CNN

CNN could revamp its anchor lineup. It's the latest news outlet with a new senior executive willing to shake things up amid changes.

While much of the attention at Fox News is placed on its opinion programming, the Fox Corp. network has created new formats and enlarged audiences for them. But he’s in the command chair now and has said the network is mulling a new Sunday block of programming that features Chris Wallace and a new newsmagazine-like program. And while CNN and NBC have made loud forays into streaming, ABC News has quietly tested the waters, making changes at “20/20” that play to audiences on Hulu, and giving correspondent Rebecca Jarvis room to roam in covering the Theranos debacle in podcast and docuseries form. When it comes to direct competition, only NBCU has the size and scope of CNN around the world. If you talk to executives who ran CBS at the time, gains at “CBS This Morning” and Colbert helped the economics of the network. The mission at CBS News in recent months has been to land big scoops and ‘gets,’ with anchors doing both TV and streaming, and let the viral pass-along take care of itself. “CNN seems to be moving back more toward straight news and away from some of the blatant opinion-mongering by its anchors that characterized its past few years,” says Mark Feldstein, chairman of the broadcast journalism department at University of Maryland, and a former CNN correspondent. Indeed, CNN appears to be borrowing a page from CBS News, where co-president Neeraj Khemlani has been injecting new blood into the ranks in the form of correspondents like Robert Costa, formerly of The Washington Post, and Scott MacFarlane, who had been with WRC, NBC’s Washington, D.C. station. “CBS This Morning” didn’t beat rivals “Today” or “Good Morning America,” but it captured some white space in the battle for aficionados of newsy conversation that Licht has been fighting since he helped launch “Morning Joe” at MSNBC in 2007, and continued when he became showrunner of CBS’ “Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” which became more reliant on newsmakers than promotional appearances by movie stars. Now Licht has to make the strategy generate some new ratings. “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell, for example, recently landed an exclusive interview with Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indiana doctor who treated a 10-year-old rape victim by providing abortion services. This is the kind of stuff that typically gives cable-news a viral boost.