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CNN has to move beyond cable to stay relevant in the digital era, chairman and CEO Mark Thompson told Semafor’s Max Tani in an interview Thursday.
“We have this great legacy platform, cable TV, but the future of CNN and the growth of CNN is not going to happen on that platform,” Thompson said, adding that leaning into more “news-adjacent” products would be key to securing its future.
That a growing number of journalists are going it alone to publish on platforms like Substack doesn’t make legacy platforms redundant, however, he told Tani at the Semafor Innovating to Restore Trust in News Summit in Washington, DC. “To say there’s no role for The New York Times and CNN because someone’s got a successful Substack is a simplified way of looking at the world,” Thompson said.
Part of that has included introducing a digital paywall in October last year, asking users to subscribe for $3.99 a month after they hit a certain number of articles.
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Thompson’s remarks come at a moment of uncertainty for the storied cable news franchise, which faces strong industry and political headwinds.
Cable TV is in sharp decline: Audiences increasingly watch streaming services instead, and CNN’s ratings, particularly, have taken a hit. It’s fallen far behind conservative Fox News and even MSNBC, which also saw a dip in ratings after last year’s election, although it has since improved.
Thompson’s primary objective has been to quickly build a strategic life raft via CNN’s large online, digital audience. Earlier this year, CNN announced that it was slashing several hundred roles from its TV operation and hiring a similar number of roles for its digital arm.
Max Tani contributed.