(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) CNN is poised to lay off hundreds of employees in a post-election purge, Puck News first reported on Friday.
This comes as former Fox News host turned CNN anchor Chris Wallace announced Monday his departure from the network.
Senior CNN talent, including Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer were both denied raises to the multimillion-dollar salaries, Puck News noted.
“In the next few months, I’m told, CNN will implement another round of layoffs that will impact hundreds of employees across the organization,” reporter Dylan Byers wrote, referencing CNN’s 100-person layoff over the summer.
CNN will reportedly lay off hundreds of employees following the election, Puck News first reported.
Top talent at CNN, including Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer, were reportedly denied raises to their million-dollar salaries.
This comes after Chris Wallace announced his… pic.twitter.com/FMJ6uyugxI
— Julianna Frieman (@JuliannaFrieman) November 12, 2024
Production workers are expected to be heavily impacted by the layoffs, according to the outlet.
As a result, on-air talent will be “asked to assume more of the responsibilities once handled by teams of producers and production assistants.”
Some reporter and correspondent roles could also be affected by CNN’s incoming round of layoffs, Byers revealed.
CNN CEO Mark Thompson, who took the helm in Oct. 2023, is the force behind the firings, the outlet reported.
He seeks to stop the network’s fall from grace as it barely cracks around 800,000 viewers—a far cry from its 13.3 million average viewers during its peak as the most-watched cable news network in 2016.
On Election Day, CNN lost the ratings war to MSNBC for the first time as it only brought in 5.1 viewers.
MSNBC recorded 6 million viewers, while Fox News outperformed them both at 10.3 million.
Byers mentioned that the next months at CNN may be “awful” to protect the business’s future.
“The soul-searching has obviously begun within the Democratic Party, which has been trying to restore its Obama-era mojo for many cycles, despite the fact that so much has changed about our politics in the past 15 years,” he wrote. “CNN, in working through its own introspective journey, may come to a similar conclusion: Re-creating the past never works.”
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
