So, what's next for CNN?

CNN founder Ted Turner in 1996, shortly before he was forced out. Photograph: Adam Nadel/AP

Even CNN's outgoing chief Jim Walton isn't sure about its future. What, if anything, could possibly put the channel back on track?

Michael Wolff

After way too many years, last week CNN got rid of its long time CEO Jim Walton. Even Walton – who bills the leave-taking as his own decision – seemed to acknowledge in his departing remarks CNN's lack of direction, and his own failure to alter that course. Actually, it would be hard to offer a more dismal appraisal of one's own tenure. Walton's message: you really, really need someone else.

But the problem with CNN is not just uninspired leadership and lack of vision. In fact, what Walton is really saying is: good riddance, nobody can fix it.

Because what's wrong with CNN is what's wrong with Time Warner, its owner. And what's wrong with CNN is what's wrong with television news. And even if you acknowledge what's wrong with it, that does not mean that there is any real upside in fixing it.

When it agreed to be acquired by Time Warner in 1995, Turner Broadcasting, the parent of CNN, was arguably the most innovative company in the media business. It was the revolution in cable television and in 24-hour news. CNN was the Twitter of its day, reinventing the culture, methods and expectations of news. I'm not sure it is possible to overstate how much Ted Turner and his satellite delivery system, plus his non-network style, up-ended the business.

Time Warner, for its part, was the Apple of 1995 – at least in terms of reach, influence, power and relative oppressiveness. The 1989 merger of the cut-throat Ivy Leaguers at Time, Inc and the killer Hollywood quasi-mobsters at Warner Communications had produced the biggest, fiercest, hungriest media company on earth – a mega-organism of considerable brains and even greater ferocity (they were even more ferocious with each other than they were with outsiders)...

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