What can we expect from CNN under Chris Licht?

Licht, the former Executive Producer of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” promises less liberal politics and more news gathering.

Here is Mike Allen at Axios:

Under new chief Chris Licht, CNN will dial down the prime-time partisanship and double down on the network’s news-gathering muscle, top sources tell me.

Why it matters: Ratings are secondary to credibility, in the view of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who’s taking over CNN.

Jeff Zucker’s successor at the CNN helm will be Licht — showrunner of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and a popular, pioneering producer who knows his way around America’s top control rooms.

• The selection of Licht, a regular at Zaslav summer parties in the Hamptons, was reported first by Puck News’ Dylan Byers. Licht will be named next week.
• Licht — CBS’ EVP of Special Programming — succeeded with three very different programs: Colbert rose on his watch to become the most-watched network late-night show, with live shows for big news … “CBS This Morning” got a ratings jolt when he was E.P. … and he was co-creator and original E.P. of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

What‘s happening: Zaslav, at the urging of mentor John Malone, is likely to push CNN back to hard news, and away from red-hot liberal opining.

• Taking on a second hallmark of the Zucker regime, the incoming Discovery team has expressed skepticism about the roster size for CNN+, the streaming service Zucker had been stocking with expensive talent.

Between the lines: Axios is told that Licht and Zaslav share a view that CNN was chasing prime-time ratings at the expense of the brand.

• Zaslav wants to move CNN back to the middle.
• CNN at all hours will emphasize the type of indispensable coverage we’ve been seeing from Ukraine — a deployment built on Zucker’s flood-the-zone, own-the story playbook, and hires including Clarissa Ward.
• CNN’s footprint includes 11 U.S. bureaus and 28 internationally. Zucker invested heavily in CNN Digital, which boasts 200 million unique visitors globally each month.

Read the rest here.

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