Statement: CNN Start Layoffs To Cut Costs Amid Economic Uncertainty And Jennifer Hudson and Mario Lopez Shows Highlighted on Roku

Janet Wu

Broadcast: Mayor of Boston announces November 6 as "Janet Wu Day" in Boston following the retirement of Janet Wu for her contribution as a longtime WCVB Boston investigative reporter and co-host of On The Record. Wu's career spans nearly 50 years, and she is the first Asian American and the first woman to serve as a Massachusetts State House television reporter. "For nearly five decades, I've had the privilege of reporting on the most significant news stories and political events in Massachusetts, and hopefully, I have gained the trust of viewers and the respect of politicians while covering the political stories that personally impact their lives," said Wu.

WBTV mourns the loss of a meteorologist and helicopter pilot killed in a helicopter crash. Meteorologist Jason Myers a father of four, and Chip Tayag, a pilot with 20 years of experience, lost their lives near Interstate 77 at the Nations Ford Road exit. The cause of the helicopter crash has not been reported. But a preliminary report is expected to be released within 2 to 3 weeks. In a statement, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said, "This is a terrible tragedy for the WBTV family, and we are praying for them and all of those in the media who work so hard to keep the public informed."

PBS announces Geoff Bennett and Amna Nawaz as Judy Woodruff's replacements as anchors of the weeknight NewsHour. Washington veteran anchor Judy Woodruff has been with PBS for nearly 40 years and is stepping away from the NewsHour to focus on a special project. Amna Nawaz is a Peabody Award Winner, and Geoff Bennett has experience at NBC and NPR. "You can't understate the importance of this moment. It is an enormous change for an incredible institution that doesn't do this change often. On that level, I think both of us understand very deeply what we are taking on," said Nawaz.

Florida-based news anchor and journalist Nancy Alvarez will return to the news desk in January as an anchor with WESH-TV, Orlando. Alverez took a step back from her twenty-year journalism career to become the Senior Vice President of Community Relations and Equity Impact at Heart of Florida United Way. As well as anchoring WESH 2 News from noon to 4 PM, Alverez will also work on special projects and provide Spanish-language content on the sister station Estrella TV Orlando.

Gray Television celebrates the promotion of James Finch to Vice President of News Services. The new VP has worked with Gray Television for years and will oversee regional content producers and lead a new in-house news training program in his new position. Gray senior VP-Local Media Sandy Breland said about Finch, "James is committed to excellence in journalism. He is a natural teacher and in this new position will provide even greater support to our newsrooms."

The Tegna-owned station in Atlanta, WXIA-TV, welcomes journalist Faith Jessie as the new weekday co-anchor for 11Alive News at 5 PM. Jessie will also report for the station's weeknight newscasts. News Director for WXIA, Jennifer Rigby, said Faith is "an investigative journalist, storyteller, and leader who's joining a team that's committed to verifying truth and holding the powerful accountable. Her passion for journalism is evident in her anchoring and demonstrated in the major stories she's covered."

Local New Mexico news stations are expanding and celebrating significant achievements this upcoming year. In 2023, KOAT will be 70, while KOB will reach 75 years on the air. KOAT is marking 110 years of New Mexico's statehood with a "Celebrate New Mexico" initiative that will feature segments and stories celebrating the state's history and people.

Cable: Bloomberg TV anchor Emily Chang leaves the long-running show Bloomberg Technology. Chang— who has interviewed the tech industry's most influential executives, like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos—  is an author and five-time Emmy winner and will still be a part of the Bloomberg TV network contributing to big news stories and interviews. According to reports, Chang will focus on other projects like a new limited series and "developing a suite of programs that explore the intersection of technology, business, and culture."

CNN President Chris Licht has stated in a memo that the cable network and digital media platform, as well as its affiliated brands HNL, CNN International, and CNN en Español, have gone through budget cuts and layoffs of staff. The changes affect several hundred positions within the network and its affiliates. Chris Litch said in the memo, "The changes we are making today are necessary and will make us stronger and better positioned to place big bets going forward without fear of failure." The full memo can be read below.

To my CNN colleagues,

As promised in my note yesterday, I am following up with an overview of the changes we have made across the company. Our goal throughout the strategic review process has been to better align our people, processes and resources with our future priorities, strengthen our ability to deliver on CNN’s core journalistic mission and enable us to innovate in the years ahead. At the highest level, the goal is to direct our resources to best serve and grow audiences for our core news programming and products.

To achieve these goals, we will be reducing open job positions, reimagining our workflows and aligning our staffing, investments and focus around three key strategic priorities: programming, newsgathering and digital. All decisions are designed to strengthen the core of our business.

While it is not possible to capture every impacted role in an email like this, I want to walk through the broader changes we are making:

HLN

Beginning December 6, CNN will no longer produce live programming for HLN and instead will simulcast CNN This Morning. HLN Crime programming will move under the WBD Networks led by Kathleen Finch and will be merged with ID. I want to take a moment to thank Robin Meade— she is not only an exceptionally popular anchor, but also one of the longest-running morning hosts in history. I know the HLN audience will miss her and the other HLN talent.

