FILE - The CNN sign is seen, April 21, 2022, in Atlanta. CNN announced Wednesday, July 10, 2024, that it is eliminating approximately 100 jobs and plans to debut its first digital subscriptions before the end of the year as the news network leans into reshaping its business. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

CNN announced Thursday it will cut about 200 jobs from its traditional TV operations and create a comparable number of new digital roles such as data scientists and product engineers as well as different types of journalists.

The planned cuts and growth on the digital side of the business come as the cable giant is charting a course for growth in an era of cord-cutting, declining TV viewership and advertising, and a need to reach audiences in the multitude of places they’re searching for content.

The affected jobs represent about 6% of CNN’s workforce of about 3,300 employees. About 1,000 work in Atlanta out of the Midtown headquarters.

Mark Thompson, who has been running CNN for 15 months, told The New York Times half of the new jobs will be hired in the first half of this year.

“The process of change is essential if we’re to thrive in the future, but I both acknowledge and regret its very real human consequences,” he wrote in a memo to CNN staff Thursday.

The bulk of CNN’s digital operations are based in Atlanta so these changes could result in more net employees locally compared to New York or Washington, D.C. CNN was founded in Atlanta by billionaire Ted Turner in 1980, but its headquarters and leadership have been based in New York for many years, especially during Jeff Zucker’s run as chief from 2013 to 2022.

“The long-term goal appears to be reducing the New York footprint and transitioning much of the company to its Atlanta campus,” said Oliver Darcy, former CNN media writer who left last year to run Status, an independent media newsletter. He noted that Atlanta has always been a cheaper place for CNN to house its employees than New York.

In a statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CNN said: “In order to continue to deliver journalism to our linear audiences while also serving a multiplatform and primarily digital audience, we are also shifting some resources to set us up for success and fully utilize the state-of-the-art facilities available to CNN in our original founding home of Atlanta.”

In his staff memo, Thompson noted: “Our objective is a simple one: to shift CNN’s gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN’s future as one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

Thompson also told the Times that “if we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

CNN’s cable network has generated most of the revenue and profits for the media organization over the past 35 years, but shifting viewership patterns are battering its bottom line. And interest in news in general has waned since the November presidential election with ratings for CNN dropping sharply for both its digital and traditional TV sides.

Thompson started signaling his plans early last year to focus more on digital operations, but he waited until after the presidential inauguration to start making bigger moves.

Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, has offered up $70 million to help CNN make the transition, the company said. CNN said it has a goal of generating $1 billion from its digital operation annually by 2030. It did not say how much its digital side creates in revenue now.

CNN launched a paywall for much of its CNN.com content last year, costing $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year. It did not release current subscription numbers. (Readers can read a limited number of stories a month, but subscribers can get unlimited access plus bonus content.)

Thompson previously announced plans for a subscription streaming service but did not provide tangible details Thursday beyond the fact it will have both lifestyle and feature-oriented products. He ran The New York Times from 2004 to 2012 and helped it introduce moneymaking puzzle, cooking and shopping features.

CNN launched an ambitious paid streaming service in 2022 called CNN+. But that product was dismantled just weeks after CNN’s new corporate owners, Warner Bros. Discovery, took over in a cost-cutting move.

Frank Sesno, former CNN D.C. bureau chief and current media and public affairs professor at George Washington University, does not envy the difficult challenge Thompson faces.

“While the shift is absolutely necessary,” Sesno said, “it remains an untested gamble. Can they replace the audience and revenue from its heyday? And it’s more than money. When a TV is on CNN in a hotel lobby or airport lounge or family living room, it becomes a focal point, a centerpiece. Digitally, you can reach more people but does it define itself as a compelling brand?”

In addition, the digital world “is a crowded universe and CNN is a little late to the game (when it comes to streaming and subscriptions). My hope is that its Ted Turner DNA that revolutionized news can do it again. It’s a tall order and will require excellent content, real journalism and creative inspiration.”

Thompson is tweaking CNN’s daytime schedule, with veteran D.C.-based anchor Wolf Blitzer moving to mornings and Washington D.C.-based anchor Jim Acosta’s 10 a.m. show dropped. Acosta has reported aggressively about Donald Trump over the past eight years and has occasionally been a target of Trump’s ire.

“Thompson pulled Acosta from CNN’s lineup without a real explanation as to why,” Darcy said. Thompson “could have found ways to keep Acosta anchoring, especially given that he posts some of the network’s highest ratings and has been a loyal employee for nearly two decades. … It’s impossible to ignore that his inexplicable decision comes just as Donald Trump returns to power.”