CNN chief Mark Thompson is set to stand before a rattled newsroom on Wednesday. The New York Post reports that he will lead a town hall to comfort distraught employees.
The gathering follows a Monday agreement that clears the way for Paramount to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company.
Breitbart News reported that Paramount reached the deal with 12 state attorneys general.
That settlement addressed a major hurdle to closing the acquisition. The transaction will now go ahead.
Inside the network, the Post found a tense mood. “People are very nervous,” one CNN staffer told the outlet.
The staffer reached for a weather comparison to describe it.
“It’s dark. It’s like when you do hurricane coverage. You see the storm spinning off the coast of Haiti and moving towards Florida and you’re just waiting and you’re like, ‘Oh, s–t’.”
A TV executive gave the Post a bleaker outlook. “Bloodbath coming, including at CNN,” the executive confided.
The same executive pointed to the next phase. “That’s the next big step — slashing and burning,” the executive said. Others also drew death-by-takeover comparisons, according to the Post.
Paramount has attached a dollar figure to its plans. The company anticipates at least $6 billion in cost savings, according to a Paramount investor document.
Breitbart News reported that the savings target would translate to several thousand lost jobs in the months ahead.
The unease predates this week’s settlement. In June, Breitbart News reported that many CNN employees turned their boss’s office into a makeshift “psychiatrist’s couch,” according to a report.
Staffers brought their worries to CNN executive Amy Entelis.
They pointed to the ties between Paramount boss David Ellison and President Trump, and to those of his father, Larry Ellison, a major Trump donor.
According to the report, employees feared that CNN would be pushed toward the right by association if Ellison took control.
The finished deal would put two newsrooms under one roof. CBS News and CNN would sit inside the same company, alongside the Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
The combined business would also hold two streaming services, HBO Max and Paramount+.
CNN, now 46 years old, has operated under its current corporate structure for much of that history.
Ted Turner, an American media proprietor, and Reese Schonfeld founded Cable News Network, Inc. on June 1, 1980.
The pair launched it as a 24-hour cable news channel. The network is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
