CNN’s New Boss Overcame Brush With Death, Helped Create ‘Morning Joe’ and Revived Stephen Colbert

“There are no [hours] to be wasted on anxiety about who says what about you or whether they like you,” Mr. Licht wrote. “These things are beyond your power to influence.”

More than a decade later, Mr. Licht, 50 years old, is taking over a network racked with anxiety over the departure of his predecessor, long-serving CNN President Jeff Zucker —who resigned Feb. 2, citing his failure to disclose a consensual relationship with a colleague. The abrupt exit led several high-profile anchors, who were hired by Mr. Zucker and are personally loyal to him, to grill Jason Kilar, the CEO of CNN parent WarnerMedia, over why Mr. Zucker had to leave.

Mr. Licht’s tenure will begin during a pivotal moment for the network. CNN is planning to launch CNN+, which will be the cable news network’s beachhead in the video-streaming wars. Ratings have fallen following the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. WarnerMedia, currently a unit of AT&T Inc., is preparing to merge with Discovery, a deal that will put the HBO Max streaming service under the same corporate umbrella as “90 Day Fiancé.”

The network faces uncertainty over the future of its programming under Mr. Licht, a veteran producer whose credits include “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “CBS This Morning.”

Discovery has said that it plans to find about $3 billion in annual cost savings in its merger with WarnerMedia. And John Malone, an influential Discovery shareholder, has said that he wants CNN to “evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with,” raising questions about possible changes under new ownership.

“I know you have a lot of questions,” Mr. Licht wrote in a note to CNN staffers Monday. “Perhaps the biggest one is how will CNN change? The honest answer is that I don’t know yet.”

Mr. Licht, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has told confidants that he plans to adjust the network’s programming mix to include more hard news and less opinion programming, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discovery Inc. Chief Executive David Zaslav has told Mr. Licht that he doesn’t have a mandate to cut costs, people familiar with the matter said.

On Monday, Mr. Zaslav called Mr. Licht “a dynamic and creative producer” who has been in the field, in the control room, and on the set of TV news shows.

Discovery said it expects Mr. Licht to start at CNN in early May, after Discovery’s acquisition of CNN parent WarnerMedia is complete. He will report directly to Mr. Zaslav.

Mr. Licht is considered a hands-on producer good at managing and building trust with talent, which is no small task, people who have worked closely with him said.

He has never run an enterprise as big as CNN, which has thousands of employees and whose operations span the globe, but isn’t totally unfamiliar with the network: His wife, Jenny Blanco, is a former CNN staffer.

Mr. Licht and Mr. Zaslav had discussed the news industry and CNN’s position in it before Mr. Zucker’s resignation, according to people familiar with the matter. After Mr. Zucker’s exit, Mr. Zaslav began aggressively courting Mr. Licht, people close to the two men said.

In his capacity as a showrunner, Mr. Licht has had access to power players like Mr. Zaslav, Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone and high-profile politicians, people who have closely worked with him said. He has been a guest at Mr. Zaslav’s star-studded Labor Day party in the Hamptons, which has drawn guests including Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, they said.

At MSNBC, where he worked from 2005 to 2011, Mr. Licht was one of the architects of the network’s morning show “Morning Joe,” anchored by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who went from on-air partners to husband and wife.

Mr. Licht’s 2010 health crisis helped him manage his professional stress, he wrote in his 2011 book. While in the hospital, he was visited by Mr. Zucker, who was CEO of MSNBC parent NBCUniversal at the time, according to his book. “He is a wise man,” Mr. Licht wrote of Mr. Zucker. “He helped me let go—let go of work—even more than I had.”

While Mr. Licht was in the hospital, then-Vice President Joe Biden called to make sure he was getting quality care, he wrote.

At CBS News, Mr. Licht is credited with improving the editorial content of the morning show, although it still lags far behind NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the ratings.

In 2016, Mr. Licht was tapped by then-CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves to take over producing Mr. Colbert’s show, which was off to a rocky start. Under Mr. Licht, the show became much more political and less focused on competing with NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon in trying to land the hot movie star of the moment. The shift in tone played to Mr. Colbert’s strengths, and the show’s ratings improved. “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” now regularly has a bigger audience than Mr. Fallon’s show.

Write to Joe Flint at [email protected] and Benjamin Mullin at [email protected]