Thompson’s name has not appeared in voluminous published speculation about the top CNN role, but he has obvious qualifications. He arrived at the New York Times at a desperate moment, and led a spectacular turnaround that turned the company into a dominant player in digital news.
But Thompson’s roots are in TV. Like many top television executives, he began his career as a star producer in the 1980s, and in his 30s led prestige U.K. news programs including Newsnight and Panorama.
Thompson, 66, held top programming jobs at the BBC before becoming chief executive of Channel 4 and then Director-General of the BBC, a high-stakes, intensely political job atop a complex public broadcaster.
That is to say, Thompson’s credentials as a media turnaround artist and as a manager of giant, high-wire corporate cultures media are unmatched. That experience might make him an attractive choice for WBD CEO David Zaslav after Licht, a star programmer who had not run a giant company, struggled in the role.
Thompson didn’t respond to a request for comment on the role, and a spokesman for WarnerBrothers Discovery declined to comment.
Friends say there’s no guarantee that Thompson would want the job, which appears likely to feature endless rounds of grim cost-control measures for a slowly declining cable business and an uncertain streaming future.
He’s said to spending time at his home in Maine and enjoying board posts at institutions like the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was knighted by King Charles of England in June. But television, former New York Times colleagues say, is in his blood, and it may be hard for him not to consider the top job at an iconic global company.
