Why CNN's CFO Just Lost His Job

New reports are indicating that CNN will have to reevaluate its attempt to expand its media platform in launching the CNN+ streaming service. CNN invested a billion dollars into this service and expected tremendous return in the next few years.
After Warner Brothers merged with Discovery, the company has just announced the decision to suspend marketing for CNN+ after the service only received 150,000 subscribers, a number well under what Warner Brothers/Discovery had projected. What does this mean for CNN now?
Former Turner Broadcasting executive and TV producer Eric Bischoff has experience dealing with executives at CNN’s parent company. He joined Sekulow to share his story and thoughts on this move:
"It’s like Groundhog Day for me in a way, watching everything that is going on with this merger. . . . I have only been through one major corporate merger in my life and that of course was the AOL/Time Warner/Turner merger. And going into that period having never experienced it before, much more experienced people at the executive level that had more experience than me all said, don’t worry about it, things are going to be great. You’re really not going to start seeing any structural major changes for at least for a year or 18 months. And that was true. A lot of the changes that occurred in Turner Broadcasting as a result of the merger . . . were very gradual. . . . What I found interesting about this situation is that David Zaslav came out pre-merger and pretty much made it clear. In fact, he referred to CNN as an advocacy platform as opposed to a news platform and vowed to take CNN into the direction of hard news. And that made sense to me because CNN has been hemorrhaging. . . . viewers for such a long time. . . . If you look at Discovery and its success, a lot of that has to do with their fiscal responsibility and managing costs and producing content that you could produce for a budget, but still attract a major audience. . . . That’s the opposite of CNN. And why in the world anyone would think, hey I’ve got this idea, let’s hope to grow the CNN brand by creating a CNN+ streaming service while you’re hemorrhaging viewers and you’ve become basically a punchline in a discussion about journalism and news is beyond me. If I was a shareholder in Warner Brothers right now, I would be grateful to David Zaslav and grateful for this merger."
Eric also added how CNN has changed so much from when he entered the media world:
"I was first hired by Turner broadcasting in 1991. I was so grateful for that opportunity. . . . But I’ll never forget the most amazing moment was the first time I walked into the CNN center and there was CNN right there, the headquarters, the studios. I was never more proud of anything at that point. CNN was such an amazing thing in our culture. It was 24-hour cable news worldwide. We could get news from parts of the world where you otherwise wouldn’t get any local or regional news from parts of the world like that. It was such an amazing thing; I’ll never forget that and to see where CNN is now . . . it is basically a punchline in the discussion in journalism . . . it is sad."
Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even further in-depth analysis of CNN+ potentially crashing and a bipartisan bill to combat the crisis at the border.