Amanpour Exit Comes Amid CNN Parent Ownership Change

Christiane Amanpour plans to leave CNN at the end of June, as the network’s parent company changes hands and CNN chief executive Mark Thompson prepares to report to its new co-CEOs. Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, will first cut her CNN International program to once a week early in 2027. The program is scheduled to end in May.

Departure and timetable

Thompson announced Amanpour’s departure in a letter to newsroom employees that NBC News obtained. He said she had decided “that the time is right to begin a new chapter” after more than 43 years at CNN. Amanpour joined the network in 1983.

Thompson’s schedule puts the program’s end before Amanpour’s departure from CNN. “The program will conclude in May,” he said, “and she will leave CNN at the end of June.” Before then, Amanpour plans to reduce the program to a weekly broadcast early in 2027.

Thompson said he and Amanpour had discussed the decision for some months. “Christiane has thought carefully about this decision,” he said. He added that he was “very sorry to see her go,” but had come to accept that the timing was right for her personally and professionally.

Amanpour, 68, thanked the people she worked with at CNN, singling out her “beloved show teams and field crews.” She said: “We together battled to seek the facts, the evidence and the humanity, so that CNN could always broadcast the truth about the world and to the world, without fear nor favor.”

A career covering conflicts and leaders

Amanpour covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bosnian War and the Persian Gulf War during her time at CNN. Her reporting also took in the post-9/11 U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza.

Her interviewees included former President Bill Clinton, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. She also interviewed various Iranian presidents, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani. CNN hasn’t announced any further details in the departure information Thompson described.

CNN under new ownership

Amanpour’s departure comes weeks after David Ellison’s media corporation Paramount Skydance formally took over Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company. Thompson will remain CNN’s head under the new owners and report directly to Skydance co-CEOs Ellison and Ynon Kreiz.

The announcement lays out a change in CNN’s corporate ownership and reporting line alongside the timetable for Amanpour’s exit. It doesn’t link the ownership change to her decision. Thompson said he and Amanpour discussed the decision for several months, and she plans to begin a new chapter after more than 43 years at the network.