Joyriding in the Wreckage of CNN+’s Dreams?

BUCK: We’re gonna be diving a little bit more into the… I don’t want to say joyriding in the wreckage of CNN+’s hopes and dreams.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But it I would be remiss if I didn’t say there was a little bit of schadenfreude, a little bit of justice feeling here at the reality of what CNN has become and what has happened here. I heard that they’re giving… The good news is — ’cause they’re lower-level folks. I do have sympathy for people that are starting their careers. You know, they’re production assistants or they’re a producer or whatever. They’re gonna get, I think, nine months of severance is what I heard.

CLAY: Yeah. That’s pretty good, Buck. I’ve gotten laid off before in media, didn’t get six or nine months —

BUCK: I’ve been in places where it was like, you know, a fire sale, all hands on deck, and you’re just lucky if you got to walk out of there with your wallet in your pocket. So, you know, it can be rough. But Tucker had a line last night ’cause I think he just really nailed this about Chris Wallace in particular.

BUCK: (laughing) That’s pretty funny. Look, man, when you’re the son of one of the most famous broadcast news people of all time and you never stop to think, “Maybe I’m really lucky,” you make bad decisions.

CLAY: Well, how about Fox News letting Tucker kind of have some fun with that decision of Chris Wallace to leave, right? That’s why I think Fox News is so popular is they try to be as honest as they possibly can with their audience. And when somebody throws up the peace sign and says, “I don’t want to be with you anymore, ’cause you’re not trustworthy,” and then they get wiped out? It’s hard not to enjoy it.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: That’s what we’re dealing with right now is that fallout from everything associated with that collapse.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: (laughing) We’ve been having fun with CNN+, which closed yesterday — or announced it was closing yesterday — about an hour before we came on the air. $300 million up in smoke, just totally burned out. Do you know…? This is according to Bobby Burack, who writes at OutKick — and, by the way, 24-year-old kid doing phenomenal work.

And if you at all are interested in somebody who is sane in an insane world, he does a really good job covering media. He just wrote this at OutKick. “According…” I’m reading from his article.” According to two individuals with knowledge, top CNN officials recently met with Keith Olbermann about a role at CNN.” Buck, can you think of a more…?

This is kind of a fun parlor game. I’ll let the everybody else out there also weigh in. You can find us on Twitter and whatnot. Can you think of a worse hire for CNN to make than Keith Olbermann, in terms of trying to rebuild legitimacy and trust in their brand? I’m not sure that I can think of anyone in media that would be a dumber hire, which probably means CNN’s gonna do it.

BUCK: I mean, they did hire Eliot Spitzer after all that stuff happened.

CLAY: (laughing) Well, they still got Jeffrey Toobin.

BUCK: That’s true. That he said. They will make some pretty outrageous decisions. So it’s not at all surprising. I do remember at the time the rumor was that it was actually MSNBC employees who were revolting at the thought of bringing Olbermann back there, but he’s no longer a person… Look, when you’re the tent pole, right, the media term for…

You know, the big 8 p.m. who brings a lot of viewers and that holds it up for everybody else, right? When you’re the tent pole at MSNBC, that is something — that is influence, right? That is a person that is in the national conversation. I think Olbermann shows you — and I really mean this — where leftism takes you: Being bitter, nasty, unfulfilled, and just stroking cats that look like they belong to a Bond villain, you know?

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I think that’s — maybe even the hairless cat, you know? But I think that’s where it is.

CLAY: I can’t think of a dumber move by them.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Here is Fallon, by the way, with a joke at CNN+.

FALLON: If you haven’t heard today, it was announced that the streaming service CNN+ is shutting down just 32 days after it launched. That’s right. CNN+ is gone, which means in six months it will be turned into SpiritHalloween+. Thirty-two days. Oh, my God. I’ve had avocados that last longer than that. Yeah, it was doing so badly, all they had to do was call their one subscriber, like, “Hey, Doug? We’re not gonna do this.”

BUCK: It’s pretty amazing. I’d also say it is the case that Zucker, who was ousted just a couple of months… Tis was his project, his vision. And he’s a guy who just got very far by being in the right place at the right time on, what was it, the Today show. And then they let him run CNN. CNN’s brand is damaged I think permanently —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — for anybody that cares about truth and objectivity. They became the anti-Trump network, it was obvious, and they became propaganda shills for the Democrat Party without any balance, without any real attempt at balance, and that comes with consequences. Apparently $300 million worth of them.

CLAY: It’s the biggest failure given time, because there’s obviously been multiyear collapses that are worse, but I don’t think $300 million in the history of media has ever been wasted more rapidly than what we saw with CNN+.

BUCK: I can’t think of anything that comes close. Here is Axios’ media reporter on the collapse of CNN.

BUCK: That pretty much says it. This whole thing is a collapse. It’s crazy, and CNN… Look, it’s really a caretaker role for the host, for the management over there. CNN was something that was created — and successfully in the eighties, nineties, and through the early 2000s — and it is heading in the wrong direction.