‘It Gets Me Audience’: Cable Legend John Malone Throws Ex-CNN Boss Jeff Zucker Under the Bus for Network’s Left-Leaning Bias

Cable legend John Malone threw ex-CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker under the bus during an interview with CNN host Michael Smerconish on the latest episode of Smerconish’s SiriusXM radio show.

During the pair’s sit-down, Smerconish grilled Malone over comments he made about moving CNN to the center during a wave-making 2021 CNBC interview in which the Warner Bros. Discovery Board member (he was designated Chair Emeritus in June of this year) remarked that “Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”

“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” he added at the time.

Smerconish asserted that Malone had failed in his aim at moving CNN to the center, frustratingly asking him “Why didn’t you insist: let’s pursue independence as a market share?” and eventually eliciting a telling anecdote about Zucker from Malone.

Read a transcript of their exchange below:

SMERCONISH: There’s one other thing I need to get to, so let me get to it now with John Malone, the author of Born to Be Wired. November 2021, you gave an interview. I think it was CNBC. And it sent shock waves through the CNN building, because it was John Malone saying something like, we need to return to the journalism that we used to practice. And everybody thought, “uh-oh, he’s going to single-handedly move us toward the center, maybe move us right of center.” You’re now looking and speaking at the one person who was excited at the prospect that you were going to do something, but you didn’t! And John, here’s the thing, this gets remembered internally as, “well, you know, we tried that a couple of years ago,” and I wanna sell sneakers to independents. 43% of the country self-identify as an I, not an R or a D, so I need you because it’s my one and only opportunity to ever ask you, why didn’t you insist, let’s pursue independence as a market share?

MALONE: Yeah, no, I think what I was really, I have to go back a couple of notches. When Ted Turner started CNN, and we were asked to support it, I thought, great, Ted is gonna do this from Atlanta. It isn’t gonna be Washington, D.C., L.A., or New York-centric, right? And he was hiring young journalists who were trying to basically be good journalists. And he also said, I’m not gonna base this on celebrity. I’m gonna base upon good journalists who are actually doing their job. And then I get a call from Rupert [Murdoch] and Rupert says, “Is there room in America for another television news channel?” And I said, “well, Rupert, you know,” cause I knew Rupert cause we were both, you know, basically in Cato together amongst other things. I also financed some things for him.

Anyway, he had this idea and I said, “well, you know Ted has kind of moved a little bit to the left.” I said, “if you look at radio, there’s a fellow by the name of Rush Limbaugh who has a pretty damn big audience and they’re very loyal and he’s to the right. He is also humorous, but he’s also to the right. And judging by that, if you were to do a television news service that had a bit right of center kind of orientation, I think you could attract an audience.” And he said, “well, here’s my idea. I want to have a real news, a real hardcore solid news group, and part of the network. But then I want to have a lot of opinion and I want to have some celebrity, and I wanna have you know, but it’s current, it’s a daily kind of thing.” And I thought, Gee, that’s kind of interesting. Kind of like the old newspaper that said well on the front page is supposed to be news, unbiased no opinion. Then you have, you have the editorial page where the owners, the management is supposed to give you their slant on things. And then you have an opinion page where you invite anybody who has an interesting opinion to present their position. And I thought that was a pretty good model. And I was trying to say to CNN, why don’t you go to that model? You can have much more interesting content about politics if you have people arguing with each other and expressing, you know, and debating conflict, rather than just presenting a biased point of view, even though you’re trying not to be biased, there’s not a human being on the planet that doesn’t have biases. And they show up when they’re explaining things to other people. And it’s unavoidable. But the way you deal with it is you have people arguing about their point of view. I noticed there’s no, there’s very little of that of Hannity and Colmes or, you know, it used to be common on television news that you would have people of different opinions actually honestly debating an issue. Now they just call the other side a bunch of bums and give their opinion.

SMERCONISH: Right, I get what you’re saying, I’m saying something slightly different, which is that there’s an ignored center of the country, and very few are on the far ends of the political extreme.

MALONE: Right, but, going for the easy money. Jeff Zucker told me one-, I said, “why are you so focused anti-Trump?” And he says, “because it gets me audience.” Okay? And, you know, it’s like, I’ve always-

SMERCONISH: Well, was that the wrong answer?

MALONE: Let me tell you, Michael, let me tell you this. When we created Discovery, we were Pollyannish. John Hendricks, wonderful person, he said, “you know, what television doesn’t do is inform and educate, okay? It purely entertains and it goes after the buck because it’s commercial. Can’t we do something that is fun, but educational.” And we tried to get Discovery, we started Discovery off. There’s something where anybody who watches Discovery, the kids come to the dinner table and they’re excited, and they say, did you know this? Or did you know that whales do that? Or that, you know, something that would be good television, high quality television, but also informative. And we started Discovery basically leasing programming from the BBC, right? Cause they had the best documentaries. And that’s how we launched the business. And then it grew and diversified and became increasingly commercially driven. And so then we had to launch additional channels that have, you know, the 2,000-pound sister-in-law, and you know, anything that’s sensational to get audience. So the question is, in this environment, how do you get people’s interest? How do you you get attention? And the social networks are now, if you ask people, where do you gets your news? Most of them say from their social network. The social network has very little editorial investment. The social networks are basically taking editorials by algorithm, and then putting them on, and then selling ads. And as Rupert said, they’re stealing our advertising.

Watch above via Michael Smerconish on YouTube.