Category: CNN

It took barely three weeks for the CNN+ streaming service to get shut down by the last-place cable news network’s new ownership. Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav is known for running a tight ship — he’s all about the profits — and from the moment that CNN+ launched, it was obviously doomed. The report was that the streaming channel had barely 10,000 daily viewers, an audience that might be enough to sustain a YouTube channel. But was anyone surprised by this failure? Was there any reason to believe that clowns who have ruined CNN could make a go of it in the online streaming market? As if there were an unsatisfied demand for more Brian Stelter out there somewhere?

Chris Licht told staffers that "this was an incredibly successful launch" but simply incompatible with the new company's plans. "It is not your fault that you had the rug pulled out from underneath you," he said as he vowed to minimize the impacts to staff https://t.co/Hmx3znddNT

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 21, 2022

This is a delusional level of denial. What was “incredibly successful” about it, Mr. Licht? Could you be specific? Because absolutely nobody who knows anything about the business thought it was successful, let alone “incredibly successful.” And the fact that Brian Stelter repeats this dishonest and/or delusional claim as if it were true tells us everything we need to know about Stelter’s journalistic abilities. CNN+ was one of the most spectacular failures in the history of the industry.

CNN+ was to media what the Fyre Festival was to luxury concert events. If there were any accountability, everybody involved in CNN+ would be permanently unemployed, persona non grata in journalism.

CNN+ didn’t even last as long as Jeffrey Toobin during a Zoom meeting

— Jordan Chamberlain (@jordylancaster) April 21, 2022

"Thoughts and prayers." ?? https://t.co/gqn98L8zXG

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) April 21, 2022

 

You remember when the malignant dwarf Jeff Zucker was forced out at CNN last month because he was shtupping the last-place network’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer Allison Gollust?

And do you also remember when Gollust, whose main job qualification as a network executive was being Jeff Zucker’s girlfriend, later exited CNN blabbering nonsense about “journalistic integrity”?

Guess what it cost CNN to get rid of these two lovebirds?

Former CNN President Jeff Zucker allegedly reached a multimillion-dollar exit deal with parent company WarnerMedia prior to resigning in February.
According to people familiar with the situation, Zucker was owed $5 million from his 2021 bonus, The Wall Street Journal reported. The agreement was finalized before Zucker announced his resignation when it was revealed he was involved in an extra-marital, consensual relationship with Chief Marketing Officer Allison Gollust. . . .
Deadline reported Tuesday that Zucker had received a $10 million, one-time payment upon leaving the company, citing their own sources. Zucker will receive the payment in the approximately seven to 10 days. Gollust also received $1 million after she left the organization, Deadline continued.

Imagine paying out $11 million to be done with these people, whose tenure at CNN basically wrecked the network, both in terms of ratings and its reputation. But I’m probably just jealous I didn’t wangle a sweet deal like that. Heck, I could have ruined CNN for half that price.

 

Totally stolen from Ace, this statement by adulteress Allison Gollust just boggles my mind at so many levels I don’t know where to start. Insofar as “journalistic integrity” is concerned, is Gollust completely unaware of why she and her boyfriend Jeff Zucker got shitcanned at CNN? Like, she somehow missed the fact that they were acting as propaganda operatives for disgraced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo? Or what about the problem — which Gollust, inside her bubble, apparently doesn’t recognize — that CNN torched its credibility by becoming a televised psych ward for Trump Delusion Syndrome patients? Or the related problem that, in the post-Trump era, CNN has lost 90% of its audience?

One would have to have spent the past few years inside a hermetically sealed vault not to understand how the intertwining of Gullust, Zucker and the Cuomo brothers was a formula for corruption, utterly contradicting the “journalistic integrity” that Gollust attributes to CNN, because everybody — and I do mean everybody — raised eyebrows about this cozy political media arrangement. Even liberals, who totally shared the Trump Derangement Syndrome fever that infected CNN, were astonished by the way the network had Chris Cuomo interviewing his brother the governor. Leaving all that aside, however, exactly what does Allison Gollust know about “integrity,” journalistic or otherwise? She has never been anything but a P.R. flack, and her primary qualification for her position at CNN was her willingness to service the sexual demands of Jeff Zucker. It was, as they say, an “open secret” for years.

Ace points out that Gollust’s claim that Warner Media is trying “to retaliate against me and change the media narrative” should be viewed as a veiled threat of litigation, but considering that her main responsibility at CNN was being Zucker’s girlfriend — a corporate-paid mistress — how does she imagine she can make a wrongful termination claim? Like, if your job was to provide fellatio to Zucker, and Zucker gets fired? We must assume that the new president of CNN doesn’t expect to get the same service from Gollust that she was providing Zucker, so exactly why should CNN keep paying her? Self-awareness doesn’t seem to be Allison Gollust’s strong suit, however, or she would have resigned as soon as Zucker got the boot. Instead she foolishly tried to hang on, and then claims Warner Media is at fault for its “disastrous handling” of a situation for which she herself was largely responsible: “Exit, lying.”

