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Chris Licht, who has served as the chairman of CNN for the past 13 months, has been fired from the network.
While you never want to hear the news of anyone being fired, Licht's tenure as chairman has been filled with controversies for CNN. Even before he was appointed chairman, he was involved in the folding of CNN+ — their streaming service — which resulted in a big amount of layoffs. Puck originally reported the news.
The news of Licht's firing also comes on the heels of CNN hosting the town hall program with Donald Trump. This caused an uproar behind-the-scenes of the network. There was also a 15,000-word profile of Licht from The Atlantic that he supposedly apologized for. That ultimately didn't save him as Warner Bros. Discovery's higher-ups — including David Zaslav — weren't too pleased with it. The lengthy profile interview detailed his leadership — or lack thereof — and it's clear as day why the higher-ups at Warner Bros. Discovery were not happy with what rose to the surface.
Prior to his work at CNN, Chris Licht was a successful television producer. He graduated from Syracuse University and worked his way up local NBC news stations. He jumped from MSNBC to CBS to become the vice president of programming at CBS News earlier in his career and was an executive producer of CBS This Morning upon its launch. He joined The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2016 and remained an executive producer until he took over for Jeff Zucker — who resigned in February 2022 — at CNN.
