Discovery Expected to Tap Chris Licht as CNN’s Next President

Discovery CEO David Zaslav is expected to name Chris Licht head of news for Warner Bros. Discovery, once Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia is completed in the coming weeks, a source familiar with the decision confirms to The Hollywood Reporter. It’s a new role that will include worldwide oversight of CNN, as well as the company’s other international news assets.

Licht will join the new company from CBS’ Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he has been the executive producer since 2016. He is also an executive vp at CBS in charge of special programming. Before joining the late night comedy show, Licht was a veteran news producer, serving as an executive at CBS News and having re-launched the CBS morning show CBS This Morning as its executive producer. Before joining CBS News in 2011 he was the executive producer of MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

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Licht will join CNN during a time of tumult at the venerable cable news channel. Jeff Zucker resigned as the head of WarnerMedia News and Sports earlier this month after the company’s investigation into Chris Cuomo expanded to include a relationship that he had with CNN’s head of marketing Allison Gollust. Licht’s role is not expected to include oversight of Warner Bros. Discovery’s sports assets.

Puck News first reported that Zaslav was expected to hire Licht.

The timing of the departure, just weeks before the expected close of WarnerMedia’s merger with Discovery, could not have come at a worse time for either company. It left Discovery with a critical position to fill when it would rather be dealing with other matters (and with on-air talent resentful of how the departure was handled), and it left CNN without its news chief just as it is set to launch its most important new offering in years, the streaming service CNN+.

WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar had held tense meetings with staff after Zucker’s departure, telling staff in New York on Feb. 7 that “I do believe it is in David’s best interest to act with a sense of urgency in terms of providing that visibility,” when it coms to naming a successor to Zucker.

Licht, as a veteran producer known to forge friendly relationships with talent, would seem to fit a similar mold as Zucker, who engendered loyalty among many key anchors, and who was known to feed ideas or questions directly to anchors mid-show.