How to fix CNN
Ubiquitous
The future of CNN, never exactly bright the past couple of years, suddenly
looked dire this week when ratings came out showing a 40 percent decline in
prime-time viewers since 2009.
Jon Klein, the network's president, has consistently defended its
down-the-middle news strategy, despite the increasingly large ratings leads
opened up by MSNBC and particularly Fox, with their ideological slants and big
personalities.
So is it time for a radical rethinking of “the most trusted name in news,” the
network of Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Campbell Brown and Wolf Blitzer? We
asked a dozen or so prominent media watchers, former industry executives and
CNN personalities for their recommendations.
Their near consensus: It has to change, get more personality, no longer be —
as one media critic called it — “the view from nowhere.” Exactly how to do
that was not so easy to agree on — and one person we asked, Phil Donahue,
doesn’t think the network needs to change at all. But the responses from
everyone else broke down into five different approaches.
1) Bring back “Crossfire”
Ask a couple of former “Crossfire” hosts for a solution to CNN’s ratings
troubles, and maybe it’s not a surprise what their answer is: Resurrect their
old show.
Both Michael Kinsley and Bill Press — each of whom had stints taking the
liberal side of the right vs. left political slugfest — think it’s worth a
shot.
By bringing back “Crossfire,” they argue, CNN could continue with its strategy
of not falling squarely on the left or the right in prime time but still offer
lively opinion on both sides — something it appears viewers want.
Five years ago, one of Klein’s first orders of business after becoming network
president was killing off the long-running show, a pioneer in high-decibel
political debate that had been the recipient of harsh on-air criticism from
"Daily Show" host Jon Stewart just a few months before.
“When he unceremoniously dumped it, Jon Klein said he wanted straight news and
not commentary or opinion,” Kinsley told POLITICO. “And now he's got everyone
expressing opinions left and right — because that's what people like.’
“’Crossfire’ used to vie with 'Larry King' as the network's No. 1 show — and
we beat him on many nights, even though he had us as a lead-in and we had Lou
Dobbs,” Kinsley said, adding that he means “the early Lou Dobbs, the boring
corporate suck-up, not the new exciting xenophobic Lou Dobbs of legend.”
“We were No. 1,” said Press, a top liberal radio host who was on “Crossfire”
from 1996 to 2003. He described Klein’s pulling the plug on “Crossfire” as
“one of the biggest mistakes in the history of modern television journalism.”
2) Forget neutral — create a new identity
Davidson Goldin, the former editorial director of MSNBC, who now runs a
communications business in New York, worked at CNN’s cable news competitor as
it morphed into a liberal alternative to Fox in the evenings. From that
experience, he thinks that “CNN needs to find an identity and own that
identity.”
“A news channel trying to build a brand by saying they cover news is like a
restaurant trying to become popular by saying it cooks food,” he said.
“What we understood from the get-go was that by focusing on opinion [and]
analysis and using topic-area expertise to draw conclusions, we could easily
differentiate ourselves from CNN, [which] was so wedded to just regurgitating
the facts,” Goldin said.
New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, author of the PressThink
blog, said the choice doesn’t have to be between “the view from nowhere” —
what reporters might call "straight down the middle" journalism” — and the Fox
News/MSNBC model.
“Maybe the view from nowhere has failed, not because audiences want opinion
rather than hard news but because the Voice of God isn't as convincing as it
once was,” Rosen said. “Nothing will improve at CNN until the people running
the news report consider that viewlessness may not be an advantage, but
ideology is not the only alternative.”
Press added that he thinks CNN “is going to have to bite the bullet and do
some advocacy programming” because, in his opinion, “there ain’t no room in
the middle.”
Viewers, he continued, get their straight news elsewhere and are “looking for
opinion in prime time ... anchors with an edge.”
3) Bring in big personalities
Adding more “edge” in prime time doesn’t necessarily mean rushing out to hire
a fire-breathing host from the left or the right. Personalities larger than
life, or so normal they stand out, would do the trick.
Michael Wolff, founder of Newser.com and a Vanity Fair contributing editor,
pointed out that “the viewing audience is just less and less interested in
traditional television, civic-minded news delivered by what are, in effect,
news readers.”
