New CNN boss Mark Thompson warns the industry is facing a “peak of disruption”.

CNN’s newly appointed chairman, Mark Thompson, warned staff at the struggling cable news network that the broadcast news industry is “nearing its peak” — while the grassroots lamented that “morale is in the doldrums due to turnover.” Great.

Thompson, the former New York Times and BBC chief who will take over CNN on October 9, sent a memo to the network’s 4,000 employees on Wednesday, describing the challenges the network is facing.

“We are under pressure from all directions – structural, political, cultural, whatever,” he wrote in the memo, which read reports the Financial Times.

“Where others see a threat, I see an opportunity.”

Thompson’s biggest challenge will be growing the station’s declining ratings, which are dwarfed by those of its rivals Fox News and MSNBC.

He will also be tasked with solidifying an unstable company that has enjoyed sizable revenues since it was acquired by Warner Bros. Discovery last year and whose CEO David Zaslav has been urging CNN to shift from its left-leaning reporting.

“This is the third CNN president in 18 months. It’s not ideal,” a top talent on the CNN show told news site Mediaitereferring to Thompson, Chris Licht and Jeff Zucker.

“The morale is in the basement. People are fed up. It’s bad.”

“But if the company actually transforms into this brave new world of streaming, the digital world, [Thompson] has experience in this area,” the unnamed CNN star told Mediaite.

The staffer wondered if Zaslav will continue to insist that CNN move toward the political center, as opposed to the hostile, left-leaning stance it took during Donald Trump’s presidency.

“There are a lot of unknowns,” said the unnamed CNN personality.

“What is David Zaslav up to? We don’t know the answer to that. There are about five people on this earth who know the answer to that. The proof is in the pudding.”

CNN staff are said to be largely supportive of Zaslav’s decision to nominate Thompson to succeed Licht, who was fired in June after 14 months in office.

“Everyone I’ve spoken to so far is ecstatic,” a CNN journalist told FT.

“CNN needs a bold strategy [and] he did that at the New York Times. He knows how to navigate large organizations.”

Another CNN personality believes that Thompson will be an evolution of his predecessor.

“Everyone’s just hoping for some stability,” the CNN staffer told Mediaite.

“Light was completely unprepared. Thompson appears to have excellent credentials.”

Another CNN contributor also supported the hiring, telling Mediaite, “It’s good to have a journalist at the helm, and one who’s reasonably successful at turning a branch inside out.” One hopes things can only get better. “

“I could imagine and hope that the changes will be less ideological and more programmatic,” the staffer added.

During his eight years as CEO of The New York Times Company, Thompson earned credit for growing the Gray Lady’s digital subscriber base by launching recipe-rich service NYT Cooking and overseeing the acquisition of tech gadget review site Wirecutter.

After leaving the Times in 2020, Thompson, who was CEO of the British Broadcasting Corporation before moving to the US, was appointed to the boards of German media group Axel Springer and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In June, Thompson, who began his journalistic career as a production intern at the BBC, was knighted by King Charles for services to the media, earning him the honorary title of ‘sir’.

Licht, who was hired by Zaslav last year after spending years executive producing Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show on CBS, was fired after failing to deliver ratings while angering the network’s staff and top stars.

The final straw that broke the camel’s back was a profile in Atlantic magazine that portrayed Licht as insecure and jealous of the CNN staff’s enduring loyalty to his predecessor, Zucker.

Zucker stepped down as CNN boss before Zaslav took over – after it was revealed he had been in a relationship for years with Allison Gollust, a subordinate who served as the network’s top marketing director.