David Zaslav Lauds Jeff Zucker While Explaining Vision for CNN: Positioned to be ‘Number One Global News Force’

Discovery CEO David Zaslav went out of his way to laud the leadership of CNN under parent company AT&T CEO John Stankey and current CNN CEO Jeff Zucker during an interview  CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Monday morning following news of a mega-media merger.

AT&T released a statement announcing the news that it was spinning off WarnerMedia assets and merging it with Discovery for a new entity that is focused on building a streaming media behemoth to compete head-on with Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ among others. Zaslov will oversee the new entity — which has engendered a lot of speculation about Zucker’s future leading CNN, as he recently announced he would not be signing a new contract when his current deal wraps at the end of 2021.

“Just to state the obvious, we’re talking about this deal on a channel, a network that is part of the deal,” Harlow noted. “I want to spend a little bit of time on that because you’re a news guy. You love the news. You built a number of news channels. What is your vision for CNN?”

“First, I think Jeff Zucker and John are doing a pretty great job,” Zaslav replied. “It’s the number one news network right now and it’s the place that people want to go when they want to get the news.” It’s not clear how he adjudges CNN to be number one, as that is not the case based on ratings, but from a news gathering operation, that assessment makes more sense.

“I think the CNN brand is terrific,” he continued. “We can add a lot to it globally. We’re in the news business in a big way. We also just invested in a news business called GB news in the UK. So our overall vision was that in addition to great content that people love, everyone wakes up every day and they want to know, they want to know what the news is. What is going on in their community? What is going on in politics.”

“So this is right up the sweet spot I think for us. It makes us really unique. This puts us in a position to be the number one — global news force in the world,” he continued.

Watch above via CNN.