NEW YORK—Christy Tanner, the executive vice president and general manager of ViacomCBS, CBS News Digital has announced that she will be leaving CBS News. 

Tanner, who joined CBS in 2013, played an important role in building up CBSN, the first 24 streaming news network from one of the major broadcast networks. Tanner and her teams also made the groundbreaking move to localize that service with feeds from the company’s owned stations. 

CBSN emphasized fact based reporting and commissioned 80 documentaries to take deeper dives into important issues, an approach that proved popular. In 2020, CBSN had more than 1 billion streams. 

In a memo to staff announcing Tanner’s departure, George Cheeks, the president and CEO of the CBS Entertainment Group noted that “Christy and her world-class team have established CBS News Digital as the marketplace leader in streaming news innovation, expanding our breaking news, editorial and reporting capabilities while continually setting growth records. I am grateful to Christy for leading my deep dive on CBS News Digital and continuing to make it a crucial part of our overall news offering.”

Cheeks added that “under her transformational leadership, CBSN has consistently dominated the OTT competition – 30% ahead of CNN and 70% ahead of NBC News Now in monthly unique users from September 2020 – April 2021, according to comScore. CBS News Digital delivered triple-digit YOY audience growth in Q4 and Q1, with CBSN surpassing 1 billion streams in 2020. During the past year, CBSN launched globally in 89 countries, and this week launched CBSN Sacramento, the company’s 11th CBSN Local stream in partnership with the CBS Stations team.”

In a note to her teams, Tanner wrote that she had decided to leave ViacomCBS eight years after joining CBS Interactive and five years after joining CBS News Digital. 

“I’m so proud of all that we have accomplished together: We focused on the public’s need for trusted reporting while significantly expanding our editorial coverage,” she wrote. “We delivered groundbreaking digital and streaming products. We consistently drove double- and triple-digit audience and revenue growth, smashing our own records month after month. We are integral to the company’s AVOD and SVOD strategies.”

WASHINGTON—Christy Tanner, CBS News Digital’s EVP and GM, will keynote at the 2018 NAB Show’s Online Video Program April 10 in Las Vegas, NAB announced today. Tanner will discuss the 2014 launch of CBS News’ streaming video news service and how it is creating value for viewers, advertisers and CBS Corp., an association press release said.

[Simon Mainwaring Tapped for NAB Show Keynote] 

Christy Tanner

The keynote will be done as an interview conducted by Will Richmond, editor and publisher of VideoNuze, which is producing the Online Video Program in partnership with NAB. During the interview, entitled “How CBSN is Carving Its Own Path in Next-Gen News,” Tanner will examine how CBS is taking advantage of intra-company news assets to add and grow existing new digital services.

Tanner, who previously held executive positions with CBS Interactive Media, TV Guide Digital and The Washington Post Company, oversees CBS News on all digital platforms, including CBSN, CBSNews.com and mobile and OTT apps. Last year, CBSN delivered more than 280 million live streams, a 17 percent improvement from 2016. She also has spearheaded the growth of the CBSN Originals documentary series.

[2018 NAB Show 4K 4Charity Fun Run Open for Registration]

The Online Video Program at the NAB Show is a one-day event during which topics like OTT, live-streaming, cross-screen targeting and deliver, mobile consumption and emerging platforms, will be examined. It is intended for senior digital media executives and other video, TV, streaming and MVPD professionals, NAB said.

The 2018 NAB Show runs April 7-12 in Las Vegas. More information is available on the NAB Show website.