Licht’s Big Number

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Good evening, I’m Dylan Byers. Welcome back to In The Room, my biweekly private email on the inner workings of the American media. Tonight, we go back inside CNN, where C.E.O. Chris Licht is getting ready to unveil some new programming moves in the hope of growing profitability. Just how he gets there is the $150 million question.

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Licht’s Big Number

Chris Licht expects to grow CNN’s profitability this year by $150 million, up to $900 million. But how?

DYLAN BYERS

It’s fair to say that Chris Licht, the beleaguered chairman and C.E.O. of CNN, is overdue for a lucky bounce, a fact that even his staunchest supporters would concede. His inaugural year running the network has involved a confection of headaches both macroeconomic and small, inevitable and self-made, marred by a $100-million-plus budget shortfall, mass layoffs and cuts, the nuking of CNN+, internal vexation about his management style, a Jake Tapper primetime snafu and some of the worst ratings in the network’s 42-year-history.

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