) technology, according to Thompson. He said they will look at how the company can safely use the tech to better serve its audience.
Thompson, a former executive at the BBC and The New York Times, helped the outlets increase the amount of subscribers significantly. When he joined CNN last year he said that the company’s TV offerings “can no longer define us,” and that CNN was “nowhere near ready for the future.”
CNN will be hoping to avoid another disaster like what transpired with the previous the launch of CNN+, a $100 million digital streaming service launched in 2022 which was shuttered only a month after it launched.
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