The axe finally dropped at CNN.
Executives spent months navigating the latest shakeup.
And CNN made a major closing announcement that no one saw coming.
CNN premiered on June 1, 1980, after billionaire Ted Turner decided he wanted a 24-hour news network.
From day one the CNN Center in Atlanta served as the network’s headquarters.
But in another sign that new management is still trying to cut costs and keep the channel afloat the network finally shut the doors on the CNN Center after selling it to two real estate developers.
The network’s main anchors relocated to Washington and New York, but CNN International talent and CNN digital staffers still worked out of the CNN Center.
Fox News reports:
CNN is moving out of the CNN Center, its longtime downtown Atlanta home by the end of this year.
The cable channel’s weekday anchors are all already in New York or Washington, but CNN still has digital and CNN International operations in Atlanta. Spokesperson Bridget Leininger confirmed in an email that the remaining CNN staff and operations in Atlanta would move to the Techwood Turner Broadcasting campus in Midtown.
The move will happen in stages and will finish by the end of this year, Leininger said.
CNN’s previous parent company, AT&T, sold the CNN Center for nearly $164 million to two Florida-based real estate firms, CP Group and Rialto Capital, in 2021, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. It was not immediately clear what would happen to the building’s other tenants.
Closing the CNN Center is the latest setback for CNN.
After Discovery bought CNN’s parent company Warner Brothers, new CEO David Zaslav made it his mission to cut $3 billion in debt from the new Warner Brothers Discovery entity.
One of the first dominos to fall was when new network President Chris Licht shut down CNN+, the $300 billion money pit of a streaming service that was the brainchild of disgraced former network President Jeff Zucker.
Licht then canceled the struggling morning show “New Day” and replaced it with “CNN This Morning,” a monstrosity of a show co-hosted by Don Lemon, Kaitlan Collins, and Poppy Harlow.
But “This Morning” is just as big a ratings disaster as “New Day.”
In 2022, “New Day” averaged 413,000 viewers whereas “Fox and Friends” brought in an average of 1.36 million.
“This Morning” draws a miniscule 410,000 viewers on average over its first three months.
Now “This Morning” is undergoing a shakeup as executive producer Eric Hall is moving to the 11 p.m. show.
Mediaite reports:
The executive producer of CNN’s newly reimagined morning show is leaving after less than three months on the job, moving to nights where he will work on Laura Coates’s 11 p.m. program.
Eric Hall, who oversaw the launch of CNN This Morning in November, will move on to develop Coates’s new show and the Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow, and Kaitlin Collins-hosted morning program will get new executive producer.
CNN tried to claim this was not a demotion.
But 11 p.m. is out of primetime and usually a dead spot in cable news whereas the morning program is a flagship show for any cable news network.
Licht and Zaslav canceled high-profile projects, fired big-name talent, and shuttered the CNN Center.
CNN alienated conservatives through a four-year smear campaign against Donald Trump.
And liberals don’t feel the need to tune in without Trump in the White House.
CNN is in trouble.
There may be no pulling the nose up on this plane.
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