Anxiety at CNN as Reporters Face Contract Non-Renewals, Anchors Scramble for Short-Term Extensions as Axe Looms

As CNN prepares to be acquired by Paramount Skydance, the beleaguered news network is said to be preparing to cut a number of its on-camera correspondents and slash anchor salaries, according to Puck. Some of these anchors are reportedly trying to sign, or signing, short-term, one-year contract extensions in hopes of locking in their income for one last year before cutbacks engulf the company. Media insiders are intrigued by the futures of CBS News and CNN once the two networks are placed under the same roof, and about what it will mean for the staff. Puck’s Peter Hamby, who used to work at CNN, said during a recent episode of his “The Powers That Be” podcast that several correspondents will not have their contracts renewed.“I know for a fact that certain correspondent contracts are not going to be renewed in the coming months and year,” Mr. Hamby said. “They’re already trying to downscale their overhead when it comes to talent.”Media insiders have long said that linear television is in an irreversible decline. The broadcast and cable news models, while certainly declining, have stayed alive for years despite predictions of doom as older viewers have been slow to convert to streaming, and advertisers still find the greatly diminished TV platforms more effective than digital media as a way to reach consumers. The widely expected combination of CBS and CNN, when the Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is completed, is likely to bring all those issues to a head. Puck’s Jon Kelly, on the “Powers That Be” podcast, said that he was recently told by a top television executive that there is a trend of anchors signing short-term contracts to “extend their deals” and “stretch out their payment[s]” while they look for other jobs ahead.There has been speculation that CBS News’s Gayle King took an enormous pay cut when it was announced earlier this month that she had re-signed at CBS. But the Status media newsletter reported that she did not take a significant cut, but only signed a one-year extension. CBS News has endured ruthless cost-cutting for decades, and is already bare bones with only a handful of high-paid on-air talent (though its modest newsgathering team, along with its digital news channel and website, are expected to be shuttered with those functions taken over by CNN). CNN, by contrast, is widely believed to be bloated, with anchors enjoying salaries as much as five to ten times their value on the open market, thanks to the free-spending ways of former CNN chief Jeff Zucker. CNN’s behind-the-scenes show teams are also far larger than the equivalent show teams at competitors Fox News and MS NOW. Indeed, Mr. Hamby said that the anchor contracts are “only one piece” of the effort to cut costs.“What we’re going to see is collapsing a ton of not just duplicative but probably excessive foreign bureaus,” he said. He argued that with newer technology, the traditional format of having camera teams ready to cover breaking news at a moment’s notice is outdated and too expensive when “we all publish through our phones.”CNN and CBS News both have foreign bureaus that would become redundant in a scenario where the two networks merge, which would allow them to share their resources.Mr. Hamby also highlighted a prediction from a media analyst, Rich Greenfield, who thinks that there will be significant layoffs at CNN and that its staff will shrink from 3,000 people to 1,000. Last month, the Washington Post announced it was dramatically shrinking its workforce, laying off about 350 employees. The news sparked harsh backlash from liberal journalists who argued that the cuts would make it incredibly difficult to put out a daily paper. While there have been concerns about the impact of slashing the number of employees, some commentators have pointed to the example of X, formerly Twitter, right after Elon Musk acquired it in 2022 and slashed about 80 percent of its workforce.Forbes notes that in the immediate aftermath of the cuts, the platform saw its advertising revenue plummet — in part because of left-wing pressure on advertisers to boycott X over Mr. Musk’s politics — but in the years since, advertisers have returned to the platform.And for most users, X operates smoothly and without the predicted outages or user-interface problems that left-wing commentators predicted would happen as a result of laying off thousands of employees. CNN did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Anxiety at CNN as Reporters Face Contract Non-Renewals, Anchors Scramble for Short-Term Extensions as Axe Looms

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