As sources tell joepompeo, David Zaslav isn’t happy about where things are at with CNN and that his concerns have been percolating for several months now.
I’m told it was as early as March that he initiated a conversation about bringing in a chief operating officer to work alongside Licht as a stabilizing force, and to shore up management of the network; the conversations about that person being Zasalv’s longtime lieutenant and confidantepiece hit, heated up within the past month.
The case for the Licht-Leavy turnaround plan is this: Licht can focus on the programming side of things , while Leavy gets down and dirty with company culture, processes, commercial matters, etc. You can choose to believe this or not, but I’m told Licht and Leavy have developed a strong rapport and become genuine friends over the past year, gone out to dinner with their wives and all of that.
What comes next? In the immediate term, Leavy, who lives in DC, is headed to New York this week to roll up his sleeves, get under the hood, and figure out what needs to be done. As Stelter reported over the weekend and I also confirmed, his phone's been blowing up with calls from CNN journalists, who are understandably rattled by everything that’s been going on. So Leavy’s schedule this week will be just what you'd imagine: meetings out the wazoo.
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