cnnThe deal between the telecommunications giant AT&T and Time Warner, owner of CNN, will not affect the location of CNN headquarters. The news was announced by Jeff Zucker, President of CNN Worldwide during his lunch with the members of the Atlanta Press Club. “Atlanta is a part of CNN and CNN is a part of Atlanta, and we are committed to this city,” he insisted.


Almost a year ago, AT&T said it was going to buy Time Warner for $85 billion. Zucker told the Club that he believed the deal would be of interest to both AT&T and CNN, because “the future is mobile.” “The network reaches more people through its mobile divisions than through television, but that’s OK. People learn the news from Twitter, but turn on TV to learn more about it or to confirm whether the news is real and not fake,” he said.
For the last 5 years since he became President, CNN has heavily invested in news-gathering, producing different shows and hiring high profile journalists. “CNN was famous for covering breaking news. My goal is to make the network able to break news,” Jeff Zucker said. Under his leadership, it created a new unit, CNN Air, where professionally trained pilots use drones to collect news. Shows like Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and Tom Hank’s series 70s, 80s and 90s were all his idea. But most importantly, he managed to attract investigative reporters and respected anchors to boost CNN’s journalist team.
Jeff Zucker was asked why after 10 months in office, President Donald Trump hadn’t given CNN an interview, while he had appeared on every other major TV network. He answered that probably, the reason was that Trump had attacked CNN many times and on different occasions, and didn’t want to be put in a tough situation. However, he believed that the White House would not neglect for long the opportunity for Trump to appear in this global TV network.
“There are two global TV networks in the world – BBC and CNN. Having in mind the fact that BBC has no or little influence within the US, we can say that our is the only really global TV network, ” Jeff Zucker insisted. He pointed out that CNN had 25 foreign correspondents while the rest of American TV networks had two or three. “In Moscow, Pyongyang or Beijing people watch CNN,” he reminded.