New CNN Chief Faces Up Hill Road

CNN has been plagued by a cascade of recent high-profile scandals and steep ratings declines. Now that rough patch is capped off by the news that longtime boss Jeff Zucker resigned after he didn’t disclose a romantic relationship with another senior executive at the company.

The NY Post reports a  decision on the seat at the top of the network likely won’t be made until AT&T completes its $43 billion deal to spin off CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, into a merger with Discovery. That deal isn’t expected to close until sometime this spring.

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Once the deal closes, Discovery boss David Zaslav — who will grab the reins as CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery — will decide what to do at the top of CNN. He could decide, of course, not to appoint any one person to fill Zucker’s role.

“CNN doesn’t need to hire outside,” one media executive familiar with the situation told The Post. “The machine kind of runs itself. CNN is a big, old bureaucratic news organization.”

Still, this person said, there will be a lot of work to do. CNN, the source said, “has lost its way.”

The network had been riding high on strong ratings when Donald Trump was president. But without the Zucker-directed constant coverage of all-things Trump, CNN’s ratings began to freefall. The network’s ratings took a nosedive, falling a massive 90 percent in the first week of the new year when considering overall viewers and in one all-important demographic coveted by advertisers.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, CNN hastily named a trio of executives to fill Zucker’s shoes on an interim basis: Executive Vice President of Programming Michael Bass, Executive Vice President for Talent and Content Development at CNN Worldwide Amy Entelis and Executive Vice President Ken Jautz

Media insiders buzzed that Zaslav will likely pick one of the three execs, as he will have a hard time finding a high-profile exec to clean up the mess that Zucker left behind.