David Zaslav Tells Investors CNN’s New Mission Will Be ‘Journalism First’ While Jabbing at ‘Advocacy Networks’
CNN will stand out from its cable news competitors by being more balanced, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav touted on Tuesday in his company’s first earnings call with analysts.
Zaslav railed against the “advocacy networks” that fill U.S. cable news and insisted CNN’s future will be about “journalism first” during the call.
“Advocacy networks are a great business, but CNN is in the business of journalism first. And it’s a really good business. Because we own it,” he said.
Fresh off the Discovery merger and the sudden cancellation of the fresh CNN+ streaming service, Zaslav said the company is “fully committed” to CNN and praised the brand as the “best journalistic organization in the world,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported from the call.
After Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia, Zaslav quickly decided to close CNN+, only three weeks after its launch and with approximately $300 million already poured into it.
While Zaslav did not get specific about CNN’s future, he promised “swift and decisive action” from the fresh management team in charge, citing the shuttering of CNN+ as an example of just such an action.
“We will clearly take swift and decisive action on certain items, as you saw last week with CNN+, while others will take time to formulate appropriate action plans,” he said.
Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels also addressed CNN+, albeit a little more bluntly, saying it was one example of management investing “incoming funds” into projects without solid potential for profit.
“Right or wrong, management has made a decision to invest a lot of the incoming funds into a number of investment initiatives,” he said. “As I’m looking under the hood here, again CNN+ is just one example, and I don’t want to go through a list of specific examples, but there’s a lot of chunky investments that are lacking for what I would view as a solid analytical financial foundation and meeting the ROI hurdles that I would like to see for major investments.”
Zaslav insisted in the call, however, that “we love the news business” and he had particular praise for CNN’s firsthand work in Ukraine, saying “when there are war trials,” much of the evidence will be from their journalists’ reporting on the situation from the ground.