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 

In his landmark 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, economist Friedrich Hayek included a chapter entitled “Why the Worst Get on Top,” explaining why collectivist regimes are always run by evil people.

What Hayek said of 20th-century totalitarian systems could be applied to dishonest propaganda operations like CNN, i.e., that to “be a useful assistant” in such an organization, someone must “be prepared actively to break every moral rule he has ever known . . . they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of everything.” When the basic purpose of an organization — its raison d’être — is to deceive people, no honest person is likely to seek employment there, and those who advance to the leadership of the organization are sure to be notorious liars, who would be considered unworthy of trust by all decent and moral people. Such was self-evidently the case with CNN and Jeff Zucker:

CNN’s top boss, Jeff Zucker, resigned from the network Wednesday after he didn’t disclose a romantic relationship with another senior executive at the company that’s long been considered the worst kept secret in television.
Zucker, who has helmed the cable network for nine years, told colleagues in a memo that his relationship with CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer Allison Gollust came up during a probe into Chris Cuomo’s alleged sexual misconduct.
“As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Zucker wrote in the memo, shared on Twitter by CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter.
“I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years,” he wrote. “I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”
Gollust, who previously worked as former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s communications director, released a statement confirming the relationship.
“Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years. Recently our relationship changed during COVID,” said Gollust, who is staying with the network.
“I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time. I’m incredibly proud of my time at CNN and look forward to continuing the great work we do everyday.” . . .
Rumors about Zucker, 56, and Gollust’s affair have been circulating in the media world for years, but the pair have repeatedly, and vehemently, denied they were in a relationship when asked numerous times by Page Six.
Zucker was allegedly so brazen about his relationship with Gollust, he moved her into the same Upper East Side building where he lived with his then-wife of 21 years Caryn Zucker before the two divorced, sources said.

Everybody knew about this “worst kept secret”:

Female employees at CNN are furious that chief spokesperson Allison Gollust is keeping her job after “lying” about her affair with newly resigned CEO Jeff Zucker “for years,” sources told The Post.
“Why is she allowed to keep her job?” a CNN insider railed.
“CNN is supposed to be a transparent news network. How does she get away with lying about their affair for so long?”
Early Wednesday, Zucker sent a memo to colleagues announcing he’d be retiring after his relationship with Gollust came to light during CNN’s probe into Chris Cuomo. He called the relationship “consensual” and told staff that he wished he’d disclosed it sooner.
Gollust released a statement shortly after saying that she and Zucker had been professional colleagues for over 20 years but their relationship “changed during COVID.”
One insider called the comments “a total lie.”
“They’ve been together for years,” the source dished.
“And she’s still lying about it today — the statement she made that ‘recently our relationship changed during COVID’ is a total lie.”

Do you see how Hayek’s observation about totalitarianism applies? The people now complaining about Gollust getting to keep her job were themselves implicated in covering up the Zucker-Gollust affair — if everybody knew it had been going on “for years,” why didn’t they say anything? Or, perhaps more to the point, if they felt Zucker’s behavior was unethical, why didn’t they quit and go work somewhere else?

But that’s just it, you see — everybody at CNN wanted to work at CNN. They wanted to work for Jeff Zucker, an unethical man running an unethical organization, which was staffed by unethical employees. The entire organization is corrupt, from top to bottom.

CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota said Wednesday on “Newsroom” that the undisclosed relationship between CNN chief Jeff Zucker and Executive Vice President Allison Gollust is between “two consenting adults,” so it should not have caused Zucker to step down.
Camerota said, “I want to say something personal for a moment. I feel it deeply personally, but I think I speak for all of us and our colleagues. This is an incredible loss. It’s an incredible loss. Jeff is a remarkable person and an incredible leader. He has this uncanny ability to make, I think, every one of us feel special and valuable in our own way even though he is managing an international news organization of thousands of people. I just know he had this unique ability to make us feel special. I don’t think that comes around all the time. I think, again, it’s an incredible loss. I just think it’s so regrettable how it happened. If what you are reporting is true, these are two consenting adults who are both executives. That they can’t have a private relationship feels wrong on some level.”

"These are two consenting adults who are both executives — that they can't have a private relationship feels wrong on some level."

