Originally posted Thursday, June 14, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Joe Pompeo of Vanity Fair has an exclusive story saying that CNN chief Jeff Zucker signed a contract through 2020. So he'll be around at least through Donald Trump's re-election campaign.
The New York based Zucker joined CNN in 2013 when the news operations were going through a bit of an identity crisis. He decided to turn the cable network portion into a home where only one or two stories focused, whether it was a stranded cruise ship or a missing airplane. Since 2015, it has been nearly all Trump, all the time. And ratings and revenues have been strong, though Fox News and MSNBC draw more viewers at night.
Trump himself now sees CNN as his enemy, frequently calling it “Fake News.” Ironically, Zucker, when he ran NBC, was the man who helped elevate Trump’s national brand name via “The Apprentice,” which paved the way for the real estate developer’s presidency.
This news came out right after a federal judge cleared the AT&T acquisition of Time Warner, which has owned CNN and Turner Broadcasting since 1996.
Internally, CNN's media reporter Brian Stelter later confirmed this news himself.
A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment.
