Does Everybody Hate Chris? News Vet Wallace’s CNN Problems

By J. Max Robins, January 11, 2023

When CNN and HBO Max recently renewed Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? for a second season, the show’s title wasn’t the only relevant question. Another one was, who cares? Despite a roster of boldface name guests, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, George Clooney, Shania Twain, Tyler Perry, Alex Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, ratings for the celeb-filled chatfest have been lackluster.

When it launched last March, Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? was touted as a signature nightly show on CNN+, the news operation’s much-ballyhooed streaming service. Then, infamously, CNN+ got killed less than a month after its premiere, a victim of  the post-merger bloodletting after WarnerMedia’s takeover by Discovery.

Seemingly, to save some face, Who’s Talking was reimagined as a weekly show on the mothership network. After all, Wallace had just signed a multiyear deal that paid him an estimated $6 million annually. CNN could at least use the longtime news anchor’s talker as advertiser-friendly filler. Likewise, the high-priced talent cost could be amortized by giving Wallace’s show a perch on corporate sibling HBO Max. And Wallace’s reputation as the down-the-middle guy at Fox News, the flagship of right wing media, could help CNN’s current regime as it seeks to shed the network’s left-leaning image and tack to the political center.

An Array of Obstacles

Still, Wallace was given a tough time slot on Sunday nights, with Who’s Talking competing against TV’s endlessly popular NFL Football slots, not to mention long-running newsmagazine 60 Minutes, which had made Wallace’s father, the late Mike Wallace, a news icon. The faceoff must have been cold comfort to Wallace the younger, who had long-toiled in the shadow of his legendary dad and has been dissed by his critics as “Mike-lite.”

In addition, Wallace had the taint of Jeff Zucker, who had hired him. (The ex-CNN chief made tabloid headlines for the network last March, in the wake of revelations about his romantic involvement with another CNN executive.) Chris Licht, Zucker’s replacement, has been open in his disdain for his predecessor’s programming and has either marginalized or let go a big chunk of those seen at CNN as Zucker loyalists.

Past His Primetime Prime

When Licht was recruited to lead CNN, he was given the mandate by Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav and major investor John Malone to remodel the network as less anti-Trump, and more centrist and Republican friendly. On the surface, that new direction might have been viewed as a plus for Wallace, foreshadowing a place in primetime. Long a mainstay at Fox News as anchor of the public affairs show Fox News Sunday, Wallace was known for his mainstream news approach that was a stark contrast at an organization whose other boldface names lean hard right.

Yet, despite gaping holes in CNN primetime since the December, 2021 scandal-ridden firing of Chris Cuomo and the move last October of Don Lemon to a relaunched CNN morning show, there was nary a word of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? filling the gap. It seems CNN higher-ups saw the 75-year-old anchor as past his primetime prime.

In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, before the launch of last Sunday’s second season, Wallace claimed he had no interest in a nightly CNN perch. Yet in the same article, he positioned Who’s Talking as a format that had a storied history on CNN and elsewhere, often as a nightly primetime staple. “CNN had not done this kind of thing since Larry King. It was kind of astonishing to me because in-depth conversations have been a mainstay throughout the history of television,” Wallace told the LA Times’s Stephen Battaglio.

A Lame Duck Hire

Methinks the Who’s Talking host doth protest too much. When Wallace jumped ship for CNN+, it appeared to be a questionable hire. All the other hosts brought on for the streaming service were decades younger than Wallace. And on Fox News Sunday and in any other post he’s occupied, he has rarely shown true talk show chops.

Still, after long runs at NBC News, ABC News and Fox News, Wallace claimed enough was enough. “I wanted to get out of politics,” he told The New York Times shortly before the doomed launch of CNN+.  “Doing a Sunday show on the incremental change from week to week in the Build Back Better plan began to lose its attraction.”

Understandable, yet that’s only part of his departure story. Truth is, Wallace’s down-the-middle mien had fallen out of step as Fox News increasingly leaned hard to starboard, with primetime star Tucker Carlson setting the hyper-nationalist tone of the network. Upon leaving Fox News, Wallace admitted he had become fed up with a network that was too often a promotional vehicle for election denialists and other Trumpian fantasies. When CNN offered millions for him to leap, he was ballet dancer-ready ready for the spotlight.

However,  now that Licht leads CNN, with the mandate to remodel the network, Wallace is something of a lame duck hire. So, another question now arises – can Wallace’s series – and CNN career – be saved? If a show falls on a network and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound in the ratings?

Maybe a list of second season stars, including Jessica Alba, Brian Cox, Ina Garten and Hugh Jackman will boost his numbers high enough that Licht and company indeed see Wallace as the next Larry King and an answer to CNN’s primetime woes. But a better bet is that in a couple of years, when his contract is up, there won’t be anyone talking to Wallace on CNN.

J. Max Robins (@jmaxrobins) is  executive director of the Center for Communication. The former editor-in-chief of Broadcasting & Cable, he has contributed to publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review and Forbes. 

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