“CNN has to figure out how to make the news either more efficient or more
entertaining,” Wolff continued. “These are the two keystones of modern news,
and the network is deficient on both counts. I suppose I would try formats
that gave you what you need to know in minutes instead of blocks and
personalities that had stronger voices — not necessarily ideological voices,
but more unique and identifiable ones.”
As for who could fill that role, Wolff said it could be “anybody who doesn't
reek of conventional television.”
Wolff noted one of the secrets of Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes’s
success: “Find people who don't look or sound like what you think television
people should look and sound like.”
Aaron Brown, who was replaced in 2005 by Cooper at 10 p.m., said that CNN
doesn’t have the “big, broad personalities” who seem to excel these days in
the evenings on cable news. Brown included himself in that group, along with
Campbell Brown, John King and Cooper.
“If I were at CNN, the thing that would scare me is not that we’re losing but
that it’s that reruns are beating us,” Brown said. “At 10 p.m., a 2-hour-old
“Countdown” is beating my guy, the guy I have invested millions in [in]
promotional dollars.”
4) Jazz up the broadcast
Atlantic contributing editor Michael Hirschorn, a former top executive at VH1
who founded production company Ish Entertainment, said CNN should step away
from “headline-type news,” which has become “increasingly easy to access and,
therefore, commodified.”
“What's working right now is news packaged as entertainment,” Hirschorn
continued, “which is a tempting route for them to go down and which they've
gone down in a toe-in-the-water kind of way.” He pointed out the short-lived
comedy news show hosted by D.L. Hughley as an example.
However, Hirschorn said that “it's a gamble they can only take once in
earnest.”
“What might yield more rewards is doing a full overhaul of their news
operations,” he continued. “Update the look, the language, the production
style. If you look at some of the stuff the BBC is doing, it's a lot more
nimble, raw, real, less larded with the kind of newsy bushwa Jon Stewart makes
fun of. But that would involve firing a lot of producers and on-air
personalities, and that's always hard to do."
Hirschorn believes CNN could find success by focusing more on specific
audiences, creating “focused shows that serve specific audiences." “’Morning
Joe’ may have a small audience, but the people who love it love it,” he said.
(While still behind "Fox & Friends," the MSNBC morning show topped CNN, CNBC
and HLN in number of viewers last month.)
5) Mix it up ...
Others suggested everything from tweaking the current lineup — perhaps with a
new personality or two — to scrapping it in exchange for something completely
different.
If Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy had his way, the
network would bring back Aaron Brown at 10 p.m. and move Cooper to 9 p.m.
Kennedy, who also writes the Media Nation blog, said that he likes “the idea
of leaving CNN as the sole cable net doing news during prime time” and that he
enjoyed it when Brown squared off against Brian Williams’s old 10 p.m.
newscast on MSNBC. “They were both terrific, and you could just pick whichever
one seemed most interesting on a given night,” he said.
“The 8 o'clock hour is probably going to be a loser no matter what you do,
because CNN is up against the heavyweight bout between Bill O'Reilly and Keith
Olbermann,” Kennedy said. “Yet it's important to get things off to a good
start, since you need a decent lead-in for 9 p.m.”
“Wouldn't it have been great to have a newscast focusing on international news
anchored by Christiane Amanpour?” he asked, referring to ABC News’s latest
acquisition. “Too late for that.”
Rosen has his own ideas for a 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. lineup.
At 7 p.m., he would rename John King’s show “Politics Is Broken” and focus on
“bringing outsiders to Beltway culture and Big Media into the conversation
dominated by ... Beltway culture and Big Media.”
Rosen would program “Thunder on the Right” at 8 p.m., a show where a
well-informed liberal “mostly covers the conservative movement and Republican
coalition and where the majority of the guests (but not all) are right
leaning.”
The following hour would be “Left Brained,” a show offering the opposite mix
of hosts and guests. And at 10 p.m. would be “Fact Check,” an accountability
show with major crowd-sourcing elements” that would cut through “the week's
most outrageous lies, gimme-a-break distortions and significant misstatements
with no requirement whatsoever to make it come out equal between the two
parties on any given day, week, month or season.”
Rachel Sklar, editor-at-large of Mediaite, a media industry website, didn’t
call for a return of “Crossfire” but does think one of its last hosts on the
right should make a comeback on CNN. Her idea of a good pair: Tucker Carlson
and Ana Marie Cox.
