CNN has difficult task moving back to middle with current roster: Concha
New CNN leader Chris Licht is evaluating the entire organization
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This article is adapted from Joe Concha's video commentary.
Even CNN has run out of ways to defend Joe Biden, but to defend the president at this point would be like defending a football team down 35-0 early in the second quarter.
The biggest issue facing the nation by a country mile, inflation, is at its highest since E.T. was in theaters. Gas prices are at an all-time high. It cost me $80 to fill up my little 16-year-old car today.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Skyrocketing, brazen crime forcing mass exoduses out of cities from New York to Los Angeles. And a border that is anything but secure, with fentanyl coming into this country and killing a record number of Americans, many of them younger adults.
So there clearly isn't enough red lipstick for this pig.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fuel prices at a Chevron gas station in Menlo Park, California, US, on Thursday, June 9, 2022. Stratospheric Fuel prices have broken records for at least seven days with the average cost of fuel per gallon hitting $4.96 as of June 8, according to the American Automobile Association. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
And now it is being leaked out of CNN that new president Chris Licht wants the network to return to the days when real journalists like Bernard Shaw were the face of the brand.
They may have been left-of-center then, but it wasn't blatant to the point like we saw during the Jeff Zucker-era, when the network might as well have been called AOCNN.
So these folks who are suddenly semi-tough on Team Biden are doing this partly because you can't defend the indefensible... and for their own self-preservation with a new boss in town.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Chris Licht, Chairman and CEO, CNN Worldwide attends the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront 2022 arrivals on the red carpet at The Theater at Madison Square Garden on May 18, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery)
CNN SUFFERS SMALLEST WEEKDAY AUDIENCE SINCE 2015
At least until Donald Trump declares he's running for president again, which many close to him believe he will. You don't hold rally after rally since Biden became president just for the hell of it, after all.
Either way, things have to change fast.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CNN's highest-rated show usually finishes 35th or in the cable news race. Reruns of Gunsmoke, a Western show that debuted in 1952, easily beat CNN in primetime.
Brian Stelter and CNN colleague Jim Acosta were recently singled out as the "face of the network's liberal shift" in the eyes of conservatives. ((AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for CNN)
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There's nowhere to go but up.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CNN needs the credibility it once had back, that's for certain, and the way to do that is to go back towards the center. The question now is: Can it do that with the current crop of talent it has?
Mostly, no.