Can CNN Be Saved?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/opinion/05douthat.html

Can CNN Be Saved?
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: April 4, 2010

Listening to Jon Stewart helped destroy CNN. Now imitating him might be the network’s only hope of salvation.


It was October of 2004, the heat of the presidential campaign, when Stewart showed up on “Crossfire,” long CNN’s flagship political program, and delivered a now-legendary tirade.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America,” he told the hosts, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. He called them “political hacks.” He accused them of “helping the politicians and the corporations.” He compared their show to a professional wrestling match. “You’re doing theater,” he said, “when you should be doing debate.”

As it turned out, CNN was paying attention. Within two months, “Crossfire” was canceled, and the network’s president, Jon Klein, cited Stewart’s tirade as a tipping point. “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall premise,” Klein said. Henceforward, he announced, CNN would move away from “head-butting debate shows.” Let FOX and MSNBC have their “live guests” and “spirited debate.” CNN was going to report, not editorialize.

Big mistake.

Six years later, CNN is still the network Americans turn to when an earthquake strikes Haiti or a crucial health care vote takes place. But most days are slow news days, opinionated journalism is more interesting than the elusive quest for perfect objectivity and CNN is getting absolutely murdered in the ratings.

It was bad before this year; now it’s terrible. CNN’s prime-time hosts have lost almost half their viewers in the last 12 months. In February, the once-proud network slipped behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but HLN (its sister network) and CNBC as well. Anderson Cooper sometimes gets beaten by re-runs of Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown.”

Oh, good grief.

They need to get back to their original format from the Ted Turner days, in depth reporting that the other channels dont want to do.

Real investigative reporting that directly impacts average people and fewer stories per hour.

The hardest part of this would be leaving the daily political spin to Fox and MSNBC and focusing on real news, but it would probably boost ratings if they did.

that people would be losing their unemployment benefits today because "Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree on an extension before they went on vacation."

WHAT??!!

That's just a lie.

It's because of crappy reporting like that that I can't watch that network any more.

and they need to rid themselves of on air idiots.

Listening to Jon Stewart helped destroy CNN. Now imitating him might be the network’s only hope of salvation.

Did listening to Jon Stewart really "destroy" CNN? Really? That one event, that one appearance 6 years ago was what caused CNN to flame out? That certainly gives Jon a lot of power.
I think it's more possible that CNN's various periods of imitation of other networks is its problem. If people want to watch a bunch of rightwing blowhards bashing Obama around the clock they can tune into Faux. There's no need for two hard right networks - the Faux-bots are never going to leave Faux for CNN no matter what. Relatively speaking, the nighttime cable news audience is just a fraction of the TV-viewing public so it's not like CNN has this huge pool of viewers they can attract from other cable networks by modeling themselves after Faux.
I agree with Jon Stewart that the cable shows are doing theater not facts, but I disagree with the writer of this piece that the news-watching public wants screaming matches with hyper-partisan hacks instead of real information. Maybe CNN is losing its audience is because they suck at what they do.

such as Wolf Blitzer hold a prominent place they are on the road to ruin.

It appears to me that they want to convert a segment of the viewing audience to a right wing perspective. Like you said, that audience, they're already watching Faux.

sold it at a loss to Ted Turner and he fired all the Pox News type yammerers.

While there isn't enough splashy disaster news to entertain the witless, there is more than enough hard news out there that no one is reporting to inform people who'd care to know if there were a station that reported it.

He's just being a wingnut apologist.

marries to their "star" and running for Senate? Doesn't Whoreward Kurtz's wife work for a right-wing lobbying outfit? This is "too much balance"?

You get corporate news no matter who dispenses it. Wolfe Blitzer has a part time job as a lobbyist for Israel Richard Wolfe who is a guest on Keith Olbermann is also a paid lobbyist for Public Strategies

is all they do! They have Gergen on, and that idiot from RedState, and when the hell did CNN ever look at in any critical
manner the health care issues?

They call their opinion mouth pieces, CNN Analysts, lol. Anderson Cooper should quit, if he had any integrity, the guy is intelligent.

But perhaps the 4 million he makes a year is more important to him than reporting accurately.

Grew up watching that channel. Still remember the horror of Columbine from my perch on a hillside in East KY. Today I can't bear to watch it. It was so pro-McCain in 2008 that I switched to MSNBC. (which was a last resort, believe you me! I'll take Turner over Gates any day.) Unfortunately Ted Turner no longer runs the place, which probably has a great deal to do with their fall from grace. Now I guess they're going to go the way of the USA Network: the also-ran with islands of good programming once every few years (or segments of nudity, anyway), but otherwise just a bunch of amateurish hyjinx.

Though personally, I'm getting tired of talking heads altogether. It's not like a guy making half a million dollars a year can sympathize with people who are wondering if they'll be able to pay the rent next month, or keep the electric on through next week. Celebs just aren't my cup of tea.

Not much competition there and people might just find it interesting.