CNN International

CNN International is reorganizing some of its teams and bureaus, and effective immediately, the 5:00-5:30pm ET show will be replaced by a simulcast of CNN US for that half hour.

CNN en Español

CNNE’s linear network will seek to expand its audience by diversifying the network’s programming beyond news. We will continue to produce news for CNNE, and throughout next year, we will look to develop a far more robust digital platform for CNNE with the aim of launching it in 2024. We believe that investment will better serve and significantly grow our Spanish-language news audience, and we will have more to share on that in 2023.

U.S. Newsgathering

We are restructuring across some of our beats, realigning resources to staff up in some units and in more areas around the country. This will help us deliver on our goal of covering the United States more broadly. Many of the staff reductions in Newsgathering will be offset by the addition of new roles to best serve our audience across platforms.

Contributors

We are also shifting our approach to paid contributors. In some areas, we will rely more on our CNN journalists. Overall, we will engage contributors who are subject-matter experts that expand and diversify the viewpoints we bring our audience.

Programming

Our programming teams will see some reductions in show staffs and, in some cases, the combination of teams for our dayside and weekend lineups.

Creative Marketing

The Creative Marketing team will see an overall reduction in size, realigning around in-house production and consolidating creative and strategy roles in New York. Roles will be added to both support that work and expand our digital and growth marketing efforts.

Research

Research is reorganizing to focus resources on CNN’s core businesses and to optimize our recently integrated Digital Analytics and Data Science teams.

Operations

The Operations teams are restructuring to align with the changes to other units across the organization.  

CNN Digital

CNN Digital conducted an exercise earlier this fall to ensure they were best structured for the future. They made changes then and, as a result, there are no further impacts in this process.

The changes we are making today are necessary and will make us stronger and better positioned to place big bets going forward without fear of failure.

To our departing colleagues, I want to express my gratitude for your dedicated and tireless service and for your many contributions to CNN. To all employees, I want to underscore the importance of taking the time you need to best be able to move forward. You can find resources to support you now here. I will be holding a town hall on Tuesday to answer your questions, which can be submitted anonymously here.

I am proud of this CNN team, and together we will ensure CNN continues to be the world’s most vital source of news and information.

Chris

ESPN signs Rebecca Lobo in a multi-year deal to lead woman's college hoops and WNBA coverage as the network's basketball analyst. The former basketball player joined the network in 2004 and previously played for the New York Liberty during the WNBA's first season in 1997. "It is an honor to be a part of the soundtrack for the games played by these incredible female athletes," said Lobo.

CNN mourns longtime sports anchor Fred Hickman. The journalist reportedly suffered liver cancer at the time of his death, age 66, early last month. Hickman's career spans over 40 years, and he joined CNN in 1980, the year of the network's launch, spending 21 years at CNN, anchored Sports Tonight, and worked at ESPN, YES Network, and other local networks and stations.

Jennifer Hudson - The Jennifer Hudson Show / JHud Productions / Telepictures/Warner Bros. Television / Roku

Streaming: The Jennifer Hudson Show is one of the many new shows available for free on Roku. The syndicated series' exclusive Advertisement-Based Video on Demand (AVOD)  streaming deal will free the show to millions of subscribers. All episodes are now available, and new episodes of the hit daytime talk show will hit Roku for free ad-supported streaming the day after they air. There is a growing demand for AVOD services that provide viewers access to free streaming content, leveraging advertising revenues to support the service.

Roku has also teamed up with Fuse Media to launch Latino Vibes, a new free ad-supported streaming TV channel on The Roku Channel. Latino Vibes will include the series Hip-Hop Houdini and Mario Lopez One-on-One and music specials with Jennifer Lopez, Camila Cabello, Bruno Mars, and Enrique Iglesias in an advertisement-based video-on-demand format. "Latino Vibes shows our commitment to creating a space in the entertainment industry that truly represents the diversity and richness of our global community, and we are pleased to have found a like-minded partner in The Roku Channel for the launch of Latino Vibes," said Fuse Media Chairman & CEO Mike Roggero.

The South African television talk show Daily Thetha on SABC1 mourns the loss of its host Pearl Shongwe. Shongwe was a radio host, former Miss Soweto finalist, actress, and television presenter. In a statement, Thulisile Nhlapo, the SABC1 channel head, said, "This is a huge loss for the channel, and at only 35 years old, Pearl was at the prime of her career and contributed a lot to building knowledgeable youth and imparted her knowledge about current issues to the youth of Africa. SABC1 will forever be grateful for all she has done on the channel.". Shongwe, age 35, was found dead in her home with no cause of death officially released.

Newzroom Afrika is expanding and hiring field reporters who can speak Zulu and Xhosa and is also looking to hire isiZulu and isiXhosa bulletin editors to report and create news stories in these languages. The hiring application process is said to end Mid-December. The news channel's plan to dedicate TV news coverage to Nguni languages comes after the South African public broadcaster reportedly dropped all other South African languages from its SABC News channel in April 2015.