An emotional @AlisynCamerota commented on Jeff Zucker's resignation, calling the shocking news "an incredible loss." pic.twitter.com/2KBr3WSgDC

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) February 2, 2022

You may ask yourself why Camerota is engaging in this shameless toadying toward Zucker, even after he’s no longer her boss. But you see that toadying up to Zucker was a prerequisite to employment at CNN, and everyone there was in a sort of ass-kissing competition, to see who could most be more obsequious toward their loathsome boss. The habit of heaping undeserved praise on Zucker was so deeply trained into Camerota that she can’t break it now, as Ace says of Brian Stelter, “They say that if you take the chain off a dog that’s been chained for ten years, it still won’t walk more than a chain’s length from the stake.”

CNN was a cult of personality, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Mao’s Communist China. Total loyalty to Zucker was the only condition of employment; ability counted for very little, and as for integrity — well, no one with integrity would ever work at CNN.

 

CNN has lost 90% of its audience since Donald Trump left the White House, a predictable consequence of Jeff Zucker’s decision to go all-in on anti-Trump programming. John Nolte at Breitbart comments:

CNN is left-wing talk radio with pictures, and CNN is failing at that because MSNBC does it a whole lot better with superior production values and appealing anchors. . . .
CNN chief Jeff Zucker sold the soul of the 40-year-old CNN brand to enjoy a few good ratings months during the Trump years. And it worked. But only for a few months. Now CNN is disgraced, a national punchline, and other than pointing and laughing, no one pays attention to it anymore.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

It is difficult to explain, and impossible to exaggerate, just how far CNN has fallen. In October, it was noted that CNN’s Reliable Sources program with Brian Stelter attracted only 85,000 viewers ages 25-54 (the so-called “demo” on which advertising rates are based), which was lower than re-runs on other cable networks of Friends, Golden Girls and Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and even lower than the cartoons Paw Patrol and Spongebob Squarepants. In a nation of 325 million people, a demo audience of 85,000 is microscopic; Stelter is irrelevant, an asterisk in the ratings.

Rather than comparing CNN to other cable-news programs, it is more instructive to compare them to YouTubers. My favorite fireworks channel, CodyBPyrotechnics, has 338,000 subscribers and the video of Cody’s New Year’s Eve show has gotten 78,000 views — roughly twice Stelter’s audience on CNN. The video of Cody’s Fourth of July show has gotten nearly 750,000 views, which is equal to many primetime programs on CNN. Then there is the Police Activity channel, which is mostly dashcam and bodycam footage of police shootings, and has 3.2 million subscribers. Their most recent video, of a burglary suspect getting shot in Seattle after stabbing a police dog, has garnered more than 200,000 views in two days. You might say, “Well, but that’s fun stuff — fireworks and suspects getting shot by cops, everybody loves to watch that.” This is true, but what about YouTube channels that do the same thing CNN does, i.e., talk about politics? Tim Pool’s channel has 1.3 million subscribers and most of his videos get 200,000+ views. That’s one guy talking to a webcam, OK? But Tim Pool’s audience is still bigger than Brian Stelter, who has an entire network staff producing his program on a channel that’s part of every basic-cable package in the country.

CNN is a failure — useless garbage, rejected by the American people.

 

Over the weekend, CNN announced that Chris “Fredo” Cuomo was being terminated “effective immediately,” and rumors immediately began to swirl about the nature of the “additional information” which the network said had “come to light” during their review of Cuomo’s case. Julia Marsh of the New York Post says her sources tell her it’s about “an alleged Chris Cuomo sexual harassment victim represented by a high profile attorney” — I’m guessing Gloria Allred, who always shows up at a sex scandal the way vultures show up for a dead carcass.

Now, the headline at Twitchy:

With next to nothing left to lose,
Chris Cuomo is apparently trying to take
CNN head Jeff Zucker down with him

That item links to a New York Post story:

In a new statement, a spokesman for the fallen TV star threw his longtime ally CNN President Jeff Zucker under the bus, while insisting the journalist “has the highest level of admiration and respect” for him.
“They were widely known to be extremely close and in regular contact, including about the details of Mr. Cuomo’s support for his brother,” the spokesman told the Wall Street Journal Sunday of Chris Cuomo’s shady support for his big brother as the governor’s sex scandal unfolded. . . .
The statement, however, prompted CNN to slam Chris Cuomo for peddling more alleged lies.
“He has made a number of accusations that are patently false,” the network told the WSJ. “This reinforces why he was terminated for violating our standards and practices, as well as his lack of candor.”

Here’s the the thing: It doesn’t matter if Cuomo is lying. Zucker was responsible for hiring Cuomo, and was therefore responsible for, at a minimum, tolerating an apparent conflict of interest. It would be difficult for Zucker to shield himself from blame even if CNN had good ratings, but their ratings are in the toilet, and the network recently changed owners, with David Zaslav now the de facto boss. If Zaslav needed an excuse to clean house, the Cuomo scandal is a gift-wrapped Christmas present, and this could be the end of Zucker’s tenure at CNN.