Amid uncertainty about the future of CNN, the network has signed a new contract with its highest-paid star, Anderson Cooper, according to Variety. Mr. Cooper, who was paid several times more than his fellow primetime hosts despite low ratings, had recently changed talent agents in a possible sign he was preparing for a tough renegotiation.  

The compensation for Mr. Cooper — who produced tough coverage of President Trump for years —  has not been reported.

In June, Mr. Cooper ditched his former talent agency, UTA, and moved to powerhouse agency CAA, Variety reported, where he would be personally represented by the agency’s CEO, Bryan Lourd, one of the most powerful people in Hollywood who also reps stars like George Clooney and Brad Pitt. The move came as CNN was grappling with plummeting ratings and was set to be spun off with parent company Warner Bros. Discovery’s other cable networks, a spin-off that’s expected to result in brutal cutbacks.   

However, Variety reported this week that Mr. Cooper had signed a new deal to stay at CNN. It was unclear whether Mr. Cooper’s new contract included any changes to his previous deal, such as a reduction in pay. Industry observers had widely expected he’d be forced to take a pay cut if he wanted to continue at CNN, which is greatly diminished from when he started there almost 25 years ago.

The CNN mainstay is believed to make around $18 million a year, a holdover from when the network’s ratings were much higher and when CNN’s business model — making enormous profits due to a dual revenue stream of cable subscriber payments and advertising — was still going strong. Now, with the rise of streaming spelling eventual doom for the current cable bundles, cable channels across the business are being stripped down or spun off. This has led to widespread speculation that the outsized salaries of a small number of top-tier cable news stars would become unjustifiable to shareholders.

Mr. Cooper now earns vastly more than some of his fellow CNN hosts, most of them women, whose ratings are higher than his.

Puck reported that Mr. Cooper’s salary is nearly five times higher than that of the chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, who anchors the 9 p.m. E.T. show, which follows Mr. Cooper’s 8 p.m. E.T. show.  

Mr. Cooper’s show is now outrated by or gets similar ratings among younger viewers (under 54)  to CNN shows hosted by women he makes much more than. His show is regularly beaten in “the demo” by colleague Ashley Phillips’ show.

Mr. Cooper — a member of the legendarily rich Vanderbilt family who has shown off his impressive real estate portfolio in glossy shelter magazines — commands a salary not unheard of in the TV news industry. But Puck’s Dylan Byers described his compensation as baked in over time, a relic from an era when CNN’s ratings were much higher and its business future brighter.

The incoming CEO of the new spin-off, Gunnar Wiedenfels, currently the CFO of WBD, is known as a ruthless cost-cutter.

“Why, for instance, would Gunnar pay Anderson Cooper $18 million a year when Kaitlan Collins draws the same ratings at roughly a fifth of the salary?” Mr. Byers wrote in June.

In 2020, Mr. Cooper’s show averaged 1.89 million total viewers with 498,000 in the key demo. And in the 2010s, he was one of the network’s most recognizable personalities. Variety noted that he is “intertwined with the network’s brand.”

Mr. Cooper has used his show to provide tough criticism of Mr. Trump’s policies. In March, he criticized Mr. Trump’s executive order that directed the Smithsonian to remove “divisive” and “anti-American” content from museums. The CNN host criticized the idea that content about the “harshest parts of history” does not “divide Americans based on race.”

“Weak countries rewrite their histories, erase their brutal pasts, and they repeat their brutality,” Mr. Cooper said.

In November, after Mr. Trump called a reporter “piggy,” Mr. Cooper said he does not “understand how somebody acts like this time after time.”

Since 2020, CNN’s ratings have plummeted. During primetime in November, it averaged 556,000 total viewers, a 23 percent decrease from November 2024, and 100,000 in the coveted 25-54-year-old demo, a 49 percent decrease from the same time last year. For the total day, the network averaged 429,000 viewers, with 70,000 in the demo.

Mr. Cooper’s show averaged 616,000 viewers in the third quarter of 2025. That puts him behind Kasie Hunt, a former MSNBC host, whose show has been CNN’s most-watched program for the last three months. In November, she averaged 712,000 viewers. 

Mr. Cooper’s shrinking audience has led to some speculation that he may be growing tired of watching his reach decline. During a June appearance on the podcast, “Sanity,” Mr. Byers speculated that the CNN host may be looking for other job opportunities. 

And while Mr. Byers suggested on the podcast that the CNN host may be “exhausted” by watching his ratings steadily decline, he said that Mr. Wiedenfels may try to slash Mr. Cooper’s salary. 

“Gunnar will look at CNN and decide he can maintain relatively similar profits at a mere fraction of the cost,” Mr. Byers said. “This will have perceptible ramifications on the talent side.”

CNN declined to comment.