CNN’s chief executive, is tasked with transforming a struggling network.

In May, Madison Square Garden featured a new headliner: Mark Thompson, the media executive who had recently gone from being an éminence grise to the chief executive of CNN. He was there for upfronts, television’s foray into theater, a glad-handing tradition in which stars share the stage with suits, imploring representatives from Arby’s and its peer institutions to commit advertising dollars. Thompson—who is sixty-seven, not merely British but a knight, appointed by Charles III—wore a navy suit and a pink oxford; his beard was a shadow of gray. “The world needs the truth now more than ever,” he said. “It needs honest reporting. It needs journalists it knows and trusts. And no news brand on Earth is better placed to deliver all of those things than CNN.” The event—hosted by CNN’s corporate parent, Warner Bros. Discovery—had the theme “Make It Happen Here.” For Thompson, that may have been an ultimatum.

He told the crowd about being offered his job: It was last summer, when he was on vacation with his wife in French wine country. His phone rang: David Zaslav—the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery—was calling. “I’d certainly heard of him,” Thompson said. “And I swear to God, in the second or so it took to get the phone to my ear, I pretty much figured it out.” That was only part of the story: Back in New York, CNN was in utter disarray. Zaslav had just sacked Chris Licht, whose thirteen-month tenure as CEO ended with an explosive profile in The Atlantic detailing how his leadership style and programming decisions had alienated the staff, tarnished the network’s brand, and induced a ratings decline that, at times, placed CNN below Newsmax in the coveted twenty-five-to-fifty-four demographic. Licht had promised a reset, aiming to win over Republicans who believed Donald Trump when he called CNN “the enemy of the people.” Now the network was losing money. In 2020, CNN had brought in a billion dollars in profit; by 2023, the amount was 892 million dollars, and headed south fast: In the past four years, almost a third of cable subscribers have cut the cord. This year, for the first time, advertisers are projected to spend more on digital video platforms than on television.

Thompson had experience turning around struggling news companies—first as director general of the BBC, then at the New York Times, where he’d recently completed an esteemed tenure as CEO. More recently, he’d been a paid senior adviser to Blackstone, the investment management company; he served on the boards of the International Fund for Public Interest Media, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Ancestry.com; he was tinkering with short stories; he spent time at his home in Maine. The call from Zaslav made business sense—and it was on trend, as Thompson was to join several Brits steering American newsrooms. His agreeing to take the role was, perhaps, less obvious; even for an executive of his experience, CNN posed any number of vexing challenges that could blemish his reputation as a turnaround artist. America’s TV news business, Thompson opined in 2021, seemed “completely unchanged since the nineteen-eighties” and was in “dead trouble,” because of its shrinking viewership and inability to engage with smartphone users. “News feels like a particularly old-fashioned style of broadcasting aimed entirely at older audiences,” he said. At CNN—where the median age of viewers is sixty-seven—Licht’s misadventure seemed to prove that the network was not, nor could it be, for everyone, and certainly not MAGA fans. “We’re never going to get ’em back,” Rick Davis—CNN’s longtime executive vice president of news standards and practices, now retired—told me. For Thompson, failure was a possibility.

When he arrived, employee morale was sagging; he embarked on a listening tour.

More From CJR: