Chris Licht, the controversial and embattled chairman and chief executive officer of the cable news giant CNN is stepping aside after a very short, turbulent time at the top, according to numerous reports on Wednesday morning, including from inside the company.Licht will leave and be replaced within 48 hours, Puck News first reported early on Wednesday. Not long after, CNN’s own news website launched a story saying that his “brief one-year tenure at the network was stained by a series of severe missteps, [and he] will depart the company”.“I met with Chris and he will be leaving CNN,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of parent company Warner Bros Discovery, told CNN employees at the start of the network’s daily editorial call on Wednesday, the CNN news site further reported, adding that “Licht has not commented on his departure and he did not immediately respond to requests for comment”.Licht was under siege from within and apologized to his employees on Monday after an Atlantic magazine profile revealed he had been aware of the “extra-Trumpy” make-up of the crowd at a widely criticized town hall with former president Donald Trump last month.According to the Atlantic, Licht had also been critical of CNN’s performance under his predecessor, telling employees they had alienated potential viewers through hostility to Donald Trump. His tenure also included the sacking of senior presenters, and widespread unrest as he pursued a stated goal of bringing the network more into the center of US political discourse and winning over Republicans.Now Puck – whose media reporter Dylan Byers has covered Licht exhaustively – has reported that Licht is set to be ousted.“After a year of leadership missteps, programming misfires, a disastrous Trump town hall and the near-total decimation of staff morale in the wake of a chilling all-access Atlantic story, Licht will be vacating the CEO position,” Byers wrote.He added: “In the next 48 hours, I’m told, Warner Bros Discovery will announce that Licht will be stepping down as chairman and CEO of CNN, ostensibly bringing an end to one of the most turbulent periods in the network’s 43-year history.”Puck reported that “Licht will be replaced for an interim period by Amy Entelis, the revered longtime CNN executive, talent whisperer and CNN Films chief who served as a loyal deputy for years to Licht’s predecessor, Jeff Zucker.”Licht was appointed chairman and CEO of CNN in May 2022.After the Atlantic article was published Licht was subjected to a barrage of criticism privately from staff and publicly from media observers.Bill Grueskin, a Columbia Journalism School professor, wrote brutally: “It wouldn’t be fair to say a trained seal could do a better job running CNN than Chris Licht. It’s just that, after reading this piece, it feels like we should give the trained seal a shot.”
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