Liberal television networks are increasingly viewed as declining assets nobody wants to own. Their audiences are getting smaller, older, and deader. Viewership rates among Americans who don’t currently reside in an assisted living facility are plummeting to zero. Nobody wants to invest. Media companies are desperate to get these failing networks, and the exorbitant paychecks of their vainglorious anchors, off their books as soon as possible. MSNBC parent company Comcast announced last year it was spinning off the left-wing network into a separate entity. Joy Reid was (finally) fired earlier this year, as corporate cost-cutters took aim at the impossible-to-justify salaries of network “talent” such as Rachel Maddow ($30 million), Joe Scarborough (eight figures), and Chris Hayes ($4-5 million).
Gravy Train Derails at MSNBC: Top Anchors Face Huge Pay Cut After Comcast Severs Ties With Left-Wing Network
Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, made a similar announcement earlier this month. CNN and other declining television assets will be split off into a new company called “Global Networks,” while the conglomerate’s more promising assets, such as the Warner Bros. film studio and the HBO Max streaming service, will form another company investors might find attractive. The breakup is expected to take effect by mid-2026. In the meantime, CNN and its celebrity anchors are in for a rude awakening courtesy of new CEO Gunnar Wiedenfels, a notorious figure in media circles known for his ruthless cost-cutting. Variety reports that the “iron-fisted money manager” frequently terrorized pampered employees in his previous role as CFO of Warner Bros. Discovery, where he was “the instigator of belt-tightening and other massive changes including a series of layoffs.”
The Scythe Draws Near
Wiedenfels is going to hack away at CNN without a hint of remorse. He has a proven track record of not giving a shit about the woke liberal proprieties that dominate among media elites. In 2022, Wiedenfels opted not to release Batgirl, a $90 million production widely hailed (by the handful of people who care) for its “Latinx” and transgender representation. He did it to save money on marketing and distribution, and so Warner Bros. could save millions on taxes by writing it off as a loss. Wiedenfels oversaw a series of layoffs and salary rollbacks at CNN even before the split was announced.
Dylan Byers of Puck predicts it’s going to get a lot worse for CNN employees, many of whom have yet to come to terms with the industry’s “inexorable decline.” Layoffs will be “significant,” budgets will be slashed, offices will be “shittier,” and familiar perks will disappear. Former CNN hack Oliver Darcy reports that starting next month, CNN employees will have to start “submitting receipts when they submit their expense reports.” Employees at the liberal network, he writes, can sense that “the cold winds they’ve felt slapping across their faces as the linear fire dwindles are about to get even more bitter.” Morale is “really grim,” one CNN employee told Fox News, a much more successful network.
Wiedenfels will almost certainly take aim at the bloated salaries of CNN’s top anchors. Many of them negotiated raises under former CNN boss Jeff Zucker, which is presumably why so many journalists were so distraught when Zucker left the network in 2021 (for sleeping with a subordinate). Compensation packages that once seemed absurd to normal Americans have become egregiously detached from market forces. Anderson Cooper makes $18 million per year reading a teleprompter to several hundred thousand nursing home patients. He loves taking his shirt off, but his ratings aren’t much better compared to those of his (still overpaid) colleagues earning roughly 10 percent of his salary. Where else could Cooper, who doesn’t need the money, make that much? Certainly not on Substack, where disgruntled former TV stars go to die.
Jake Tapper has a “multiyear” contract that guarantees him an annual salary in the “low-eight-figure” range, according to Byers. Our own sources tell us Tapper or his agent may have lied to inflate his earnings out of crippling jealousy and disdain for Cooper, his higher-paid colleague. Even the lesser-anchor salaries (in the mere seven figures) will be hard to justify going forward as the network continues to shed viewers and revenue. Here’s a look at the so-called talent at CNN whose unreasonable paychecks are ripe for a trim.
Anderson Cooper: Old money scion best known for pioneering the journalistic art of wearing tight black shirts in disaster zones. Writes books about other wealthy WASPs. Gets sloppy drunk with Andy Cohen on New Year’s Eve.
Jake Tapper: The Dartmouth grad is a notorious hothead who hired a PR consultant to train him to be “nicer” ahead of the launch of his best-selling book, Original Sin, about how journalists “missed the story” of Joe Biden’s decline because his aides were so good at hiding what was obvious to everyone else. Hunter Biden once threatened to fight him.
Kaitlan Collins: Got her start at the Daily Caller, where she authored cerebral listicles and posts such as “These Hotties Melted The Internet This Week,” and “Rihanna Gives Nerd a Lapdance And He Has No Idea How to React.” Why does she earn so much less than Cooper and Tapper? Is it because they went to Ivy League schools and she went to an SEC powerhouse with an acceptance rate of 76 percent?
Dana Bash: If she didn’t have such a solid reputation for coddling Democrats, Kamala Harris would not have picked Bash to conduct her first sit-down interview of the 2024 campaign, more than a month after becoming the nominee. She is the ex-wife of former Obama adviser Jeremy Bash. She is also the ex-wife of her CNN colleague John King. The couple split several months after their son was born.
Erin Burnett: The network’s only evening host (besides Collins) who didn’t attend an Ivy League school. As far as we know, she is one of the only journalists who has ever been described (more than a decade ago) as “hot.”
Abby Phillip: Rose to prominence in 2017 after Donald Trump called her “stupid” at a press conference, and heralded as the “breakout star” of the 2020 election after giving a monologue on CNN about how Joe Biden’s victory was a powerful moment for black women. Phillip went on to become the most-profiled journalist since Taylor Lorenz, and has achieved considerable renown as the host of that show Scott Jennings is on.
Laura Coates: Like Phillip, she’s a woman of color who went to a top-tier Ivy yet earns considerably less than Tapper, a lowly Dartmouth grad and obnoxious white man. You may have noticed the alarming lack of diversity amongst these overpaid morons. Is racism to blame? It’s the only possible explanation. In 2021, CNN brought back disgraced Zoom masturbator Jeffrey Toobin to avoid promoting Coates to senior legal analyst.
Wolf Blitzer: The grizzled cable news veteran has worked at CNN since 1990, but earns a rookie’s salary. Ivy League bias? Age discrimination? What’s the deal?
John King: Best known for being married to Dana Bash. He fiddles with the touch screen on election night, but is otherwise forgettable.
John Berman: Never heard of him.
Brian Stelter: Last, and certainly least, the “media expert” lost his seven-figure salary in 2022 when CNN fired him for being a screeching hack who relentlessly promoted anti-Trump grifters such as Michael Avenatti, now a convicted felon. Stelter returned to the network in 2024 after agreeing to take a massive pay cut, but his reduced compensation still far exceeds his actual market value.
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