Hey, Jeff Zucker, can you spare some change?
As the CEO of CNN Worldwide nears his first anniversary atop the once-mighty cable news network, ad buyers on Madison Avenue are far from bowled over by the start of the Zucker era, according to interviews with several top power brokers.
The 48-year-old former CEO of NBCUniversal has failed to produce much excitement or turn around CNN’s sagging prime-time ratings, the executives said.
Some executives were surprised at the glacial pace of change Zucker has brought to the embattled network, while others urged the veteran programmer to warm up to greater change and take risks.
“To the naked eye, it doesn’t seem there’s been an immediate visible improvement in performance,” TargetCast’s head of national buying, Gary Carr, told The Post.
At R.J. Palmer, ad buyer Marc Morse said Zucker should shake things up in order to attract advertiser attention.
“You want to see them taking shots,” Morse said. “Without risks, networks just stagnate.”
The ultimate judge, said Carr, is whether the numbers are doing better, is it higher quality? “I don’t see it,” he added.
In his 11 months atop CNN, Zucker has spent much energy changing the morning schedule and forming a digital strategy.
His imports include Jake Tapper, Bill Weir, Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan Morgan Spurlock, Anthony Bourdain and morning show boss Jim Murphy.
To be sure, full-day ratings in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic are up about 3 percent in the first 11 months of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012, according to Nielsen Media Research.
But in prime time, which attracts the most viewers and advertising dollars, CNN’s ratings continue to tumble — although at a slower pace than rivals — and the Atlanta-based network is now solidly in third place in total prime demo viewers behind MSNBC and ratings champ Fox News.
One news industry source said CNN got its “cocaine” with its coverage of the Boston marathon bombings and the Cleveland kidnappings — “but it ran out of gas” after that.
Zucker has promised insiders that big changes — including some in prime time — are on the horizon.
CNN seems to be suffering from a similar malaise affecting all the news networks this year: Viewers are drifting away in favor of mobile products.
Outsiders are expecting CNN to drop Anderson Cooper’s second hour at 10 p.m., and run something fresh — and perhaps end Piers Morgan’s hold on the 9 p.m. hour.
Time Warner-owned CNN is set to end 2013 with net operating revenue of $1.09 billion, flat with last year, according to SNL Kagan’s latest projections.
Net ad revenue will slip 10.5 percent in 2013, to $293.2 million, Kagan projected, from $327.7 million last year, which was a strong one for political advertising.