Welcome back to In The Room. I’m Dylan Byers.

In the nearly three months since Chris Licht’s dramatic departure from CNN, an interim leadership quadrumvirate has admirably attempted to steer and steady the ship. But now, David Zaslav has his eyes set on a new potential chief. In tonight’s issue, fresh reporting around his preferred candidate, plus news and notes on the network’s gamble to make core news programming available to streaming audiences on Max.

In recent days, Zaslav has been working to convince Mark Thompson, the former New York Times Co. and BBC chief, to take over as CNN chairman and C.E.O., sources familiar with Zaslav’s thinking told me. Semafor’s Ben Smith reported earlier this week that Thompson was a leading candidate for the position, but Zaz’s interest appears to go even further: my sources say that the WBD C.E.O. has made up his mind and is actively trying to recruit Thompson. While Zaz and other WBD executives have had conversations with other potential candidates, Zaz appears to be pursuing Thompson with the same singular focus with which he had once pursued Licht. (His impulsiveness may be looked upon more favorably this time around.)

It is by no means clear that Thompson wants the job. But, as I noted earlier this week, he has ample qualifications, having served as a producer and executive at the BBC before leading the New York Times Co.’s transformation into the growth-oriented, product-centric, A.R.R.-minded, fewer-bullshit-costs, multiplatform media-lifestyle bundle that it has become. Further, Thompson would also be seen as a serious choice who could potentially reshape CNN’s digital and streaming efforts, and who at the very least might erase the stain of the Licht era. And while some CNN insiders fear that Thompson’s appointment would disrupt the network just as it is starting to stabilize under its interim leadership, it’s also possible that those interim leaders would stay in place while Thompson worked on broader strategic initiatives. At the Times, Thompson was that rare outsider who proved able to evolve the business without alienating the lifers.

Indeed, Thompson’s truest credential may be that he doesn’t need to do this. After Jeff Zucker’s poorly aging defenestration, most successors either seemed underqualified (Licht) or to hail from a bygone (and recklessly expensive) era of cable economics. Thompson, of course, is a centrist Brit who took over the Times during its darkest hour and knows how to keep a newsroom in check. Zaz would be lucky to have him.

These interpretations may not fully appreciate what WBD is actually doing. Unlike its competitors, CNN Max will provide a live simulcast of most of CNN’s most notable shows, including The Lead With Jake Tapper, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and Anderson Cooper 360. And it may go further, possibly simulcasting most or all of CNN’s primetime lineup and its morning show, as well. There will be new shows, too, as well as CNN International simulcasts, but that programming is arguably a fig leaf for WBD’s primary objective: bringing the core CNN product to streaming. “We’re putting our varsity team on the field, as opposed to taped content or secondary personalities,” J.B. Perrette, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming division told me in an interview. “We’re giving consumers the best stuff from CNN, because that’s what they want.”

Perrette’s logic will be obvious enough to the consumer, but it flies in the face of conventional industry wisdom about business strategies and the mediaco’s contractual obligations to cable providers and MVPDs. Streaming economics are not nearly as lucrative as linear economics, and mediacos have long been wary of cannibalizing their traditional businesses by accelerating cord cutting. They’re equally wary of breaching contracts with providers like Comcast and Dish and DirecTV who expect a certain degree of exclusivity to the content. The reason CNN+ launched with Jake Tapper’s book club rather than The Lead, after all, was because CNN executives weren’t ready to upset the status quo, or didn’t think they could. They built the service knowing it would eventually house the core product, just as Disney built ESPN+ knowing it would one day feature NFL and NBA games. Still, they figured they’d have to renegotiate their contracts before that was possible.

Warner Bros. Discovery renegotiated its deals with the MVPDs this summer, I’ve learned, but Perrette says the company’s ability to simulcast so much of the CNN linear feed is an option that has long been available to them. “We’re clear about our rights,” Perrette told me. “We’re very clear that this is very compliant and within the parameters of what we’re allowed to do.” And, indeed, a source with one of the cable providers also told me that WBD is well within its rights to simulcast its most popular CNN programming, so long as it doesn’t move the whole linear feed over in its entirety. This may feel like the equivalent of letting ESPN move Monday Night Football and the NBA playoffs over to ESPN+ so long as it keeps second-tier Italian soccer on linear—and, indeed, many industry veterans believe WBD will face consequences for its decision to test the limits of their agreements. (“The MVPDs will get their revenge,” one said.) Whatever the case, Perrette seems very much at ease. And Zaz has the bargaining power of all the WBD assets behind him.

Perrette also isn’t worried about cannibalizing CNN’s existing linear audience, which he rightly notes is a different demographic than the audience WBD hopes to reach on streaming. “These are two different customer segments,” he told me. “The segment of the population that is watching CNN on traditional linear cable is obviously aging; the streaming audience is 20 to 30 years younger.” The addition of CNN’s core programming to Max may not be the main draw for younger subscribers, but it is added value for the cord cutter who likes the idea of being able to access live news when news actually breaks. (Perrette and other WBD executives seem most excited about a breaking news feature that will alert Succession or Sex and the City viewers when, say, the Pope dies.) At the very least, it might help WBD reduce churn.

Perrette believes CNN can build additional revenue on streaming by creating new ad inventory while increasing CNN’s cumulative audience, thus driving up the price for that inventory. Theoretically, it’s a compelling idea. If CNN Max pulls its weight bringing in or retaining subscribers, it may also be attributed some portion of the overall Max sub revenue. Finally, Perrette argues that CNN Max will increase CNN’s brand perception, and thus its profitability.

This is a notably different strategy than CNN+, which sought to build a news and lifestyle business that would drive subscription revenue directly back to CNN. Indeed. Zaz & Co. are investing opex vs. capex, which will keep the experiment lean. Skeptical media veterans warn that none of Perrette’s revenue streams are likely to make up for CNN’s losses on the linear side, and that sustaining the costs of global newsgathering and expensive on-air talent will soon become untenable. “At some point, J.B. Perrette is going to have to do a cost-per-episode analysis of Jake Tapper vs. Dr. Pimple Popper,” one media executive said, referring to one of Discovery’s many low-cost, low-brow reality shows. “It’ll get very hard for CNN to justify talent costs.” Sure, no one said future cost cuts weren’t part of the equation.

Ostensibly, this is a challenge that Thompson, the brilliant turnaround artist, might be able to address should he accept the job offer inevitably coming his way. He may be less qualified to address the network’s other pressing problem, which is making compelling television. Outside of its criterion coverage of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, CNN has largely failed to create captivating programming in the post-Zucker era. Licht, the industry’s once-heralded “wunderkind” executive producer, somehow managed to take much of CNN’s already unremarkable programming and make it markedly unwatchable. Since his departure, the network has been a mix of respected, reliable standbys—Anderson, Wolf, etcetera—coupled with younger talents who are still getting comfortable behind the desk. But none of it is terribly distinguished within CNN nor across the television landscape, as the ratings bear out. “CNN at 3 a.m. looks like CNN at 3 p.m.,” one veteran media executive observed.

That may have been a sustainable programming strategy in the old days, when CNN’s global news-breaking prowess practically made it a public utility. In the streaming era, it will have to justify its existence to subscribers who know that news is ultimately a commodity, and that there are myriad ways to get live coverage of invasions and elections through their phones while Max—or, god forbid, Netflix or Disney+ or Amazon Prime—streams in the background.