Zucker was born into a Jewish family in Homestead, Florida, near Miami. His father, Matthew, was a cardiologist, and his mother, Arline, was a school teacher.
He was a captain of the North Miami Senior High School tennis team, editor of the school paper, and a teenage freelance reporter ("stringer") for The Miami Herald. The 5-foot-6-inch (1.68 m) Zucker also was president of his sophomore, junior, and senior classes, running on the slogan: "The little man with the big ideas." He graduated from North Miami Senior High School in 1982 Before college, he took part in Northwestern University's National High School Institute program for journalism. Zucker went on to Harvard University. He was President of the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson during his senior year and as such he encouraged the decades-old prank rivalry with the Harvard Lampoon, headed by future NBC colleague Conan O'Brien. Zucker graduated from Harvard in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in American history.
When he was not admitted to Harvard Law School, he was hired by NBC in 1986 to research information for its coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics.
In 1989, he was a field producer for Today, and at 26 he became its executive producer in 1992. He introduced the program's trademark outdoor rock concert series and was in charge as Today moved to the "window on the world" Studio 1A in Rockefeller Plaza in 1994. He is credited with managing the show during its most successful years and launching it into its 16-years of ratings dominance.
In 2000, he was named NBC Entertainment's president.A 2004 Businessweek Profile stated that "During that time he oversaw NBC's entire entertainment schedule. He kept the network ahead of the pack by airing the gross out show Fear Factor, negotiating for the cast of the hit series Friends to take the series up to a tenth season, and signing Donald Trump for the reality show The Apprentice. He is credited with the idea to extend Friends episodes by 10 minutes, and convinced the cast to extend their contracts by two years. The Friends era was one of the most profitable ever for NBC. The Zucker era produced a spike in operating earnings for NBC, from $532 million the year he took over to $870 million in 2003."
Zucker introduced Las Vegas, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Scrubs. He originated the idea of airing "Supersized" (longer than the standard 30 minute slot) episodes of NBC's comedies and aggressively programming in the summer months as cable networks began to draw away viewers with original programming from the network's rerun-filled summer slate. Bravo changed its programming direction towards popularity gaining reality television, while the newly acquired Spanish network Telemundo was positioned to be more competitive with leading network Univision."
In December 2003, Zucker became president of NBC's Entertainment, News & Cable Group as well.
Following the merger with French media empire Vivendi Universal, he became president of its Television Group in May 2004. During Zucker's tenure, shows that he championed such as Father of the Pride and the Friends spinoff Joey were considered failures.
On December 15, 2005, Zucker was promoted by NBC to Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal Television Group behind Robert Charles Wright, vice chairman of General Electric and chairman & CEO of NBC Universal. Zucher was responsible for all programming across the company’s television properties, including network, news, cable, sports and Olympics. His responsibilities also included the company’s studio operations and global distribution efforts.
In 2010, in response to a public controversy over the network's reported rescheduling of late-night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, Los Angeles Times reporters Meg James and Matea Gold wrote that Zucker's tenure had led to "a spectacular fall by the country's premier television network" and dubbed the intra-network feud and subsequent public relations fallout "one of the biggest debacles in television history".Under Zucker NBC fell from being the number one rated network to the lowest rated of the four broadcast networks and was occasionally being beaten in the ratings by programming on some of the more popular cable channels.
Days later, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that in Hollywood "there has been a single topic of discussion: How does Jeff Zucker keep rising and rising while the fortunes of NBC keep falling and falling? ...many in the Hollywood community have always regarded him as ...a network Napoleon who never bothered to learn about developing shows and managing talent." She explained that Zucker "is a master at managing up with bosses and calculating cost-per-hour benefits, but even though he made money on cable shows, he could not program the network to save his life."
Dowd also reported that an unnamed "honcho at another network" stated that "Zucker is a case study in the most destructive media executive ever to exist... You’d have to tell me who else has taken a once-great network and literally destroyed it."
On June 2, 2010, the New York Post reported that Zucker would be paid between $30 million and $40 million to leave NBC Universal shortly after Comcast completes its 51% acquisition in the company.
Zucker worked with fellow NBC alum, former Today host Katie Couric, producing her daytime talk show for Disney-ABC Domestic Television, Katie. However, Zucker left the show to be the president of CNN Worldwide.
Zucker became president of CNN Worldwide on January 1, 2013. His appointment was widely welcomed by the network and its anchors. Anderson Cooper told colleagues that Zucker was "the first CNN president to actually watch CNN".
Under Zucker's management, CNN was named as the cable news channel showing the most growth in an era of declining ratings, growing the viewership by 51%. In 2014, CNN overtook MSNBC in the coveted Nielsen ratings demo of viewers aged 25–54 to be second place overall, and saw an increase in both total daytime and prime time viewers. A 2014 New York Magazine profile said that in his two years at CNN "it’s become clear that he has actually managed to move the needle."
In an effort to attract viewers of cable channels like The Discovery Channel and A&E, Zucker has said he wants CNN to publish more documentary like programming that provides viewers with what he called a unique "attitude and a take". In a 2014 press lunch, he insisted that news was still the network's first priority, saying, "we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can do news, and we can preempt our original series when there is news. Zucker stated, in an interview with the New York Times in April 2017, that "The idea that politics is sport is undeniable, and we understood that and approached it that way."
Zucker also has made digital news a priority at CNN, with sources telling The New York Times his strategy involves "investing heavily in digital operations." CNN now ranks as the No. 1 most-trafficked news outlet, attracting more than a monthly average of 105 million unique visitors to its web and mobile properties in 2016, according to comScore.
In 1996, Zucker married Caryn Stephanie Nathanson, then a supervisor for Saturday Night Live, with whom he has four children. Diagnosed at age 31 and 34 with colon cancer, Zucker successfully underwent surgery twice and chemotherapy after the first surgery.
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