Minichan

Although Zucker has become a polarizing public figure in a hyper-partisan nation, he has pleased one important constituency — CNN’s new parent, AT&T. After six years of leading CNN to record profits, Zucker was rewarded with a new title of chairman of WarnerMedia News and Sports in March, making him the company’s maven of live TV. He will now guide CNN through a potentially epic 2020 presidential campaign while exploring ways to expand WarnerMedia’s portfolio of sports properties, which include the NBA and the NCAA Men’s Championship Basketball Tournament.

The job taps into Zucker’s passion for sports — he is a die-hard Miami Dolphins fan with vivid recall of the NFL team’s undefeated season in 1972. He dealt with sports rights negotiations during his run as president of NBCUniversal.

The elevated role is a relief to some CNN staffers who feared Zucker would leave the network after the AT&T deal. Trump has called for his firing, and some feared AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson, who has a good relationship with the White House, would listen, or even spin off CNN. Right-wing commentators said definitively that Zucker would be out. There were reports Trump’s ire with CNN led to the Justice Department’s unsuccessful attempt to stop the $85-billion merger with Time Warner in the courts, a claim Justice Department officials have denied.

But Zucker told The Times in a recent interview in his empty office at Time Warner Center (the company has since moved to its new headquarters in Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side) that AT&T has respected CNN’s journalistic independence. Last fall, AT&T donated $250,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that defends press freedom around the world.

The company was also completely on board when CNN went to court to reinstate the White House press credentials of correspondent Jim Acosta after Trump’s press office lifted them because it was unhappy with his aggressive questioning during briefings.

“I think that was an enormous test of how AT&T felt about the division,” Zucker said. “And I can tell you unequivocally from the start they were very supportive. It is not an easy thing to sue the president of the United States.”

It helps that under Zucker’s watch the network’s annual profits have doubled to $1.2 billion even as it lags behind rivals in the Nielsen ratings. Through the first five months of 2019, CNN had a daily average of 654,000 viewers — down 8% from a year ago, compared with 1.39 million for Fox News (down 3%) and 1.02 million for MSNBC (up 3%).

But about 70% of the network’s revenues come from carriage fees from cable and satellite operators, which continue to grow even as more consumers cut the cord. S&P Global Intelligence said CNN took in $974 million for its flagship channel in 2018, up nearly 7% from the previous year.

A pay TV subscription is still the only way to watch CNN live. That will not change, but Zucker said CNN could put its name on a separate direct-to-consumer streaming news service aimed at cord-cutters, as other TV news organizations have done, “within the next two years.”

CNN’s additional revenue from digital news content and its international channels have helped push annual profits to more than $1 billion in each of the last three years, and Zucker is expecting similar results in 2019.

CNN’s original series programs and films, which can draw ratings in slow breaking news periods and be sold to streaming services, have also become a lucrative business. Zucker believes ratings will rebound as the 2020 race for the White House heats up, although not the level they reached in 2017, when Trump turned cable networks into must-see TV.

Zucker has tried hard to keep CNN’s coverage in the middle lane as Fox News gets a lift from hosts and commentators who defend Trump and his policies (and regularly hammer Zucker, who has called their channel “state-run TV”), while MSNBC wins viewers with its deep dives into the administration’s troubles.

“We’re not pro-Trump and we’re not anti-Trump — we’re pro-truth,” he said. “And I understand that pro-truth in this day and age can come off as anti-Trump. But for us the chips will have to fall where they will.”

Zucker cites consumer research that CNN regularly commissions. In April, when respondents were asked to name a news organization they trust most for national and international coverage, 23% named CNN, putting it ahead of Fox News, which had 21%. Those numbers have been fairly consistent in recent years, even with Trump bashing the channel, he said.