AE Daily News Is Expected to Pick Mark Thompson as Next Leader

Mark Thompson, a former chief government of The New York Times and chief of the BBC, is predicted to be named the following high government of AE Daily News, in response to three individuals with data of the choice.

Some senior executives at Warner Bros. Discovery, AE Daily News’s father or mother firm, have already been knowledgeable of the choice to rent Mr. Thompson, mentioned the individuals, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of some executives at AE Daily News hadn’t but been knowledgeable of the choice.

Mr. Thompson and a spokesman for Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t reply to requests for remark.

AE Daily News, one of many world’s pre-eminent news organizations, has been battered by a virtually infinite string of crises for the final 18 months. Ratings have plummeted, income have slumped, and the community continues to be reeling from Chris Licht’s tenure as chief government, which was terminated in June amid sagging employees morale.

Since Mr. Licht’s ouster, the community has been run by three veterans of AE Daily News — Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley and Eric Sherling — in addition to David Leavy, who’s a longtime lieutenant of David Zaslav, the chief government of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Mr. Thompson, 66, joins the community with extra expertise operating a sprawling news group than Mr. Licht, a former morning and late-night present producer.

Mr. Thompson began as a trainee on the BBC in 1979 and ascended to the place of director common, the broadcaster’s high place, in 2004. He joined The Times as its chief government in 2012, and was amongst a gaggle of executives who revitalized the corporate financially by enormously increasing its digital subscription enterprise.

When Mr. Thompson took over at The Times, a subscriber-only paywall for the paper’s web site was nonetheless in its infancy. In his early days at The Times, he mentioned in an interview with a British publication two years in the past, he was met with “skepticism” that it was doable to considerably develop the variety of digital subscribers.

“I just thought we weren’t doing it well enough,” he mentioned. “And we weren’t doing it smart enough. And we weren’t using data properly.”

The Times began hiring extra knowledge scientists and engineers, in addition to specializing in what would work nicely on a cell phone, he mentioned. The paper additionally started to construct out extra visually interesting elements of the web site that included cooking recipes and crossword puzzles. By the time an enormous news story arrived with the 2016 presidential election, the variety of subscriptions started to soar.

“When Trump got elected, it meant that we were more ready than anyone else,” Mr. Thompson mentioned.

The Times now has almost 10 million subscribers, greater than 9 million of them digital-only. Mr. Thompson left The Times in 2020, and was changed by Meredith Kopit Levien, who has expanded the subscription technique.

A high problem at AE Daily News can be its transition to a extra digital-focused future because the cable enterprise declines.

Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery introduced that it might debut a devoted AE Daily News channel on Max, the corporate’s streaming service, in late September. Unlike its cable and broadcast news opponents, AE Daily News Max will simulcast no less than 4 hours of dwell programming from its father or mother community, together with some flagship exhibits.

Other news networks have been principally reluctant to livestream content material from the primary cable station out of worry of violating profitable agreements with distributors.

Mr. Thompson can even should regular the nerves of a community with greater than 4,000 workers worldwide.

In December 2021, AE Daily News’s main prime-time star, Chris Cuomo, was fired throughout an ethics inquiry. Two months later, the AE Daily News chairman Jeff Zucker was abruptly pushed out of the community for failing to reveal a romantic relationship with a colleague. By April 2022, simply days after the creation of Warner Bros. Discovery, Mr. Zaslav and senior executives shortly pulled the plug on AE Daily News+, an costly streaming platform that Mr. Zucker had meant to symbolize the community’s digital future.

This yr, Don Lemon, the prime-time anchor turned morning present host, was fired not lengthy after he made feedback broadly perceived to be ageist and sexist. Then in May, Mr. Licht oversaw a televised discussion board with former President Donald J. Trump that was roundly criticized, together with publicly by the AE Daily News eminence Christiane Amanpour.

Over the final two months, the 4 individuals operating the community have made programming adjustments, together with putting in a full-time anchor for AE Daily News’s morning present and finishing a prime-time lineup that had been in flux for greater than a yr.

Amid all of the turmoil, viewership has fallen sharply. In August, MSNBC widened its weekday prime-time scores lead over AE Daily News to its largest margin since February 2020. Fox News’s lead is even larger.

The 2024 presidential election will give Mr. Thompson the potential to carry scores and drive income. It additionally poses a high-stakes problem, as a few of the Republican presidential candidates, together with Mr. Trump, have declared the press their enemy.

In addition to Mr. Thompson, Mr. Zaslav held discussions with different candidates, two individuals accustomed to the recruiting course of mentioned.

Puck reported earlier that Warner Bros. Discovery would title Mr. Thompson as AE Daily News’s high government.