Both Carlson, who this year co-founded The Daily Caller, and Cox, currently
the Washington correspondent for GQ, have had lively debates on The Washington
Post’s website. Sklar described Carlson as “authentic and engaging on air”
while noting that Cox has “a built-in audience, thanks to Twitter and [filling
in for MSNBC host Rachel] Maddow and the cool-kid cred that CNN seems to
crave.”
“They had a good thing going in their WaPo chats, and I bet that would play
well onscreen — they’re smart and watchable, and neither of them is
particularly afraid to piss anyone off,” Sklar continued. “And while they take
the news seriously, they don't take the players — or themselves! — seriously.
As a general rule, maybe that's the way to go.”
6) But don’t screw it up
“If they ‘fix’ CNN to be like Fox and MSNBC, then who will we turn to when we
want that breaking news coverage?” Sklar asked. “The breaking news coverage
without an agenda?”
Prime time, she noted, is only a “piece of the puzzle,” with the demo — the
prized age 25-54 demographic — even smaller.
“Stop for a moment and think about what CNN stands for. It feels pretty
important right now,” Sklar said. “So, yes, tinker with the execution, by all
means — that’s clearly broken, and there are ways to fix it. But the central
mission matters, and I still truly believe there's a market for it.”
Aaron Brown, now the Walter Cronkite professor of journalism at Arizona State
University, makes the point that while CNN is taking heat for its prime-time
ratings, the network is still a “highly profitable business” overall.
“What they do have to do is endure the fact that each month or week or year,
there are going to be stories about how they get their asses kicked,” Brown
said. “But as a business, they are doing just fine.”
Indeed, while any network would want to turn a profit and take home bragging
rights in the ratings, Brown pointed out that the former is still the primary
goal for executives.
“If I had to choose and I’m [CNN Worldwide President] Jim Walton or the Time
Warner guys, I’d choose to make a fortune,” Brown said. “If I’m anchoring the
show, I’d want to win, or I wouldn’t want to lose to a rerun.”
And then there is Donahue, the daytime talk show pioneer who hosted an MSNBC
prime-time show from 2002 to 2003. He said he hopes CNN will weather the
current trend in cable news.
“At this moment, their competition is more entertaining than they are,”
Donahue said. “And I admire them for holding on and not being seduced by that
kind of arm-waving.”
But at this point, for CNN, holding on may not be enough.
--
The trouble with American journalism, in short, isn't that it's too skeptical,
but that it's too willing to throw skepticism to the wind when it suits the
agenda of proclaiming every war a Vietnam and every Republican president a
Nixon.
Stephen Newport
Less military spending and more entitlements. "Ask what your country can
do for you" loudly and repeatedly.
Anim8rFSK
with that idiot Judy Woodruff's coverage, asking atheists to pray, and
never recovered.
--
As Adam West as Bruce Wayne as Batman said in "Smack in the Middle"
the second half of the 1966 BATMAN series pilot when Jill St. John
as Molly as Robin as Molly fell into the Batmobile's atomic pile:
"What a terrible way to go-go"
Stephen Newport
No, they didn't.
Zerkon
> So is it time for a radical rethinking of “the most trusted name in
> news,” the network of Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Campbell Brown and
> Wolf Blitzer?
Simple really. Hire this guy:
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03242010.html
CNN does not want to be 'fixed' obviously. No one wanting a audience
share would have Wolf Blitzer on for that long in that time slot. He is
not a high tech Cronkite and seems neither honest or even comfortable on
air.
CNN is not NEWS it is a Corporation. 'News' is a hook for corporate
product including war. Fix this and maybe the 'hip' but TV elusive target
demo will take a look.
Dano
I think at 70, he's had it with all of this. No surprise that the truth
about the so-called liberal, MSM is by and large a conglomeration of big
money interests and simply out for profits. The last thing they want is to
rock this boat. Especially in this economy. They have their million dollar
homes...cars...boats and the other luxuries to pay for. Even the highest
paid sellouts have mortgages...those are simply bigger than ordinary folks
are. They feel they have far too much to lose.
aemeijers
> By: Michael Calderone
>
> The future of CNN, never exactly bright the past couple of years, suddenly
> looked dire this week when ratings came out showing a 40 percent decline in
> prime-time viewers since 2009.
>
Oh, here's an idea. Maybe start broadcasting news again? And maybe start
having some reporters in the field again, instead of just repeating what
everyone else is reporting.
--
aem sends...